Tuesday: The Top Station

I imagine almost everyone who visits this area takes this trip, to the highest station in Europe. It was conceived by a Swiss industrialist on an Alpine hike in 1893, and was completed in 1912. His idea was to extend the existing railway from Kleine Scheidegg, at 2,000 metres, to the top of the Jungfrau, at 4,158 metres, by tunnelling into the Eiger and diagonally upwards and across to reach the Jungfrau summit. It turned out to be a project beset by geological and financial problems, so they stopped short of the target, having reached 3,454 metres. Still pretty remarkable! This poor reproduction will perhaps give you some idea of the tunnel’s route.It's the dotted red line.

The train stops in the tunnel twice on the ascent so that passengers can walk through galleries to observation windows set in the side of the mountain. These galleries have access doors onto the mountain itself from which climbers have been rescued. This is the view from the Eigerwand stop (see fuzzy plan above) There’s not much of the Eiger in view other than a strip of rock on the right because it’s a vertical cliff.

So here we are at the top, with Jane in front of the longest glacier in Europe being supported by a pole shoved up the back of her jacket. It was very slippery and cold, but the scenery was superb. It’s possible to see France, Germany and Italy in clear weather- which we had- so we’re claiming all three.

How do they survive in this temperature? A colony of alpine choughs lives at the top, cleverly scrounging tit-bits from the tourists. We unfortunately had eaten our sandwiches by this time, so one of them crapped on Jane’s hat: just remember to save some next time.

They can’t resist a bit of Disney: an Ice Palace, full of chambers and ice carvings. This is a pair of eagles, the best of the bunch, the others being, predictably, polar bears and penguins, some of which appeared to have been done over by vandals with a blowlamp.

In summary, it was a brilliant day out with the incredible views as the crowning glory.