Alpine Adventure Day 27 - Chair Lifts, Funicular's, Mini Golf & Movies

Today started with a bit of uncertainty. After a slightly unsettled night following our late night planning (and arguing) about our Egypt trip we both felt a little tired but at the same time sharing an urge to get out and release some of the nervous energy that had built up. The internal question we both faced was "Should we stay in and relax this morning, or just hop on a bus and walk up a hill"?


In the end the bus won out.

After a meditation and a hearty breakfast of melon and porridge we hopped on the bus to Vissoie and from there the connecting bus up towards the villages of St Luc and Chandolin. Set on the eastern flank of the Val d'Anniviers these two high altitude villages have stunning outlooks and access to lots of hiking otherwise too far away from the villages we have spent most time in at the head of the valley (Grimentz and Zinal).

Our destination was the Chandolin Telesiege (chair lift) which would ferry us up to an altitude of 2470m with our legs swinging free beneath us. In fact, when we did get on the chair lift we enjoyed it so much we baffled the station operator by staying seated at the top and heading straight back down just to experience it both ways.

Eventually, 3 trips later, we did get off at the top. Our plan when we left Grimentz had been to do another run like yesterday morning up to one of the nearby peaks close to 3000m. However, one look along the Rhone valley confirmed that the forecast rain was almost a certainty to reach us soon. So we switched our plans and ran instead around the hillsides, traversing the contours, to reach the Tignousa Funicular railway station around half an hour later, just as the rain swept in.

The route across had been short but really quite special as the clouds still hasn't quite swept into the the head of the Zonal valley and the peak of the Matterhorn was standing clear and tall in the distance, surrounded by other snow capped giants. Wonderful.

It was so much fun we had half a mind to carry on running anyway, all the way to Zinal which we guessed was about 2 hours run away. But then good sense won out....it was raining after all and we had tired legs already......and we got to enjoy a funicular ride down to St Luc and a bus back to the apartment instead

Once back it was still only 2pm and we decided on a quiet afternoon watching a movie  (I got to choose, Star Wars!) while the rain poured outside. Lovely .... and also the perfect interval to take us to an evening game of mini-golf followed by dinner and an evening writing in our journals, mindful that tomorrow will be our last full day in the Val d'Anniviers for this visit.