May

May 17: Mentally fit with a book

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A very relaxing day with absolutely no exercise whatsoever. Well, I finished putting the new plants into the garden this morning (and promptly forgot to take photos) so that could be classified as exercise. Now there’s some colour behind the hedge, in the garden, on the outdoor table and a window box next to the front door.

The hammock had its first workout; I started Donna Tartt’s new book, The Goldfinch, and lay under the umbrella for a while before the cool breeze sent me back inside. There’s nothing like a swing in a hammock for relaxation I reckon, preferably under palm trees with a blue ocean and white sand close by, but hey, the forests of Wohlen bei Bern and that sensational fresh-cut grass come a close second.

I need to finish the Cary Elwes audio book too, I’ve been neglecting it a bit because his voice is just so jolly posh you can only handle so much of it for so long! If you’d like to see short reviews of the books I’ve read this year, click here. Unfortunately, I’m well behind on my goal of 52 books in 2015. Can it be salvaged? The Goldfinch is going to take me a while to get through – at 864 pages, I won’t be ripping through it in a few hours, like the past few books – so maybe I’ll have to choose some shorter ones to get back on track … is that cheating?!

We also started watching a new Netflix series, Luther, tonight. It’s about a London detective with many problems and some questionable techniques trying to do his job. I’ve been a fan of the main actor, Idris Elba, since he was in The Wire but so far the recurring storyline of series one has me shaking my head in disbelief. I only hope it gets better!

Still having small problems with my right butt cheek muscle, but it’s slowly feeling better and I hope I’m up for Monday Runday tomorrow!

Wishing you a wonderful day.

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Someone’s clever “rockwall” garden on the walk into Einsiedeln. It was high and long!

May 16: Gardening all day!

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Rene, our neighbour and owner of the whole property, called us this morning and asked if we could help him clean the ride-on lawnmower today. No problem!

From midday, we prepared the mower to be in tip-top working condition. We both got a bit sunburnt! Oops. Here’s Leo cleaning out all the caked-on grass.

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Scraping off the hard grass

I cleaned another part and Rene sharpened the blades and then we put it all back together again. After nearly two hours it was ready to go, and Rene was ready for bed!

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Rene decided to have a little pause here

The grass was still a bit too wet to mow after yesterday’s all-day rainfest, so Leo and I put up the umbrella at our house and rebuilt the hammock holder. We also made a quick trip to the local shop for some new plants and soil.

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The terrace looking all summery with the soon to be planted flowers on the table

When we came home, I jumped straight on the mower and did just the back of the house and half of the front. Rene wants to see if the grass in the furthest part of the front lawn can thicken up a bit if we cut it less. So the grass looks a bit half and half. We had lots of problems with the wet grass clogging up the mower again. Afterwards, I decided to weed around the little house Liliane calls the pergola, where they have dinner parties and so on. It’s like a small shack with two tables and an indoor fireplace. Lovely in winter and great for barbecues in summer. Didn’t take a photo of that, I’m afraid.

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Looking good

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Can you see the line where I stopped mowing?

Leo made dinner then we sat outside with Liliane and Rene admiring our handiwork and watching all the birds. We finished the night with the James Bond movie Thunderball. I’m feeling exhausted! Right butt cheek muscle is feeling better today, so that’s another win!

Looking forward to planting all the new flowers tomorrow.

Wishing you a wonderful day.

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My little garden will get a spruce up tomorrow

May 15: Injured at home in the dry

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I think it rained once today – all day! Thank goodness we were home, warm and dry. It was also five degrees Celsius – a wee bit cooler than the previous four days! Oh the joy of lying on the couch, looking out the window, thinking what could have been! Horrible! Just horrible!

In general, I haven’t had to walk much in bad weather. The worst experience was in the Black Forest in 2013, when I plodded along for a day in non-stop rain. Stupidly, before I set off, I wondered how wet could I possibly get in seven hours? After one, the only dry part of me was my chest.

