a very short night — we arrived in dubai city at 23:25 last night and got to our ridiculously expensive hotel at 1:10 this morning and i got up at 5:00 to be picked up by the shuttle to our workshop location at 6:00. well, it was supposed to pick us up at 6:00, it did turn up at 6:30: what i had heard in the night was not (as i had imagined in my sleep-deprived state of mind) the hotel crew washing off the desert dust but was indeed and in fact: rain!

the first time i’m on the arabic peninsula, in a desert state, it rains! typical. rain in the united arabic emirates is like a couple of centimeters of snow in the southern states of the US: it hits both on the wrong foot and in both cases you have accidents all over the place. the largest one was without doubt a “sweet water tanker” that had titled over on the highway to abu dhabi.

during the workshop with our client i keep fighting against sweet sleep — inspite of very interesting presentations.

luckily, we finish earlier than expected, have a lovely dinner outside with a view across the waterfront, then manage to get the bus back to arrive earlier than scheduled to take us back to the hotel — which we do, once the bus driver has been told how to get back to dubai…

i’m sitting in the saddle spot between mount zindelspitz (to the south) and mount rossalplispitz (to the north). half an hour ago, mrs d, i, and fredi, our friend and outdoor guide from blue dimension got here after a climb up from lake wäggital, up through some frozen and snowed over patches — just my luck really: we hired fredi’s services as an outdoor guide to help me get over, past, beyond, and ultimately safely away from those exposed sections of today’s walk, and i had not really banked on having the additional challenge of iced over slopes… anyhow, just getting to the saddle spot was already quite exciting for me — just a couple of meters to the east of where i’m now sitting is: nothing! to be exact: about 1000m (about 3′200ft for you non-metricals) of nothingness, 1000m of straight down nothingness.

yikes.

the path to zindelspitz is looking ghastly from the point of view of a confessed acrophobic such as myself — that and the 1000m of nothingness right in front of me already had me politely but firmly excuse myself from the expedition to the peak of zindelspitz. so, mrs d and fredi have set off by themselves and i’m waiting for them to return.

having calmed down from my initial panic attack i spend the time trying out my new camera (got the body last monday from digitec and the 28–300mm lense arrived on thursday from adorama): i’m just blown away by the vibration compensation feature which allows me to shoot 300mm at 1/30s!

after about 30min a young walker comes down from zindelspitz. watching him it seems to be so easy, so effortless, just like taking a stroll to the station in the morning. sigh. sometimes i wish i had that same non-concerned-ness about exposed places, sometimes i wish that i, too, could just ignore those gaping abysses of nothingness… eventually he passes me and continues up towards the peak of rossalplispitz — which i’m supposed to scale today as well. following his progress i begin to have second thoughts, and third thoughts, and fourth thoughts. in fact, i can’t stop thinking that i must have been bloody raving mad to have agreed to today’s experiment, ropes or no ropes. i briefly entertain the idea of returning back to the lake right away, the memory of the iced slopes and that bit of having to scramble put a stop to it, though. sigh.

after a while i can hear the voices of mrs d and fredi and then see them navigating the chain-secured part and coming back down to me. yet, before i can even voice my concerns i find myself on the ascend to rossalplispitz! gulp!

…and the first part is kind of ok, i manage to persuade myself that that tiny piece of void to my right is not really important. soon it gets steeper and steeper though and the scenery becomes breathtaking — literally so in my case. panic sets in. luckily we have fredi with us, experienced fredi and he helps me take a break, take a deep breath and calm down again, and we try the last 50m scrambling up to the peak. it would have been nice, could i report that it went all swimmingly, but it didn’t. half-way up i get another panic attack and it takes quite a bit of encouragement, patience and even the encouraging words of a young swiss-french lady overtaking me to get me going up again…

…and i make it! i really make it up to rossalplispitz! it’s an exhilarating experience! the views are fantastic — as is lunch out of the rucksack up here at over 2100m altitude! yes, sure am i concerned about the way down, but i also enjoy being up here and am grateful for fredi’s help and patience (and the encouraging words of that swiss-french lady).

