Sledging and bruises ...

The sun has finally returned to Zurich! Taking advantage of this most unusual occurrence, Tim and I headed for the outdoors at the weekend. On Saturday, we took the train up the local mountain Uetliberg, and enjoyed impressive views of our adopted city. It looked sprawling with rather too many high-risers to be described as beautiful, but where the old town stretches to the lake, and the glistening lake slithers into the distance towards snow-topped peaks, the image is fairy-tale like. S was for sledging on Sunday, when we journeyed to nearby Rigi. The views were no less than spectacular, with an impossible landscape of mountains poking up under a blanket of double cream.

There were two sledging routes: the first, a precariously narrow trail with a dangerous drop on one side, dipping and ducking across rivets in the snow and gasping for our lives all the way down - at least I was. I breathed a sigh of relief at the bottom of this one. The second was marginally more sedate, and made safer by the fact that the path was wide with no looming drops. Fear factor made me breathless; bouncing around on the wooden sledge has, I'm sure, done my pelvis damage. I feel bruised and battered! But that feeling of well-being you get from the glow of the sun on your nose, and the biting wind on your cheeks is a feeling that cannot be beaten. I just miss the 'hot chocolate and rum' culture of Austria....