Water had soaked up my sleeves past my elbows (using walking sticks meant the water had the chance to run up and down my arms), it pooled around my toes when walking downhill and my rain jacket puckered in such a way under my backpack’s waistband that water poured straight towards my crotch. My walking pants weren’t waterproof and hung so low with the weight of the water that after only a few hours I was treading on the cuffs.

That was the day I saw one other walker. We nodded as we passed each other going in opposite directions and after about 20 metres, unprompted, we both turned around to look at each other and burst out laughing. I know we were both thinking, “Phew! I’m not the only idiot out in this weather!” Despite the dire conditions, the spontaneity of that moment is a happy memory.

That was also the day I vowed to always carry an umbrella in the future, to keep the rain off my face. My clothes dried pretty quickly and it took five changes of stuffed newspaper in my shoes for them to dry overnight.

My current right butt cheek injury still has me baffled. I don’t know how I did it, but I could feel a twinge on day two. On day three, after sitting in the buttercup field, it was really hurting. Everything was generally fine yesterday, except for the final hour into Einsiedeln, and I thought it was going to be ok. Plenty of heat-generating cream later, I’m still hobbling and really hope it will be fixed for Monday Runday!

Needless to say no major exercise for me today. I did some push-ups and sit ups but took it really easy and caught up on lots of reading. That’s good mental fitness!

Wishing you a wonderful day.

May 14: Swiss Camino Day 5

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Well, the final day has come and gone, and my right butt cheek is pretty happy it’s ended, but the rest of me wishes we were walking for longer.

Today we did a shorter stretch of 16km from Rapperswil to Einsiedeln, to finish the first third of the Swiss Camino, but because there was a fair bit of uphill it took us about six hours (with stops). See here if you want a detailed description of our whole journey, written by people from the Camino.

When we walked the middle section of the Swiss Camino in 2012 we started in Einsiedeln, so it was a logical end point for this trip. We can now say we’ve walked across two-thirds of Switzerland.

Leaving Rapperswil, you walk through the city, past the marina and onto a wooden footbridge which crosses the Lake of Zürich. What a great way to start the final day, listening to all the birds nesting on the lake, which is a nature reserve. Once across, we walked along a train line for a while, and then headed up, up, up to St Meinrad, where we stopped for a quick sugary drink and then started, for me, the highlight of the trip.

This section, between St Meinrad and Einsiedeln, is the postcard vision we have in our head of what Switzerland looks like – snow capped mountains, lakes, fields, cows, little wooden houses and glorious greenery. I kept taking photos of the same section of landscape, hoping to properly capture its beauty, but, alas, no picture can portray just how awe inspiring it is. You’ll have to come see for yourself!

Another highlight was being charged by a little cow. Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of that, but I would have loved a video of him bouncing in front of me, being all threatening, and me running away flailing my walking sticks in the air.

When we arrived in Einsiedeln, home of a very huge monastery, we were shocked by how many people were there, but it is a religious public holiday in Switzerland today, so maybe we shouldn’t have been too surprised! Because of this we didn’t go into the church, as we’d seen it on our previous trip.

We stopped for a much-needed late lunch and then caught the train to Bern and then the bus to Wohlen. It took just over two and a half hours to get home. While walking that 10 minute path from the bus, we felt the first spits of rain, and as I type this, at 10.30pm, it’s raining heavily. Our decision to compress the five-day walk into four days was a good one, because the weather has quickly turned from amazing to miserable.

Signing off for now. The photos once again will tell a better story than me. I think I might start a new section on this blog about walking, with the various hikes we’ve done, but need to work out if the time it takes to set it all up is worth it. Would you like to see more photos of other walks around the UK and Europe?

We haven’t slept well the previous two nights, so hopefully being in our own bed will put everything right again, including that strained butt cheek??

Wishing you a wonderful day.

May 13: Swiss Camino Day 4

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Today was tougher than I care to admit, and it was the shortest of the three days we’ve walked so far. Why so tough? Because so much if it – I’m thinking about three quarters of it – was on asphalt. That stuff is a killer, especially when you can see green grass so close by. Walking on a street/sidewalk/footpath is so much tougher on the feet than a natural path and we’re both suffering because of it.

