Uphill Battle

Each summer since we moved to Geneva, we have spent a weekend in Interlaken, the adventure capital of the world.  The last two summers we have gone canyoning, which is an amazing adventure of jumping, sliding, and swinging down a canyon in the mountains of Switzerland.  Since we've already done two of the best canyons in the area already, we opted for a tamer adventure this summer and did a bike ride from Interlaken to neighboring town, Brienz.  We rode the train up with our friends Shelley and Mike, and their baby girl Harper on Saturday morning. We were staying just a bit outside of Interlaken at the Hotel Neuhaus which sits just on the shore of Lake Thun.  We immediately sat in grassy area at the hotel, staring out at the lake and amazing mountains surrounding us.

After a few hours of sunning ourselves, Shelley and I decided to check something off our bucketlist, by renting some paddle boards and heading out into the lake!  We grabbed the boards, and slowly made our way out into the lake, amazingly keeping our balance.  It was a bit tougher than I expected at first to keep my balance, but once I got the hang of it, it was pretty fun to go around the lake, paddling away, in this gorgeous landscape.


That evening we headed into town to have dinner at our favorite restaurant in Interlaken, Hooters! Travers and I took our bikes while Shelley, Mike and Harper hoped on the bus.  We enjoyed the beautiful easy bike ride into town, passing by lots of cows and more breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains. And we were rewarded with the taste of delicious wings and tasty burgers and sandwiches.









The next morning, we said goodbye to Shelley, Mike and Harper, dropped our bags at the Interlaken train station, and headed out on our bikes towards Brienz.  We had mapped it out as a 20km ride, taking just a few hours, mostly flat along the edge of the lake with a few hills here and there. But boy were we wrong!

The ride started out beautifully. We rode along the river, following a riverboat that was headed out to the Lake Brienz. We hit the edge of the lake and still the ride was just gorgeous, down a gravel path, gazing at the beautiful blue water.

Just a short way into our ride, we hit our first hill. And at first it wasn't too bad. We both dropped into low gears on our bikes (and let me interject by saying that our bikes are not mountain bikes by any means. They are just regular casual bikes that are meant for easy-riding). So we started out ok, but this hill just kept going up and up!  So, eventually we had to get off and walk our bikes up this hill.  Don't worry we thought, this is just the bad one, and after this it will get better. When the hill finally did stop, we were rewarded with some great views of the lake below and with a short downhill into a town called Iseltwald.

After a brief rest, we hopped back on our bikes, and back up hill.  This went on for several more hills. We would get a brief relief with a downhill, and then have to go right back up again. At one point, we were walking our bikes up the hill, and were passed by an old man that must have been in his 90's, pedaling away on his bike, making his way slowly (but faster than us) up this hill!  But we never gave up, and we learned quickly how to down shift into our lowest gears and pedal extremely slowly up the hill.  Most of the time, we just sucked it up, and walked. We rested a lot, and were finally rewarded by passing by a gigantic waterfall, the Giessbach Falls!


These falls were so large that the water spraying off of them nearly drenched us, which was a welcome relief from the heat and sweat of our bike ride.  We parked our bikes and headed down a path that lead to a bridge built behind the waterfall!  I have never been behind a fall this large before. It was an amazing experience to see the fall from this perspective!

We cooled off as much as we could, then grabbed our bikes and continued our ride. We got to see the falls again from a different perspective, and couldn't believe just how long and far the falls went!











With the end of our ride getting closer, we headed back up a few more hills, being quickly dried and hot again, but knew the end was near.  Eventually, we made it up a hill and around a bend and finally had Brienz in sight!  With a final burst of energy, and a welcomed downhill, we quickly made our way into the town, catching our final glimpses of amazing mountain ranges and glistening blue water.

We had made it! All 20km in just a bit longer than we anticipated. Ok, a lot longer than we anticipated, but we enjoyed ourselves, even with the uphill battles and gave ourselves a big lunch as a reward in Brienz.  Stomachs full, legs shaky, we headed to the train station to head back to Interlaken.  Unfortunately, there was a power issue, and we ended up having to take a bus back, but we were definitely done biking for the day!  We grabbed our bags from the train station in Interlaken and boarded the next train back to Geneva. Our epic bike ride was over!