Lauterbrunnen - Part 2

I think the photos speak for themselves in this post. we went paragliding. it was awesome. 800m above Switzerland is a pretty nice place to be (as long as you are attached to a parachute i suppose). It was very expensive but definitely worth it. i felt surprisingly safe in the harness, after you run off the edge of the cliff (sounds a lot scarier than it actually was) you just kind of shuffle back and your sitting in a nice sturdy seat and can just sit back and enjoy the views. stupidly i forgot my sunglasses so in most of the photos i am squinting into the sun but luckily i got some nice photos as well. just after we took off my pilot (i suppose that's what you would call him) pointed out some snowy peaks and told me all that snow had fallen the night before. this probably gives you a good idea of how cold it was. i had dressed in layers so my body was nice and warm but my hands and face were freezing!

Ewen at the take off point

All ready to go

Getting harnessed up

Running off the edge

Up up and away

going over the town

about to go through the clouds

look mum, no hands!

Coming in for landing

In the afternoon we did the 'Murren Loop' which takes you by cable car to a town called Murren which was a tiny little town with lots of picturesque houses and great views over the snowy alps. we spent about an hour wandering around the town before getting in another cable car and traveling down to Grindlewald we didn't stay here though as we wanted to go to Trummelbach falls and these closed at 5pm so we got on another cable car and then bus and that took us to the waterfall. The Trummelbach waterfalls are a series of 10 waterfalls that fall between rocks and have been made accessible to tourists through tunnels in the rock walls. Up to 20,000 liters of water per second rush through the falls and over the course of a year over 20,000 tons of boulder detritus are carried in the water. the sound was incredible and you could feel the spray even meters away from the water. after spending a while wandering around looking at all the different vantage points at the water we got a bus back into Lauterbrunnen and it dropped us off behind our campsite.

The town that is Murren

We heard that if people have flowers in front of their houses in Switzerland they get a discount on their tax... this person must pay no tax at all!

Ewen at Trummelbach water falls

Trummelbach

Trummelbach

We did have an awesome video of the waterfalls and several paragliding videos but these accidentally got deleted. Don't worry though we still have one paragliding video which hopefully Ewen will add to his blog for you all to see :-)