swiss made

I’ve just returned from a trip to Switzerland, a country that I’d never previously visited. As a result of this visit, I have a few things to write about, but I’m still finding it difficult to sit in front of a computer for extended periods (see my previous post), so this post is merely a trailer for what will appear on this blog after I return to Hong Kong, currently scheduled for next week.

One of the main highlights of our trip was a visit to St. Gallen old town, which is a world heritage site. The street architecture here is fascinating, and we were able to go inside a very impressive church:

This is the Episcopal Cathedral of the Diocese of St. Gallen. I couldn’t identify the architectural style, although it obviously isn’t Gothic. However, when we entered the church, I saw immediately from the flamboyant décor that the style was Baroque, even though I’d never previously been inside a Baroque church:

According to a leaflet that we picked up as we entered the church, it was built between 1755 and 1766. I will be posting more photos of the interior next month, together with photos taken in the streets around the church, like this one:

Another place that we visited was the Walensee, a large lake in the mountains south of where we were staying. I’d actually commented on the absence of mountains in the area where we were staying, so it was good to see something of the Alps up close. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to walk far, but I like this photo of a narrow waterfall that cascaded down the side of the valley containing the lake:

…and this is a view of the Walensee taken from a similar position to the previous photo:

We also visited Lake Konstanz, where I took this photo of a pair of swans:

As a Cumbrian, this lake reminded me of the Solway Firth, viewed from a small village like Allonby. In other words, the lake is so large that the opposite side is so far away that it reminded me of the experience of just being able to make out the shore of Galloway in the far distance from Allonby.

I also plan to write a separate feature about the guest house where we stayed:

The reasoning behind wanting to write about this place in detail is the sheer number of quirky ‘installations’ here, like this one in the corridor outside our room:

And then there were the rabbits! I took a lot of photos of these outsized rodents, which had quite a large grassy area to cavort around, although I was more likely to see them lolling around, as they were in this photo:

In addition to writing up more detailed accounts of what I’ve described above, I will be finishing an account of a bike ride south of Penrith that Paula and I did in early July, before my accident, and a collection of my favourite photos from this ill-starred summer (I took almost 1,200 photos before this unfortunate event).

a message to my readers

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will probably have noticed that I haven’t posted any new material since the beginning of last month. The problem started in the middle of last month. I’d just been for a short bike ride (35km), and when I got home, I found a note in my letterbox to inform me that someone had tried to deliver a parcel, realized that I wasn’t in and left it with a neighbour across the street.

When I went across the street to retrieve this parcel, I found that it was too heavy for me to lift. I could raise it just clear of the ground, but there was no way that I could have carried it across the street. However, the neighbour had a child’s push-chair, but when I tried to lift it onto this conveyance, I felt a slight pull in my lower back.

You probably think that I should have sought the assistance of a younger—and stronger—neighbour, because I have a long history of lower back problems, which started in 1968. I was working in Libya, on oil rigs in the desert, and I was driving a Land Rover across what appeared to be a gently undulating plain of firm sand at about 50mph when suddenly I was airborne. As I touched down, I felt a sharp stab of pain in my back. I did need some treatment by the rig’s medic, but I recovered quite quickly, and because my lifestyle has always involved a lot of physical exercise, adverse back episodes have been quite rare and easily dealt with, apart from one in 1983 when I was hospitalized on traction for two weeks after an incident when I was working at the Outward Bound School in Hong Kong. The school had just been hit by a severe squall that had caused the school’s pontoon jetty to break free from its moorings, and effecting a suitable temporary repair involved doing things that my back didn’t like. The problem was that I couldn’t just stop, which probably explains the eventual severe outcome. Incidentally, although I quickly returned to full fitness after the hospital stay, I was refused a new contract and kicked out when my existing contract expired on the grounds of ‘doubts’ about my fitness.

The parcel incident that I described above also seemed quite trivial. I expected my back to be okay within a few days, but a few days later, I woke up to a slight feeling of numbness in my right leg. This also didn’t seem significant, and I continued with my routine of long walks in the morning and evening as usual. I seemed to be able to ‘walk off’ the numbness in my leg.

Unfortunately, this numbness has slowly changed to pain, which means that I haven’t been able to do any cycling since the ride I referred to earlier. I haven’t even been out of the house for more than three weeks, apart from a visit to the local health centre for a detailed assessment of my condition, because I can’t place any weight on the affected leg without triggering excruciating pain. And I can’t sit in front of a computer for any length of time either (it has taken me almost two weeks to finish writing this short note). I don’t expect to produce any more posts for quite a while, although I do have a few posts in the pipeline, including a hold-over from last year that will answer the question of where you would take someone who had one day to ‘see’ the Lake District; a detailed description of a bike ride that Paula and I did south of Penrith at the beginning of July (with videos); and the usual selection of photos that I post every year after my stay in my home town.

We’ll be heading back to Hong Kong at the beginning of October, and I’m optimistic that I will have fully recovered by then (I am making progress).