Day 2 – The Jakobsweg To Interlaken

For our first day out we decided to hike a 12 mile stretch of the Jakobsweg along the lakeshore between Brienz to Interlaken. Nothing like a little warmup before you jump right in …

The Jakobsweg, or “Way Of St. James” is a network of trails criss-crossing Europe that have been used throughout history for Christian pilgrimages to the burial site of St. James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. One of these trails just happens to pass through Brienz and along the northern shore of Lake Brienz to Interlaken. As it turns out we’d be hiking another stretch of this trail, this time along the Thunersee, on Day 6.

This section of the Jakobswseg is reasonably level but there are periodic and repeated ascents as high as 750 feet above the level of the lake as you make your way towards Interlaken. This trail was mostly gravel but a few sections were paved – the nice thing was that in only a few short stretches did you have to either cross or follow a road with car traffic. Overall the trail was well-maintained, clearly marked, and wound its way through a nice mix of woodlands, meadows, and lakefront villages.

There are almost always benches along the wanderweg (the easier hiking trails) throughout Switzerland, usually sponsored by the tourist office on the nearest village and sited with a carefully-selected view. Today we took advantage of one of these benches overlooking Lake Brienz to enjoy our traditional Swiss hiking lunch – fresh crusty bread with locally made cheese and sausage as well as some Swiss chocolate, sliced apples, or baked goods for desert.

Our lunch beverage while on the trail is usually just water from our ever-present Camelbak hydration backpacks – see the Links page for their website. There’s no way that we could make relatively long distance hikes like today’s 12 miles without lots of water so the 100 ounce bladders in our Camelbaks are well-used. That said, if we know that a particular day is going to be (literally) a walk in the park then there just *might* be a small bottle of Fendant wine from the Valais region tucked in alongside the bread!

There were scattered showers in the weather forecast so one real advantage of this trail was that it kept us close to train stations and lake steamer landings in case the weather turned bad and we had to bail out for an early return to Brienz. We felt a few sprinkles from time to time but the weather held and was actually quite pleasant for this kind of walk. Today was a good example of how we were able to use on-line weather forecasts (especially the hourly details) and real-time webcams to plan and take hikes regardless of the weather. As it turned out we were able to get out for a hike every day of this trip in spite of some rather bleak weather forecasts, especially for the first week of our visit when there was rain (and even snow!) in the forecast each day. See the Tech page for more information about making the most of your favorite technology while vacationing in Switzerland.

We left Brienz about 11:45 and arrived Interlaken about 4:15. Allowing for lunch and numerous photographic delays we covered the 12 miles in four hours, which is right on our usual average of 20 minute miles over rolling terrain. The trail took us directly to the Interlaken Ost Bahnhof, a railway station that we’ve passed through many times over the years. We were right on time for the next departing Zentralbahn train back to Brienz – it was a 20 minute ride back along the same general route that had taken us substantially longer to walk!

Weather

Meals