after about half an hour we get our kit together — fredi is very kindly going to secure me on my way down and so i’m being “put on a leash” as i call it. the descent of the scramble bit is every bit as frightful as i imagined it to be, but being secured via the rope i manage to get down to where the path is — and then have to manage the final “piece de resistance”, about 50m of narrow path with the aforementioned 1000m of nothingness to my right… with fredi’s help and securing i do manage it and it becomes much easier after that. phew.

we make our way through rocks, but nothing as scary as what i’ve just put past me. the landscape looks almost alien being slightly covered in snow dust.

at hochfläschen hut we break for a well-deserved coffee — and enjoy the view back (rather impressive and chat with a young couple who had passed us on our way down.

a rather exciting walk. would i do it again? hmm…i guess that yes, but not alone

links:

• pictures
• slideshow

this morning i learnt that on monday afternoon my very good friend steve wright died after a motorbike accident in twyford.

to say that i’m devastated and sad is an understatement.

all day long pictures of steve keep coming up: our first project together for a UK mobile phone operator, working frantically through the night to get the demo running next morning at 9:00 … steve picking mrs d and me up at the end of our southdowns walk last year and whisking us back out of the rain to warm and friendlz bigpath farm … steve taking care of their cat bramble … steve preparing the BBQ … us having a ridiculously expensive pint of guinness at disneyland paris … seemingly endless and escalating sametime exchanges of more and more ridiculous icons that we each had found on the internet … his two words of german “moin moin” with which he would start all his sametime sessions with me … DVDs with those missed topgear or dr who episodes arriving from the UK … steve taking us on a mini-pub crawl through pubs of hampshire … URLs with links to fantasticly looking new bikes … URLs to ridiculous stuff each of us had found on the internet … our planned trip to the bike exhibition in milano in three weeks, him as the CEO of bigpath enterprise, me as the bigpath enterprise sales director germany and switzerland … his “right!” when he’d just finished something … standing in line at the coffee bar in hursley … his shed full of bikes and bike parts … his wit… his humour … having a laugh with him…

sigh.

we have lost a very good friend and i miss him terribly. our thoughts are with his family who must miss him even more.

here’s to you, steve! i hope we’ll see each other again some day!

i wake up early today, not just because of the usual 5:00 bell ringing from the monastary’s church tower, today the whole valley around einsiedeln is just drowning in the sound of cow bells and sheep bells — it’s alpabtrieb! every year in the may–june time frame the local farmers bring their stocks, mostly cows and the occasional sheep herd, from the valley floor up to the alps where they stay for the summer. from the beginning of september until mid-september, end of september we then have alpabtrieb when the whole process is reversed.

einsiedeln being a little town¹ with tourist traffic all year round it wouldn’t do to have all the farmers bring down their stock all at once, so, the whole business proceeds in stages according to a pre-determined schedule over the course of two weeks. today we seem to have the cows from our end of valley descending on us

oh, and that picture was not taken today but rather two years ago at the goldinger tal, they’ve homecoming cows there as well.

good breakfast at 8:15 today, then we are off to catch the S1 sherpa bus from llanberis to pen-y-pass, the starting point for our ascend to the summit of snowdon!

the weather forecast for today is fairly good and the bus ride (the bus stop is almost right outside our b&b) is nice and short, after 20min we are at pen-y-pass. although pen-y-pass is “only” at 360m above sea level it has a very alpine feeling to it with the barren mountains surrounding it and the strong wind blowing.

