Solothurn - Wäckenschwend
25 km
Elevation: up 520m, down 200m
Min altitude 428m, max altitude 777m
Active hours: 6h36m
Steps: 45197 (though I don't trust the steps anymore)

The morning started with my clothes having disappeared from the sanitary building where I'd left them to dry (I got them back at the reception) and writing yesterday's log. And thinking about where to go next. It seemed like I should just do one or two more days of walking or I'd get too close to the alps. But I don't want to go home yet. After looking at a map in a bookstore and calling someone to spar about it, I decided to go on for a few more days and go to Interlaken. Next time, when I need some days to get used to ascending and descending, I'll just walk for a few days somewhere else, then take the train to Interlaken, because from there it's pretty much right up into the alps.
That took all morning, so this is again half a rest day. I went back to the bookstore to get the map I'd want for those few days, did some grocery shopping, and left. I had to get out of the flat area and of the city with adjacent villages, and it took forever. Flat flat flat terrain, I'm in Switzerland, not the Netherlands! I left at 12.40, and it took until 16.00 until I started to see some height differences again, and some blue sky, though not where I was going. Later, I even saw sunshine and by 16.45 I had to climb a small hill again. In that time the only thing I saw worth mentioning was birds of prey, at one point over 20 in the sky in my field of vision.
It took until 18.45 before I finally entered a forest and got something other than asphalt or gravel under my feet. And then the forest stopped again at 19.30. But in those 45 minutes I did get a small river, a waterfall, forest around me with steps built into it (it was some 300m of climbing but much of that was so steep that they made steps and even stairs in one place); I liked it very much.
Then a bit more asphalt, and a forest road to a nature friend's house where I had hoped to sleep. But it was closed and empty. As there is nowhere else nearby where it is possible to sleep, I had to camp here, but I felt I should ask permission. So, after working up the courage, I called the guardian, who spoke nothing but very swiss-accented German, and managed to ask and get permission to put my tent in the garden. So I'm half way wild camping again.

Geschreven door Jewaontheroad