A Swiss Train Journey

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Now I am no railway buff but can there be a better way to travel around Switzerland than by train? With cog and funicular systems linking to the main valley lines, it is possible to board a train in Geneva and travel up and into the mountains. Mister E and I purchased flexi pass tickets before we left the UK enabling us to travel on trains, buses, and boats on four days in any thirty. Services are frequent, reliable and, save at peak times, uncrowded. The scenery is magnificent.


We travelled alongside Lake Geneva and then climbed gradually through the Rhone Valley to Visp where we transferred to the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn, ascending past avalanches and ever deepening snow to Zermatt. 


There we emerged into the square outside the station where small electric taxis and horse and carriages wait to pick up hotel guests.


From the village the railway lines rise higher still on the Gornergrat Bahn, a popular tourist ride and also an alternative route up and down the mountains for skiers.



Our appetite for rail travel unsatiated, we transferred from Zermatt to the Bernese Oberland and Wengen, travelling on six trains to do so. Connections were never more than a few minutes apart and all ran together seamlessly. Again the views as we scaled ever upwards on the cog railway were tremendous.


As in Zermatt the railway line is an integral part of the transport system for skiers, climbing to Kleine Scheidegg which is reminiscent of something from the wild west; a one horse town with timber structures. It is also from there that, beneath the towering peaks of the Eiger and Monch, the Jungfraujoch Bahn sets off to the "Top of Europe" or at least its highest railway station at 3,454 metres above sea level.



Maybe we were getting a little bored with conventional and cog rail travel, but on moving to Crans Montana, we left the train at Sierre/Siders (that two named town, where the French and German languages collide) and boarded the funicular instead. It whisked us from the valley bottom to the mountain resort in 12 minutes.


It was another journey that was worth taking just to drink in the views, especially from the top.


Sadly back at home, the East Coast Mainline's scenery just can't compete.


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