After all, the first thing you would think about if this country came up in conversation would be the mountains. However, where Siegfried lives the terrain is merely undulating.
So he suggested that we visit the Walensee, a large lake to the south of where he lives.
On the way there, the rain was so heavy that I could barely see the car in front. I almost suggested that we turn back, but I’m glad I didn’t.
There is a motorway running along the south side of the lake, and also a regular road, which we followed. The traffic on this road was quite heavy, and progress was slow, but we eventually reached the western end of the lake and turned onto an extremely narrow single-track road. There are no passing places on this road, and the traffic arrangement to compensate for this is something very unusual. At the start of the road, there is an open area where cars wait. They have a seven-minute window, starting on the hour and half hour, when they can proceed. Vehicles travelling in the opposite direction also have a seven-minute window to proceed, starting at quarter past and quarter to the hour.
When we reached the end of the road, we were able to get out and walk around, and I took these photos of the lake and the surrounding mountains:
If you do watch this video, be sure to turn the volume up, because the car’s sensors were constantly being triggered by the proximity of the walls. Siegfried said that he’d walked along the road previously, which must have been quite harrowing, because there are no opportunities to avoid the tunnels on foot, although he’d never driven along it.
And that was yet another great day in Switzerland, a country that I’d not previously visited (I was pulled from a school trip to Interlaken at 24 hours notice back in 1964 because I’d led a canteen protest earlier).