I had my phone interview at 8am which I think was ok (please be good!) and then we left the Hörnli at about 8.45am. Lots of downhill to start the day and then into Steg … and then a very long straight footpath next to a busy road for about an hour. Ugh! Reprieve came in a short grassy path but then it was back onto a narrow road which serviced some smaller villages.

We chatted with another walker in a lovely field of wildflowers and she cracked us up. The first thing she said was the Canton of Zürich, being Protestant, had terrible signs for the Jakobsweg, or Swiss Camino, which is a Catholic pilgrimage. We laughed at first but then we had to agree with her. Not only was this 24km stretch between Hörnli and Rapperswil tough (yes that is the real name of this lovely village on Lake Zürich – I always joke about it being full of rappers), but the signs were pretty non-existent. The woman we spoke with in the field had been on a very long detour thanks to bad signposting, which involved going a long way down only to have to come a long way back up again. She was livid!

Later we spoke with an old woman who ran a little cafe for walkers/pilgrims and she said a few years ago, the canton had ordered all the Jakobsweg signs to be taken down, and because they live on the path, her husband had bought a few of them at the markets and put them up again! They were very helpful, so hats off to him for his foresight!

We struggled slowly into town just after 4pm and I’d lost my sense of humor by the time we found an overpriced hotel. I had a pain shooting from my right butt cheek down my thigh and Leo was also struggling. Why do we do this? Oh that’s right, it’s fun!

We did see amazing snow-covered Alps (the photos don’t really show them so well) and an incredible storm rolling in which thankfully bypassed us, but we were both very happy for the day to hurry up and end.

Even though it’s a lovely city, Rapperswil goes on the ‘must-see next time’ list for when we have more energy. We had a quick drink on the waterfront and then pizza near the hotel, where Leo cracked me up. I took a photo of him at the table and he was surprised that the man who refuses to wear sunscreen could be so sunburnt!

It was warm again today, and our decision to make the five day trip into a four day trip seems to be a good one, because bad weather is forecast for Friday, which would have been our last day of walking. Thankfully, tomorrow is our last day and we’ll be home and comfy on the couch when the bad weather kicks in.

Hope you enjoy the photos. No surprises that I didn’t take many photos of walking along the roads and on the footpaths etc. Hardly inspiring stuff!

I’ll post descriptions when I’m home.

Wishing you a wonderful day.

May 12: Swiss Camino Day 3

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Another long day with a very steep and arduous hill at the end but the view from the top is worth it!

It was pretty warm today, even I can admit that. I had sweat droplets coming down my face which hasn’t happened for a very long time! We left the accommodation in Tobel at 8.45am (we’re creatures of habit it seems) after a big breakfast talking to the owners and another couple who are walking one more day with their dog.

First came some fields with fresh hay bales, then some flat parts, then some hilly parts, then lunch in Fisherlingen, then some really beautiful forested parts and then finally some open parts which were very, very steep. Leo asked me was it just him or was I suffering on the incline too? I was suffering. We arrived in Hörnli just after 4pm and decided after 28km that was enough for one day. It was time to stop and enjoy that view.

Hope you enjoy the photos. I’ll write descriptions when I’m home.

Wishing you a wonderful day.

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May 11: Swiss Camino Day 2

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We set off just before 9am after a hearty breakfast at our hotel in Constance, through the city for about half an hour and then into a lovely forest area next to a stream. After just over three hours we arrived at our intended destination, Märstetten, and thought why stop now? So we went on, for another four hours and made it to Tobel. Just over seven hours of walking and about 26km under our belts.

All up a wonderful day in the sunshine with plenty of spectacular views and animals and hay bales. We’ve had dinner and my hayfever tablet has worn off and my nose is running and I can’t stop sneezing so I’m going to keep this short!

