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Journal: |
I was woken at 5am by the loud peeling of bells from the nearby
church (I suspect it's some kind of significant day in the Swiss
religious calendar.....excuse my ignorance), but I managed to get
back to sleep. Breakfast wasn't supposed to be until 8:30am,
but I was hoping to make it as far as Einsiedeln for the night and I
knew it would be a long walk, so I arranged to get some (day old)
rolls and jam for an earlier breakfast. As it was, I only
saved myself about half an hour and left around 8:45am. It had
obviously been raining heavily overnight and there was a very large
tree branch down across the road from the gasthof. It wasn't
actually raining when I left, but it didn't take long to begin
raining lightly and I stopped and put on my Goretex trousers.
Problem was, that it wasn't cold and I was going to get warm walking
in my wet weather gear. The cloud was very low and views were
going to be limited.
I was aiming to get to the town of
Rapperswil for lunch, but don't exactly know how far it is. I
don't have a guidebook and the signs don't include distances,
although they do occasionally provide walking time estimates.
The walking was predominantly along back roads and farm roads and
stayed high on the western side of the valley the trail was
following. Despite the rain, it wasn't that unpleasant and I
enjoyed watching the slice of rural life I passed along the way -
milking sheds, tinkling bells, small farm cheese shops, cattle
sheltering under trees, farmers working in their huge barns, green
wet pastures.
I made good time, but I still didn't reach the
outskirts of Rapperswil until after 1pm. Just then thunder and
lightning arrived and the light rain turned into a torrential
downpour. I got quite wet, but so did a lot of other people I
saw riding their bikes home from school. I also saw quite a
few people riding their bikes while holding umbrellas.
As I
reached the centre of Rapperswil, looking pretty sodden, the rain
eased and I walked up to the cathedral and castle which were on
higher ground and overlooked the cobbled winding lanes and steep
tiled rooves of the old town. I then walked to the railway
station via the cobbled town square with street cafes looking pretty
dismal in the weather. As I had hoped, there was some
reasonably priced food at the station and somewhere dry to eat it
and I had a quick lunch.
From Rapperswil I needed to cross
the long bridge and spit of land that separated Zurichsee from
Obersee and as I found the trail I also found a sign indicating that
Eisiedeln was four and three quarter hours walking away and it was
already 2pm. There were no villages or towns between Pfaffikon
on the south side of the bridge and Eisiedeln, and I decided it was
smarter to stop early in the former rather than walk on and risk
trouble finding accommodation at a late hour. Also, the trail
was going to climb back up to nearly 1000m and I could see the low
cloud was going to prevent any views. Opposite the railway
station in Pfaffikon I found the Hotel Sternen and, not seeing any
other accommodation nearby, I took an over-priced room, checking in
at 3pm.
It didn't take long for my room to get that wet gear
smell as I spread everything out to dry and had a shower and washed
some stuff. Then I had time to catch up on email with the
first match of the European Championship on TV in the background,
before getting a calzone from nearby for dinner.
Breakfast is
at 7:30am tomorrow and I'm hoping to get on the trail shortly
afterwards for what will be a longish day, hopefully with better
weather. I plan to catch a train from either Schwyz or Brunnen
tomorrow evening up to Zug (about 30 minutes away) to stay with
former work colleagues, Jamie and Vivian, who now work for Reuters
nearby.
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