Trummelbach Falls and Piz Gloria

This was our first full day in the Swiss Alps, and it started out wet and cold – not very promising at all. Many of the surrounding mountains were hidden in thick, grey cloud. Those that we could see had a heavy dusting of fresh snow.

The wet weather wasn’t entirely unexpected, since we’d checked the Met Office app last night, so we decided to go with wet-weather-plan-A; walk to Trummelbachfalle, where we were promised no less than ten waterfalls inside a mountain. If they are inside a mountain, we reasoned, then the weather wouldn’t be an issue. We also planned – after we’d visited the waterfalls – to walk further up the valley to the cable car station and check out prices and times for an activity we plan to do tomorrow.

The walk to Trummelbachfalle took about 40 minutes. As we walked, the weather improved. So much so that patches of blue sky were appearing with increasing regularity, and by the time we got to the waterfalls, the weather was shaping up rather nicely, so much so that our multiple layers were coming off and being tucked away into the rucksack. When the sun came out, it was really quite hot.

Along the way we saw lots of hand gliders whirling around above our heads. This is also a popular spot for base jumping, and I was thrilled and mildly horrified to see someone actually jump off the edge of the cliff way above us in a wing suit, with – mercifully – a parachute appearing shortly afterwards.

Entrance to Trummelbach waterfalls is roughly £18 each. Flashing the tourist card that we’d been given with our campsite booking, we received a small discount of three Swiss Francs (I call them Chuffs… a chuff being equal to roughly one pound). We were also amazed to discover the lass in the kiosk selling the tickets comes from Baildon in Yorkshire, a mere stones throw from Keighley. It’s a small world.

A lift built into the rock takes visitors up to about the halfway point, from which a series of tunnels reveals each waterfall one by one. And it was awesome. These are fast flowing falls of glacier water (20,000 litres per second) from Jungfrau, Monche and the Eiger, that have carved out stunning caverns in the heart of the mountain. Superb!

As planned, after the waterfalls, we walked another 40 minutes or so up the valley, to the Stechelberg Cable Car Station. Bearing in mind the object of the exercise was simply to check prices etc. for tomorrow; we looked at how gorgeous the weather was, reflected on how far we’d walked, and how it require repeating if we left it until tomorrow, and then went and spontaneously bought tickets for the next available cable car to the very top. It’s one of those moments we might describe as ‘A Bose Moment’ (a private joke).

With a rather healthy 30% card discount, the round trip cost us only 161 chuffs. Trust me – that’s not a bad deal at all in these parts.

Changing twice, it took three cable cars (Murren – Birg) to get us to the summit of Schilthorn, famous for its revolving restaurant, Piz Gloria, so named after the fictional mountain peak, and filming location, in the James Bond film ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’.

Did we have lunch in the revolving restaurant? You bet we did. Did we see mountain panoramas to take the breath away? Oh yes – We could see across to Jungfrau and The Eiger, very clearly. Was I excited about standing in the very same spot that George Lazenby infiltrated Blofeld’s secret hideaway? You bet. For movie nerds, there’s a whole OHMSS experience there for visitors to enjoy… I loved it!

We did a circuit of the outer terrace, photographing in all directions, before lunch, then repeated it after lunch. There was just one last thing to do before catching the return cable car. It’s something called the ‘Thrill Walk’, which is basically a walkway around the outside of the summit, which clings to the rock face, with a narrow, single-rope-bridge section and a glass floor section. I walked it, and enjoyed it, but it was time to leave the Piz Gloria and head on back to reality (and a roughly hour and a half’s walk back to the campsite).

What a fantastic day it’s been!!