Hit Grindelwald, kleine scheidegg, Grosse Scheidegg, Wengen, Murren and Lenzeheide. Went to Lugano aswell but the sun was out and we ended up sunning ourselves by the lake instead!! A nice mixture of singletrack, double track and awesome views!!!!!!!

wow great photo's. Haven't seen a DDG for a while.

Excellent pics, thanks for sharing 😀

Looks like a really beautiful place to ride.

Looks like a great trip – did you cadge a lift on a coal railway? What is that?

There's no road up to Murren, so everything goes up the funicular… that's the mad freight loads thing at the bottom. If aliens from the films ever attack that's where I'm heading, it looks mean… 🙂

Awesome stuff, really refreshing pictures, especially with the DDG content!

Brilliant, cheers for that. I spent one of my most favourite holidays ever in Interlaken last year. Great place.

Thanks for the comments guys. Much appreciated. I know they are not the greatest or the craziest. Its funny but I always find that you hardly ever take photos at the best spots cos you are too busy riding it!!!

Yeah Phiiil is right. Looks a bit OTT to carry a few bikes but they were shifting alot of gravel up to Murren from Lauterbrunnen and I guess we just hitched a ride.

Interlaken was tops, found a nice park up for the van in Wilderswil just up from interlaken on the way to the Eiger/Jungfrau, where we mananged to get a few free nights in our van but we camped quite alot at a campsite in Grindelwald…. and then later in the holiday we came back and camped in Latuerbrunnen meaning we could hit Kleine Schiedegg from the other side… oh yeah Murren was cool. The DH section that follows the cable car is pretty serious… well for us on HTs anyway. Though I still think it would have been pretty serious on my full susser aswell. Was tempted to hire a stumpjumper for the day at 65 swiss francs in LB but resisted.

Was lucky to get 3 1/2 weeks in Swissland. Spent a fortune but I think I could almost live there. Time to learn Switzer Deutsch…

OH yeah DDG rocks!!!! Though I do love my santa cruz.

great pics, you are right about missing the best ones because you are riding, but then that's the point i guess!

Woohoo! I love the Berner Oberland…those photo's made me smile alot. we had a chalet near Gstaad. I have such great memories of the area. I took my girlfriend (now wife) on our first holiday to Murren and she loved it and we've been back a couple of times but not since getting into MTB.

We have plans for a road next year which will include Lenzerheide and on into Graubunden with any luck.

EIDT: Just rememered i'll be back there in 2 weeks! Going for a long weekend in Kandersteg and then onto Champery for the DH World Cup!

Yeah the BO is damn cool. Did alot of hiking aswell. Infact the best single track I found was on a walk. We took the Gondola outta grindelwald to First and walked to the lake – Bachalpsee. There's a singletrack from that lake to Waldspitz. Would be beautiful on a full susser, great track with some techincal rock sections/drops – we walked it, woulda loved to have rode it – let me see if I've gotta a pic of part of it…..

Its not the greatest pic to give you an idea of the track – it goes down the left of the pic. There was another track on the right side of the valley. Both looked fab.

GB / Lenzerheide was great aswell. Would like to snowboard there!!!

There must be some great trails down from Murren into the Lauterbrunnen valley, although making sure you avoid those enormous cliffs of course!!!

There's a great traversing walk from First to the Schynige Platte railway, probably good for riding out of season too i suspect.

Keep going from Bachalpsee up to Faulhorn… Single track almost the whole way back down to Interlaken! 😉

Couldn't get all the way up to faulhorn – too much snow!!! Tried though.

Same with the schynige platte to first. We aimed to hike between the two but there was just too much snow with big cliff drops – very narrow snow covered ledges where the path was!! Had to turn back. It was ok walking in the snow where there was a fairly steep slope but the path narrowed with a cliffedge and we bailed… Still managed a 6 hour hike but had to head back to the station as there was just too much snow higher up.

The main descent from Murren to LB is tops. Starts where the cable car ends. Its an awesome DH track – pretty steep in places and there's rocks and roots aswell.

There's also some trails down from Murren village itself down to the other end of the LB valley (where the other cable car is). Supposed to be pretty good.

Great pix!!

A lovely reminder that this kind of riding is so accessible – a pleasant/inspirational change from FS/DH bikes

: )

Now I don't want to be at work….

We just love that area – been there for the last 2 summers (maybe again next year).

We settled on Meiringen as our base – still a nice little town but a bit more lived in and less twee / touristy. Plenty of bike tracks but did need to search the maps for really interesting stuff. Did you sometimes struggle to find singletrack? Everything the Swiss signpost as mtb trails seems to be tarmac or double track 🙁

Nice cheapish and spotlessly clean campsite at Meiringen:-
http://www.alpencamping.ch

Until I looked at the gallery on the camping ground website I'd never seen a roof tent. Finally a reason to get a Land Rover – Roof tents

yeah we went to Meiringen but just to meet my girlfriends Swiss side of the family and visit the falls where Holmes met his end and the incredible gorge whose name I cant remember.

The other DH track from Murren I think is the one that takes you to Gimmelwald – we didnt have time to do that. The DH track we did went from Grutscha down to LB.

We did find quite a bit of singletrack but most of it did take some looking for. The bike shops and the Tourist info while providing maps for all the bike routes were a little vague about singletracks. Its legal to bike anywhere in Switzerland apart from a few paths marked no bikes but I think they are trying to create a balance bwt hikers and bikers. In that respect they sorta avoided telling us where some of the great singletrack was. They seem to put alot of cinder/gravel down on tracks aswell ….. seems a little insane considering the gradient in places. Some of the bike signs were a little confusing in places. But if we got annoyed or confused a little we just looked up at the Eiger or other mountains and went ….. wow!!!!!!!!!!

We bumped into quite a few bikers and we were our usual jovial selves but just got cold shoulder from virtually all of the other bikers if not all. Perhaps we didnt look serious enough in baggy shorts and tshirts. From the lycra clad xc types to the fully kitted DH types – they pretty much ignored us. oh well, twas funny when we blasted past the fsussers on the dh on our crappy hard tails.

One question though…. why are there so many americans in Switzerland.

Also didnt realise there were so many Serbians in Swissland. They all came out onto the streets when they beat Germany. It was really strange to see hundreds of serbs walking down the street waving flags and giving the 3 fingered nazi salute. Urrgh. felt weird to see that.

hope bus driver has a camera to watch the back of the bus as he reverses close upto wall 😯

The awesome gorge is probably Aareschlucht.

On one day we cheated a bit and bought a few hours with a local guide up on Hasliberg above Meiringen. I also got quizzed as to why I wanted to ride alps without a full suss (Alfine hub gear and concept of singlespeed back in UK really puzzled her) Swiss mtb etiquette does seem a bit weird around there – I rode past 3 ramblers that had bimbled up from a cablecar station and did the usual slow to a crawling pace / plenty of room / smile / say hello in something approaching local lingo. Sandra the guide caught me up just after and asked what had happened as the walkers were really angry with me for being inconsiderate. Ho hum. Guiding is found here:-
http://www.bikekultour.ch/ENG/

And just to aid post holiday depression – a nice webcam of the blue lake that is fed by that blue stream in your photos.

http://www.swisswebcams.ch/english/webcam_brienzersee_(3855_brienz)_1091875657.html

Plenty of Singletrail in the region around Meiringen. I did a tour from Engelberg to Lungern via Meiringen on Saturday and found loads of nice stuff. Granted the trail section traversing Meiringen itself was quite non technical for the most part but the sections in the near by areas were awesome.

More information on the tour we did here