Bonjour from the North face of the Eiger (at ground level, obviously!!)

So we had a long day drive from Nancy to Grindelwald, about 6 hours, and arrived in the pouring rain with the low cloud blocking all the great views. We had just got the tent up in the rain and were putting everything inside when the campsite owner said we needed to move about 4ft as we weren't on the pitch correctly. So that was a nice welcome!!

Anyhow, the next day was the big 50 for James, the weather continued to be wet and cloudy so we decided to go to the Gletscherschluct Gorge which was nearby, we hiked up to it (only about half an hour) and it was a nice gorge to walk through. The river was running very fast through it, and there were some very high waterfalls - it was a glacier back in the 1950's. They had strung a 'spiders web' across the river which you could go and bounce on - I was somewhat tentative about it, but managed to get on for a small bounce! I'll upload some pictures so you can see it.

Then we took the bus into Grindelwald itself, we are about 20 minutes walk just outside. It's very alpine, lots of wooden chalets and colourful windowboxes filled with flowers but it's incredibly touristy and was packed with people. The thing we were particularly surprised by were the high number of Muslims, the women in full bhurkas - it seemed so out of place here, where everyone is in hiking gear! It's also very overrun with Asian tourists, so it was way too busy for us! We came back to the tent for baked camembert and some wine to celebrate James' birthday. For those in the know, he was absolutely delighted with my surprise tickets to the Belgian Grand Prix :)

Today (Wedenesday) the weather was finally better and we had beautiful blue sky today, we could see the North face of the Eiger from the tent and all the snow on top as well as several glaciers on the mountains next to it. It's very surreal typing the blog and then looking up to see it all. We had hoped to do the Jungfraujoch mountain railway today but it was impossible to get the website working to book tickets - we could get up there but coming back was all sold out, plus we heard many reports of it being rammed with people and at £400 for the pair of us, it was very expensive so we decided not to bother with it and went up the cable car instead

It was lovely, it was a 25 minute ride up and then at the top there is a walk around the cliff edge which you can do, another thing to overcome the nerves on as the floor is metal with holes in it, so you can see straight down. We walked part of the way back down which has worn us right out (old timers!)

Tomorrow we move to Liechtenstein for 2 nights x x