Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Yes, I know that the portrait module was Tuesday, but how could I resist Winnie and Pepper – a 2-year-old St Bernard and his aunt – when I spotted them in the courtyard at Nostell?
But before I could get the shot I was after the two of them came to life, checking out the camera so closely that I might as well have switched to macro.
Luckily they soon settled down and I got my shot.
Monday (Montag), 6 (seches) June (Juni) 2011
WE’VE GOT just one ‘big trip’ still to do during our stay here; we want to visit Jungfraujoch, the ‘Top of Europe’ but today isn’t the day to go up there as cloud is swirling around and down below us even here at Wengen. This is the view looking up Lauterbrunnen Valley from the station at 10.15 am, as we wait for the train.
We arrived in cloud on Wednesday and the next morning, when the cloud cleared partially to reveal the mountains at the head of this U-shaped valley for the first time, it was as if the curtains had been raised on a great scenic theatrical spectacle.
A man cuts back the scrub on a steep banking by Allmend station, the next on the line as we travel uphill from Wengen. Alder scrub is one of the habitats recreated at the Alpine Garden at Schynige Platte.
It looks as if the cloud will hang around for a while so we take the next train down the other side of the slope from Kleine Scheidegg to resume Saturday’s walk down to Grindelwald from Brandegg, where we finished up the other day.
A St Bernard, much larger than the Swiss Mountain Dog I drew yesterday, is one of our fellow passengers.
There’s time for a coffee break at Brandegg Restaurant before we start. I settle down to draw the musical cows in the surrounding pasture and, feeling a little more confident with my phrasebook German order:
‘Drei cafes mit milch, bitte.’
Which I think is German for ‘Two coffees with milk, please.’ It isn’t; the waitress brings three coffees! But she kind enough to take one away again, much to the amusement of the staff.
Sheep have smaller bells than the cows. A group of 9 or 20 were slowing grazing around an old barn in the flower-rich meadows above Grindelwald.