we intend to take the pyg track up to the summit of snowdon — from the 1:25K ordnance survey map it’s not entirely clear where the track starts so we follow the broad miner’s track for about 200m and then climb up a small track going off to the right which takes us almost straight up and we quickly gain height. we end up on a track parallel to the miner’s track but about 100-150m higher. eventually we join the real pyg track — it turns out that it started at the northern end of the pen-y-pass car park — and are now on a nice track leading us along the eastern side of the snowdon horseshoe up to the little col between snowdon and garnedd ugain. the track zig-zags a bit, crosses boulder fields, very occasionally requiring a scramble. the view towards the south of snowdonia is just breathtaking and become better with each meter gained. when we reach the col the wind coming from the north and the sea is already waiting for us and we very quickly don our rain jackets to block it off. from the col on we join the track coming up from llanberis parallel to the rail tracks. snowdon summit is now veiled by low flying clouds and it’s become rather cold rather quickly. after 15min we reach the summit and are rewarded with breathtaking glimpses across mountain ranges of snowdonia!

our packed lunches from our b&b turn out to be a bit of a surprise: ours must have been swapped with those of the other couple staying at our b&b — i certainly didn’t order eggs with onions and mrs d didn’t order tuna with tomatoes… oh, well.

half an hour later we are on our way back down. instead of following the llanberis path along the railway tracks back into llanberis, we decide to take the pyg track back and follow through to its starting point — the scenery inside the snowdon horseshoe is just so much nicer and “dramatic” than the easy-peasy llanberis track

back at pen-y-pass we both have a cup of tea and from the café enjoy a last survey of where we’ve been today: a fantastic walk through a breathtaking landscape with really exciting weather!

while we wait for the bus we chat with one of the café ladies and learn that this year alone there have been 10 fatalities already on snowdon; that pyg track is the most dangerous of the routes; that the sherpa buses are sometimes in a bit of a squeeze when one of those large “german made” tourist buses is coming down the pass to llanberis, forcing the sherpa buses to reverse all the way back…

it’s 16:15 when we get back to llanberis.

dinner: tandoori chicken at spices of llanberis, quite well done.

all in all: a fantastic and exciting day!

we get up late today, a rocking 30min later than the days before, and, after breakfast, flip the tourist-bit to the on position and make our way into the city of st davids¹:

• fuelling stop at the local delicatessen (biscuits for the train ride tomorrow, burned sugar likewise)
• three very nice scarves at the fashion shop in new street
• today’s guardian at the post office
• some apples at peter’s the grocer

next, we finally visit st david’s cathedral.

st david’s cathedral is a bit unusual in that it’s the first cathedral that i’ve visited whose floor is not level but instead slowly rises from the main entrance up towards the choir. also, the main pillars are slanted outwards. very interesting. also fascinating are the different styles of ceilings each section of the cathedral has. really impressive — and we do get an almost sub-sonic blast from them — are the bass pipes of the organ: thick as trees and certainly as high.

the cathedral shop has the usual nick-nack and riff-raff on sale, nothing really tempting — and nothing suitable as a birthday present for our in-law, mrs a, meaning we’ll need to keep on looking.

after a nice lunch in the cathedral refactory we sit on the green and spend the afternoon reading

our last dinner in pembrokeshire is a the excellent cwtch restaurant again (nicely completing the symmetry of this week: our first dinner last sunday evening was at cwtch as well) — we managed to get a reservation for 20:30, leaving enough time to pack our bags, watch the latest dr who on tv, and stroll back into town.

not as energetic a day as the rest of the week, but rather pleasant as well!

our good friend and sometimes mountain guide fredi kälin had advertized a snowshoe tour to the gloggeentürmli in the gotthard pass area — the precondition being that the pass itself got opened again and, of course, that we’ll have appropriate weather.

well, the gotthard pass was opened thursday a week ago, now let’s see whether the weather plays along…

when i read in late november that the district council had granted a license to a business owner from euthal (which is at the southern end of lake sihlsee) to operate a small café on lake sihlsee in case the lake got frozen solid, i laughed and thought, “yeah, right, that’s going to happen…” — well, the saturday before christmas the district of einsiedeln declared the ice south of the euthal viaduct safe for skating!

after christmas i managed to get decent skates in my size and went for a morning of skating! lots of fun! the ice is a bit rough in places, but you’ve got a couple of kilometers of skating fun — just going around the outer loop takes you about 15–20min. plus, the ice field café is doing bratwurst

