Thursday 13th June Today we caught the bus along the north eastern side of the lake to our last castle Schloss Oberhofen, about 5km from Thun. It is an extraordinary place in that it has undergone so many changes since the original keep was constructed in the 13th century. After a succession of owners including a Russian Grand Duchess in the 19th century, it was sold to an American lawyer in 1940 who attempted to make it more of a 'Fairy castle' with mixed s...

Today we visited Spiez on the south east side of the Thunersee. Jane checked the timetable & found that buses ran every 30 minutes so we walked into town & bought our tickets just a few minutes before the bus arrived at our stop. Although pubic transport is very pricey access to buses is quite open & most people board at the nearest door rather than pass the driver. We never saw anyone either pay or validate a ticket, so either the Swiss are incr...

Tuesday 11th June A little brighter today but still the mountains had their head in the clouds. We found the lift up to the Schloss & walked out just below it to visit the Castle Museum which was quite superbly presented, starting with an exhibition on the history of tourism in Thun dating back to the mid 1800s when people came to stay in hotels on the lake to visit the mountains. Then we climbed the huge keep which has 5 storeys of exhibits on aspects ...

Monday 10th June 10th Another damp morning for our trip to Bern, Switzerland's & the Canton's, capital. We had booked the rail tickets on the internet & d*** had them on his phone, so off we went. At the station we arrived at the platform after one went up the steps whilst the other went up a ramp in the opposite direction. In swept the train & d*** hopped on & started walking to where Jane would have got on. As you've probably guessed, Jan...

Saturday 8th June Jane looked at the locality on Google maps & found a new way into town going by north for 500m by the river past the power station, which has a 4m weir to divert the water flow & crossing it to walk on the northern side. The path on this side is tree lined & passes the open air swimming enclosure & a couple of parks & even a small 'Hunde (Dog?) WC' area fenced & gated. To our surprise there was also a quite sizeable ...