Day 2 - Saturday - Up In The Alps

Firstly, I thought you might like another picture (pic 1) from our vantage point at the camp fire yesterday. It was pretty full! There were scouts from Germany, USA, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Denmark that I recall.

Anyway, back to day and it's a good job we have flexible plans!

Today we were going to go up to the caves and to the Niederhorn but we couldn't get booked on the cable car and the forecast was dreadful. Instead we walked down towards the town centre and got the Adelboden cable car up a good few hundred metres. The photo (pic 2) is when we were still pretty close to the ground, although it didn't feel like it (I have no head for heights). For orientation, our chalet is a few hundred metres to the right and the Oeschinensee lake is in the valley you can see to the left of the pic.

We wound our way down through the fog from the top and intermittently had some nice views. It was a pretty gentle stroll really, although some of it was quite steep and we thought we were in for heavy rain more than once.

We saw some nice flora and David Mott swore he saw a monkey on the hillside on the way down, although I suspect it was a stray scout.

We crossed a couple of rivers and headed back down to the Kander Valley, getting to the chalet about 1-ish. We had a late lunch and avoided the worst of the rain.

In the afternoon many of us had a stroll down to the village itself and browsed around the shops, although they close at 4pm on a Saturday.

There has been showering (yes, honestly!) and then many of the Scouts got dirty again playing football. Cards are also proving popular and I suspect TVs and gaming consoles aren't really missed at all. We have also started making a hot air balloon so if we get that to fly we'll report back and maybe post a pic or too.

Inevitably last night many weren't asleep until after midnight and I think a few were up quite early too, although I was still asleep until after 7am so I can't be sure. There is some tiredness evident this evening so we are just having some trifle before packing in for the evening. Tomorrow won't be too intense; although it is quite a trek up to the Gastern valley it is flat-ish once there.

I had hoped to get some guest bloggers but they all seem to busy playing tonga.

Thanks for the cricket news - I may not bother with the highlights I am recording!

Dave