Spring 2024

Bern (Belp) Airport - 07 April 2024

07.04 - Belp airfield!

And - Saturday nights are far worse! We’d seen a group of youths with a trolley full of tinnies - maybe it was them who played loud (rubbish) music and were loud and lairy until about 2am!

So not the best night for sleep. And Hercy - sending a message at 03.18, and then deleting doesn’t mean we didn’t know you did!

Decided to just have a wander around Neuchâtel today. I’d watched a YouTube - so had a general idea of what to see.

We walked around the marina and towards the main square. The Swiss certainly like their bronze statues. And, of course, I feel obligated to take photos of them…

We managed to get some CHF out - but no further ahead really - as we still don’t have any change!

There are also lots of fancy fountains. As you may know, I do quite like well done graffiti - and Rue de Neubourg was the place to find it. Think we were both expecting Neuchâtel to be bigger than it is - was easy to miss the narrow street of graffiti. Hard to photograph too, as narrow and on a slope - but very well done on the rough surface.

Walked up to the castle and collegiate - which has a lovely ceiling. If we were doing ‘door of the day’ - would be a close run thing!

As expected - beautiful views back out over the lake.

Overall, Neuchâtel has a lovely feel about it, despite it being Sunday and all the shops were closed.

Walked out to the viewing platform. The giant size green bench doesn’t look that high - but certainly ungainly climbing up onto it 😉

After a couple of hours and over 8,000 steps, went back to Dave for lunch. Slim pickings - no bread - cheese and crackers!

We spent quite a while trying to decide where to go to next.

I was driving today. The ticket for parking worked - was only CHF 1.50 - bargain - despite lack of sleep 😴

Well, Colin the co-pilot was having a right laugh today. Took us three attempts to get to the free moho service place - was only about 5 minutes away. Colin doesn’t seem to understand tunnels too well! Anyway, we’re glad to have serviced Dave again - looking ahead - places seem few and far between.

We also managed to fill up with diesel. My Easy FX card wasn’t accepted, so we used Tintin’s Starling card. They take out CHF 150, and then they’ll charge us in EUR in due course.

Drove for about an hour, we’re now parked up on the edge of an airfield. The plan was to get the bikes out and ride into Bern. However, was gone 4pm by then - and decided we wouldn’t do Bern justice by whizzing around (will take about 25 minutes to cycle there) and I need a while to study the bears 🐻😊