As Tim and I hiked in central Switzerland at the weekend, Grandma felt close - in the bright wash of cheery colour that greeted us as we emerged from the Biel-Kinzig cable car at some 1,600 metres' altitude. Petals of orange, yellow, purple, white, blue and pink danced in the breeze, like confetti for a fairy wedding. Above them, grassy slopes swept upwards to rocky crags that carved a magnificent outline against the sky.
We spotted marmots too - a flurry of brown fur between the flowers that provided welcome amusement on our steep climb up to the Chinzig Chulm pass. Apparently Russian General Suworow and his troops crossed the pass in 1799 - which made our effort in shorts and T-shirts pale by comparison.
From the top, where we stopped for lunch, the views were quintessentially Swiss, stretching across a panorama of snow-topped summits above grassy meadows. An inquisitive Alpine chough tiptoed close to us, appetite clearly heightened by the sight of our Arran oatcakes and Gruyère. From there it was a seemingly never-ending descent - from a wilderness between towers of rock, past an aquamarine lake and a sleepy Alpine farm, then down and down through shaded woodland, finally reaching a splendid gorge of light-stippled pools and caves carved out by a waterfall.
A poem etched on a post as we reached journey's end summed the day up: "Eyes filled with green, nose filled with grass, and belly filled with summer," it read. Please note: I have attempted to identify the flowers we saw, as named below, and cannot promise the names are correct!