• link to photo blog

that cough has not become any better :-(, the weather has not become any worse so after church (we are now attending the worship service of the local reformed church) a second breakfast, and a short nap (me), we go for a short walk around einsiedeln: up the hill towards the monastery (lots of people on the ice skating ring there, got to do that next week!), around it (lots of people doing cross country skiing), around it and then up friherrenberg mountain (lots of people skiing and sledding there). the weather seems to be taken from a picture book or some tourist advertisement about switzerland: just bl**ding marvelous! once we have cleared the summit of friherrenberg we are all by ourselves and enjoy the snow and the views

the sun is getting ready to settle down for the night by the time we reach chälen, on our way down we encounter a BMW that clearly is stuck on the icy road up to chälen, but can’t really do much about it (quite a traffic jam by the time we leave: two cars trying to push–pull the BMW up the hill, another car whose driver just wants to get past and down the hill to einsiedeln).

back home, we settle for a repeat viewing of the 2005 version of pride and prejudice with keira knightley and donald sutherland, have tea and upload the pictures of this weekend.

i just hope the coughing will get better (or worse if you look at it from the point of view of the cough) by tomorrow: i’m scheduled to give a lecture on virtual worlds tomorrow evening at the university of freiburg…

back from a rather unusual evening (for us, that is) — we went on a night orientation hike organized by the zindelspitz section of the swiss alpine club (of which we are card carrying members)! the hike started at the car park in innerthal in the lovely wäggital valley.

getting there was already an adventure in itself: we went by car (courtesy of mobility car sharing) from einsiedeln via sattelegg pass to vorderthal. that route is a seemingly endless succession of narrow curves, first climbing up to sattelegg pass and then (even narrower curves) all the way down to vorderthal. exciting — especially the first time round!

we got to innerthal almost right on time. each of the three categories — leisurely but reading skills required, classical orientation run, GPS run — had two groups of two starting. mrs d went for the leisure categories, i went (yes, you guessed it) for the GPS one. after initial confusion (my partner had left his reading glasses at home and mistook the compass reading for the distance), we managed to get out of the parking lot and were on our way to the first waypoint. the whole route was a cleverly arranged sequence of navigating to waypoints, taking coordinates from the map, backtracking on tracks, and following routes.¹

navigating via GPS to waypoints in the dark in unknown terrain — rather a challenge, but also quite a lot of fun! aside from from being paired with one of the formidable chaps who do the jungfrau marathon (gasp!), aside from falling into one of those cow-made holes and just plain slipping down a wood enclosed burn (luckily my rucksack cushioned my back!) we managed to do the entire course — and won the first prize in the GPS category (a voucher for a night’s stay at the sardona hut)!

afterwards we had a rather nice dinner in a local ski hut followed by chatting and swapping “war stories”

when we leave innerthal it’s about 0:30 and it has started to snow! we probably break the record for the slowest drive from vorderthal via sattelegg pass back to einsiedeln: unknown road, snow blowing against the windscreen.

all in all a very exciting and fun night! recommendable

• interested in the route: KMZ file

the move is completed! we’re now living in our new apartment for two weeks and — aside from teething problems with the electrical wiring — everything went fairly well! we’ve returned the keys and responsibility of our old apartment in adliswil back to our former landlord and have, thus, concluded the adliswil chapter.

i’ve started getting up early! leaving the house at 6:50 to catch the 7:00 train to wädenswil, then the 7:28 train to thalwil and the 7:40 to rüschlikon — and about 10min up the hill to the lab unusual feeling to be among the first in the office

coincidentally, out here in the hinterland of switzerland, the rhythm of live is a bit different from live in the zurich suburbs: from 22:00 to 5:00 in the morning einsiedeln has a traffic curfew in place for most of the town! one can get permits to drive during the curfew (and as a resident it’s no problem at all) but only “to drive directly to or from home on the shortest route possible” — so, no idle roaming about or late night sightseeing tours of the town! you’ve been warned! also, i’ve the suspicion that at midnight they lock up the valley…

we’ve both taken a number of pictures — unfortunately, the USB cable for the camera has so far not made an appearance in our humble abode…stay tuned

content.