We’re definitely going to feel our legs and feet tomorrow and are worried we may have overdone it on day one! But the weather was too good to stop. Leo has a sore part at the back of his knee and I have a blister on the back of my left heel. Not to worry! We’ll power on tomorrow (we’ll probably be up quite early as it’s 8.15pm and Leo is asleep already!) and see how far we can go.

Enjoy the small selection of photos. I’ll add descriptions when I get home.

Wishing you a wonderful day.

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May 10: Swiss Camino Day 1

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We caught the train at 9am from Bern to Weinfelden, then changed trains to the smaller local train to arrive in Constance, Germany, at 11.35am.

I was here in July last year with Pastora and her husband Leo, his friend Sven and her friend Rosa. My Leo was at his school reunion. I was looking forward to coming back and sharing the beautiful scenery with Leo.

Leo thought he’d never been here before, but when he saw a building he exclaimed, “My sister had her wedding reception there!” So it turns out he’s been to Constance before too. 😉

It’s on the Bodensee, or Lake of Boden, on the border of Germany and Switzerland and there’s plenty to see and do here for all ages. We had a great afternoon wandering around the cobbled laneways and slowly taking in the sights. I’ll let the photos tell the story.

Looking forward to setting off tomorrow morning after a hearty breakfast for the first stage of walking.

Wishing you a wonderful day.

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May 9: Cheering on the Bern GP runners … too late!

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We had great intentions of leaving this morning for the start of our Swiss Camino trip, then realised why rush? We have plenty of time and Leo needed a day of nothing to wind down after some serious flooding problems he had to solve at work.

So we thought we’d head into town and cheer on the runners in the 34th Annual Bern Grand Prix, “the prettiest 10 mile race in the world.” Well, it probably wasn’t so pretty this year, because they had to change the route with the Aare river flooding/overflowing.

We didn’t know anyone running, but thought it might be nice to add some photos of the event to the blog. Here’s the photo we got.

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The end of the Bern GP (running race) at the Bundeshaus. We missed it all!

By the time we actually headed into town we were a little late. They were deflating the finish line. Oh well, maybe next year!

We wandered around the city and had a late lunch at the markets in front of the Bundeshaus. My lunch consisted of some of these …

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Two raspberry macaroons and two strawberry and pistachios … oh wait, one is already in my mouth!

Plus some Mexican taco thingies. No photo of those – nowhere near as pretty! How about some peonies instead …

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Amazing peonies for sale in the food and flower market in front of the Bundeshaus

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The main street of Bern. There are many ornate water fountains dotted around the city

I didn’t end up writing any more Travelling Light stories as promised, but will do a post-walk debrief summary of the gear I took. Too much? Too little? I’ll have to wait and see!

Wishing you a wonderful day. Maybe it’s Mother’s Day where you are? If so, wishing you a marvellous Mother’s Day too. Have a peonie! xx

May 8: A slow walking and exploring kind of day

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So Swiss! On the way to the bus stop

A short post today, without a silly song. Although I did talk jibberish with the cow above on my way to the bus to meet Claudia for lunch and then Pastora and Iva for ‘afternoon tea’.

My brain seems to have tuned out from the fitness side of things at the moment, probably because I know we’re going walking soon and that will be a really good workout for five days. So today, I just walked to and from the bus and wandered around an area of Bern that I’ve never been to before.

Claudia, always a great tour guide, took me to the Muesmatt Quartier. It’s very much a university area, being so close to various faculties, and it’s also very charming. In one part, all the streets are named after birds. Below is a good example of its sweet style.

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Checking out a new area of Bern with Claudia

Once again, Cafe Pyrennes provided some solid entertainment for Pastora, Iva and I this afternoon. We met a retired local sports journalist and had quite a few friendly arguments with him about all manner of things, but mostly women’s sport, of which he’s not a fan. Harrumph! But despite this jostling, it was a wonderful day.

Wishing you one too.

p.s Hopefully I can post updates from the Swiss Jakobsweg, or Swiss Camino, from tomorrow. We catch the train sometime before sunset to Constance and then should begin walking on Sunday, May 10. Just got to work out how to upload the photos onto my iPad while we’re underway!