Great company, weather a bit too hot.

Pam has been looking after us like royalty, and hosted us and two other old friends to dinner yesterday.  Lovely evening, superb meal.

We’ve been a little less ambitious with our itineraries this time, but are nevertheless beating my daily 3000 steps target every time, even on Friday when we spent a lot of time snoozing and sitting on the terrace.  On Saturday we took the boat from Biel towards Solothurn along the Aare.  Pleasant enough, but when we went out on the top deck in search of fresh air and shade, we got a bit pissed off with being told where we could stand or place chairs.  We therefore paid off at Grenchen, caught a bus into town, and took the train to Solothurn.  Handsome Baroque architecture, which we were a bit too hot and sticky to appreciate fully.  On the way back to the station we were in time to watch a heat of the dragon boat competition on the Aare: all good exuberant fun.  Though Switzerland is often accused of being austere and strait-laced, its zany episodes never cease to delight me.  I forget which year it was: probably around 1997, when the streets of Zürich were populated with brightly painted life-size plastic cows.

Step count: 8053.

Today we did another of our mad itineraries that are possible only thanks to the well-interconnected public transport system.  We took a tram, a train and a bus to the Bern airport at Belp-Moos, having arranged to meet an aviation YouTuber, Matthias Hänni, with whom I’ve conversed at intervals on line.  What a delightful fellow he is!  Friendly, knowledgable and with an interesting health story.  Having suffered from cystic fibrosis, he took part in a ten-year research programme, and is now evidently asymptomatic.  He recently published a piece he’d written for a learned journal on the subject, and when I tabled it for my German conversation group, we all found his story really inspiring.  Having now met him he seems in rude health.  Look up Matt’s Aviation Channel.

After a sandwich lunch, he drove us to Münsingen, where we joined a train over the old Lötschberg line to Brig, whence we’d planned to return via the new Lötschberg base tunnel.  On a whim, I suggested that we return via Lausanne, so we had a real orgy of scenery, along the glaciated Rhône valley and the lake shore.  After Lausanne the climb up through the vineyards is always beautiful.  After that, however, the weather took a turn for the worse, and although we got home dry, we’re having some pretty lively thundery showers this evening.  A relief, really, since we’ve been finding the hot sticky weather pretty tiring.

Step count: 5069.