we are moving! the last two weeks in our old apartment in adliswil have started. just took delivery of 90 boxes from our movers — the dismantlement is starting…

after a rather good night’s sleep we enjoy breakfast at riverdale house b&b — mrs d starts flirting with jake, the charming and enchanting son of the house: soon they are playing together with his wooden trains (well, he’s just about three years or so). the weather has improved in that it’s not raining anymore — we collect our clothes from all over the house where they had been left to dry (luckily our shoes are dry as well!) and set off for a bit of sightseeing in alfriston:

• the national trust’s clergyhouse, and
• the local church, st. andrews, the “cathedral of the south”

both very impressive; it turns out that the clergyhouse was the very first property bought by the national trust back in 1896 for the sum of £10!

after a bit of shopping (mineral water, apples) we start around 11:00 for our walk to lewes. the weather continues to hold, and we follow the “ridge” of the south downs. at the firle paragliding site we pause to watch student paragliders trying to become airborne — the wind is rather variable so this turns out to be a bit tricky and most just fly their paraglider like a kite…

we do meet a couple of fellow walkers as well as some astonished sheep. the walk from rodmell to kingston turns out to be a bit of a chore: mrs d all of a sudden suffers from severe and painful cramps in her legs and only manages to continue with lots of stretching exercises. in kingston we take a break at the juggs before eventually continuing on. luckily the last bit is rather easy and level walking and we reach our b&b for today, berkeley house hotel, where we have the spacious and nice twin bed room right at the top of the house.

after a shower and a short nap, we start our reconnaissance of lewes’s pub-with-food situation. the first attempt is at the john harvey tavern which is the pub of the local brewery — unfortunately it’s bursting at the seams and it seems a hopeless cause to wait for a free table so, on we crawl from pub to pub (sans the alcohol, though): one looks nice, but stopped serving food at 19:00; the next still does food but its patrons are on the wrong side of the shady–non-shady divide; another one was recommended in the guide, but seems to have changed owner and clients the words “tarts” and “floozy in a jacuzzi” sprang to mind. after about an hour we are back at the john harvey tavern which by now has lost some of its high-pressure cooker character and, with a bit of luck, we manage to command a whole table in the non-smoker’s section the beer is quite good, as is the food! we enjoy the evening…

today’s the first day of our south downs way long distance walk! 180km lie ahead of us! to be honest, i am a bit worried whether i will make it — the distance is not what i am worried about, it’s the weight of my backpack (17kg!) and the fact that we have two “long days” ahead of us: one 30km and one 32km day. well…not guts no glory

after a quiet night (no roundabout next to this b&b…) we have breakfast and then start our adventure: we pass through meads village and make our way to the start of the south downs way another couple is just leaving as we get to the official starting point and offer to take our picture they are using a luggage carrying service and only have two small backpacks…

as we set off, the inevitable happens: it starts raining. at first it’s only a drizzle but then it becomes more serious about it and also calls in the help its friend, mr windy. strangely enough, though, i don’t really care: it just feels fantastic to be alive and part of the elements out there and i enjoy the day regardless of the rain!

 

from eastbourne until we turn land inwards towards exceat, we are following the coast line with its sheer drop to the channel on our left. and it’s a roller coaster walk: up and down and up and down. the wind picks up speed and force and soon we keep a respectful distance to the cliff edge as we are pelted with gale force gusts saturated with rain. as we get close to beachy head we see a police helicopter, lots of police, and a winch going over the cliff. some of the police men and women wear gloves and it looks like a forensic operation is under way. increase the distance to the cliff edge

the light is — inspite of the rain — rather interesting and the seven sisters are an amazing piece of coast!

when we reach cliff end it’s, well, the end of the cliffs for us and we turn inland towards exceat visitor center, which we reach after about 30min. the café looks eerily deserted, but we are wet, wet, wet and absolutely crave something hot — and, luckily, we can still order lunch while we wait for our soup of the day along with a pot of tea, the couple we met earlier this morning in eastbourne comes in from the rain, then a group of ladies who refuse to sit down and just stand in a huddle, a bloke with his dogs comes in for a cup of coffee — we are no longer alone.

