Day 34 27th July Unterageri to Walenstadt

We retraced our path 1.5k back into town this morning to head off along some quite flat terrain for about 10k to catch a train. Only catch was there was  a nasty uphill just at the end. The train trip was to get us around some 3 rating climbs. Our map has climbs rated from one to three with three being pretty ghastly on a fully loaded bike! We have previously ridden two 3 raters in the one day and decided if there is a train to take us around them we will catch it. We have mastered the ticket machines at the small Swiss railways stations which are often unmanned. We were welcomed in English to the machine today but that is where the English ended, the rest was in Swiss. Not anything like French or German. We even have the change of train and platform down pat and can even help old ladies onto the train while keeping a bike steady with one leg.  We arrived at the station we were planning to so all good.

We had a quick bite to eat and headed off along Lake walensee, called this because it is shaped like a whale, so the local transport police told us, but we thought that was a loose use of the comparison. We chatted to two Transport Police at a railway station where we had pulled into get a drink. One of them had spent time in Oz on an exchange visit at school and so had very good Australian.

Once again the scenery was very pretty today. There were two tunnels for us to negotiate today, each about 1k long. They were well lit and had small openings to the lake. They were part of the road and rail system and were for cyclists and walkers only so we were very safe. On leaving the first tunnel we had a 25% climb to negotiate which we attacked with gusto but found we had to walk the last bit of it. It was quite short so no real chore.

While riding along this area we kept our eye on several hang gliders above us, we could not see where they were taking off from but against the rocky face of the mountains they made an awesome sight.

When we arrivd at camp we were entertained by more gliders and a helicopter which appeared to be assisting with maintenance on the electricity poles steel structures high up the hills. The camp grnd is again by a lake, very pretty and vveerrry full.