We’ve left the car behind for a few days and travelled to the skiing village of Bettmeralp, where we’ve spent the past two days hiking between Alps and generally enjoying the fresher (but much thinner) mountain air. We’re staying in the Slalom Garne Hotel, a very modern place in keeping with it’s surroundings with all the mod-cons and extremely friendly and helpful staff.

We’ve spent a lot of time here just enjoying the near-classic Swiss Alpine views, wandering through the greenest of fields and past waterfalls, and generally absorbing the sights and sounds of our immediate locale. As a carless village, the pace of life here is sedate, quiet and almost out of time; so much so that you can hear cowbells from grazing cattle almost a kilometre away.

Being a hiking destination, there are lots of walking routes to and around the various neighbouring mountain peaks, which in itself would give anyone plenty to do in the time we had. However, this region is home to one of the most impressive natural phenomenon in the world, and is part of our reason for being here: the 18000 year old Aletsch Glacier.

It’s easy to integrate a viewing of glacier into your daily hike (it is 23km long after all), and we decided to fit it in to a hike up to the Bettmerhorn, which is a convenient end-point as there’s a handy restaurant and cable-car down to the village.

Walking to the neighbouring Riederalp and getting a cable-car up to Moosflue, It was only about 4km on foot from the starting point to the peak, and we did manage to get a fantastic (if overcast) view of glacier almost the entire way up. What we didn’t take into account was the altitude; the incline started out very gradual, but got steadily steeper towards the end, and with the air thinning and tundra turning to snow, was more than a little challenging. Thankfully, waiting for us at the end was a nice schnitzel dinner to go with our sense of achievement.