eventually we are recharged enough to continue to alfriston — but before doing so we take a look at the rather interesting visitor centre with its execellent explanation of how the coast at exceat has changed rather dramatically back and forth over the last 100 years!

the walk to alfriston takes us through wood then over typical down hills and finally through litlington, where we unfortunately ignore the bridge over the cuckmere river in the erroneous belief that there will be another one closer to our b&b for tonight, the riverdale house b&b… we end up walking through a lovely peaceful valley along the meandering cuckmere river all the way to alfriston, past it almost until we reach a bridge across the river and then it’s all the way back through picturesque alfriston (picturesque but wet) back to along the cuckmere river until we reach the sign post for riverdale house. the permeating light rain has turned into a down pour by the time we reach riverdale house. our landlord and landlady for the night, rory and pippa menzies, are fantastic and help us get to grips with our soaked through clothing (the bottom compartment of my backpack has delveloped the ill-conceived notion that it’s a “spa”…) — our room is comfortable and newly decorated, we feel right at home.

after a hot shower we make our way into alfriston again — true to form, it has stopped raining! the george inn catches our fancy and we have a nice dinner!

after a really good night at the hotel eden früh and an likewise good breakfast, we check out and make our way to the main station again. the thalys to brussels leaves cologne at 10:14 and we arrive at the station with enough time to buy newspapers and mineral water.

the trip to brussels is fairly uneventfull and we arrive on time at brussels midi at 12:38 — the eurostar is scheduled to depart at 14:59, so over two hours to pass. brussels midi station is dark and dreary as ever, the usual warning against “thieves operating in that area”, lots and lots of people. belgium’s reputation of having a good cuisine is not really reflected by the assortment of fast-food places at the station… we settle for a café close to the eurostar departure lounge and read the papers.

at 14:20 we move over to the eurostar departure area, check in, check through belgium border control, through the x-ray-thingy, through UK border control and — wait for the bording to begin.

the eurostar leaves brussels almost on time and we are racing through belgium and france before we reach the channel tunnel, having late lunch at 300kph is not something we do every day the ride through the channel tunnel takes just 21min (that’s almost the same amount of time it takes from zurich through the zimmerberg tunnel to thalwil) and shortly after we get off the eurostar at ashford international — a rather typical small town railway station in kent. we wait away the time until the next train to eastbourne leaves an hour later in the lovely, well-stocked café-with-a-view on the platform — well, kind of…

the weather seems to be undecided on whether to start raining or hold back when we arrive in eastbourne — and we arrive on time! which is rather amazing after a journey by train across half of europe…

our b&b for the night is the beachy rise b&b in meads village, just east of eastbourne: it turns out to be a nice little b&b, nothing too fancy nor to frilly but instead a nice little room at the top. there are a couple of shops and two pubs around the corner (along with an ATM at the little supermarket) — we opt for the ship inn as the pilot inn seems to be a bit too “atmospheric” for our taste: food is good, beer is as well.

tomorrow we’ll start on our south downs way adventure: a 180km walk from eastbourne to winchester — not only will we walk that distance but we will also have to carry our stuff ourselves: at the latest weigh-in it was round about 15kg each…we are not entirely sure, whether we can pull that one off…(or should i say, carry it through?)

anyway, i’ll post more or less frequent updates to my twitter account which you can either keep an eye on or which you’ll also find in the sidebar on the left — so, if you’d like to find out what happens: stay tuned

tomorrows walk (cardada - mt madone - mergoscia) mapped out, printed, and GPS route uploaded, looking up train times now

booked hotel in cologne for the 13th now to avoid having to get up at 4am to reach the eurostar in brussels…much better solution

back home after a beer with reto…income tax bill for 2005 finally arrived: far less to pay than expected, nice

calling it a day…thunderstorm has not made it to us so far…