Lake Oeschinen

Oeschinen Lake

"Leave the hustle and bustle of city life behind and head into the beauty of nature and the peace and quiet of the mountains." That's what it says on the webpage for this beautiful lake, called Oeschinen See (lake). It's not the case on a sunny Sunday in September. There were hundreds of people enjoying the beauty yesterday, including us.

We travelled an hour by train from Berne to Kandersteg, walked to the base station of a cablecar that took us up the mountain. (The energetic and fit can hike to the lake and on up the mountain trails.) Then we walked down to a cafe for a coffee with views over the lake and glacier-topped mountains as in the photo above. A path through beautiful pine forest took us down to the lake's edge.

I found fungi and flowers along the way and kept stopping to photograph the stunning views framed by the trees. There are reflections and waterfalls down the cliffs on the opposite side of the lake and the mint-coloured water changed colour continually as the cloud cover changed.

There are two restaurants at the the lake's edge as well as a rowboat hire service and a number of pieces of public art. We did a lot of just sitting and watching (and eating) because as well as the beautiful views there were people in groups around the lake having picnics, camping, sitting around fires (you can buy wood at the lodges), walking their dogs, playing games with children and hiking and you have to agree that people-watching is a fascinating pastime. We heard many languages being spoken.

It's difficult to show the scale of the landscape in a photo. The area is part of the Jungfrau-Aletsch-Bietschhorn UNESCO World Heritage Site.The lake itself is 1km long and 1.6km wide.

And then it was time to go down the cable car and back to Berne. The train was packed with people, bikes, backpacks and pushers - I don't think anyone in Switzerland stays home indoors on a sunny weekend.