Another beautiful sunny and warm day for exploring the Lauterbrunnen region. This time we headed in to Lauterbrunnen centre, parked the car by the railway station and got on the ‘Grutschalp’ lift, which takes you up to a train which runs from there to Winteregg and then on to Murren.
Murren is a classic Swiss postcard town, dotted with chalets all covered in brightly coloured flowers. It’s a completely car-less town with the only vehicles on the roads being little electric buggy carts that ferry hotel guests and their luggage between the hotels and the gondola lifts.
There’s a selection of shops here, including one they call an ‘honesty shop’ – completely un-staffed, where you pick your choice of gifts from the shelves and leave your money in a pot!
We wandered through Murren and on to Gimmelwald – another small village that had a mountain hostel and a cable car that you could take back down the valley to Stechelberg – a small village on the valley floor.
We couldn’t do this because the car was parked back at Lauterbrunnen, otherwise we would have taken the lift back down and then just caught the regular bus back from Stechelberg to Lauterbrunnen centre.
Alternatively from Gimmelwald, you can get the cable car all the way up to the Schilthorn – the high mountain peak destination with the famous revolving restaurant from James Bond On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
We considered this, but the webcam at the cable car station showed the summit was shrouded in thick cloud so it would’ve been a wasted trip.
We headed back along the footpath through Murren back towards the train station, stopping to take a detour on a lift up to Allmendhubel, which has a restaurant and one of the most impressively-located kids adventure playgrounds you’re ever likely to see!
The Allmendhubel lift isn’t covered under the Jungfrau Regional Pass lift passes so has to be paid for extra. The extra cost was worth it though, even if just for the photos of the playground with this stunning backdrop on such a beautiful day.
Details you’ll need
- The Grutschalp lift destination on Google Maps