Walking from Wengen for over 80's

We have spent many Summer holidays walking in the Alps. I am now 87 and my wife is 84. We want to go to Wengen this year but our walking prowess is now very limited. We shall take the opportunity to re-explore the area but would like to think that we could just walk out of the hotel and go for a walk of say around three miles on reasonable paths and without encountering too many steepish hills so that we can enjoy the magnificent scenery. Are we expecting too much? Glad to have any comments. Hoppies.

Hoppies said:

We have spent many Summer holidays walking in the Alps. I am now 87 and my wife is 84. We want to go to Wengen this year but our walking prowess is now very limited. We shall take the opportunity to re-explore the area but would like to think that we could just walk out of the hotel and go for a walk of say around three miles on reasonable paths and without encountering too many steepish hills so that we can enjoy the magnificent scenery. Are we expecting too much? Glad to have any comments. Hoppies.">>

I always joke with my friends in the USA that a level walk in Switzerland may be inclined at up to 30 degrees...upward or downward.

The very best example of what you seek the walk from Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg, where you can catch the train back to Wengen. To get from Wengen to Männlichen, step out the door of your hotel, walk a few paces ( if you stay at the Hotel Schoenegg, at least) or a few more paces from other hotels to the gondola lift, and ride it up to Männlichen.

I believe that the moderators can point you to some other easy trails that meet your criteria, but you might have use public transport to get to the start and finish.

The trail I mention is at about 22oo meters,and will likely not be snow free until sometime around or after mid-June.

<<"What I was really after is what are the prospects of being able to go out for an hour's walk from the hotel without using public transport? We would like to be able to do that as well as the other recognised walks using transport.">>

Your original request was for walks of about 3 miles. If you still walk three miles per hour, you are doing nicely. ;-)

You probably recognize that Wengen is on a hillside, and you'd have to avoid going up or down the hill to meet your other criterion....reasonably level....

Just in case you have not seen Wengen recently, these pictures from a search with Yahoo will give you a sense of how you might do that...walk in Wengen itself. And, even that will probably not yield a one hour level walk.

search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=pictures+of+wengen

Some forum members - Kim 11 in particular - are intimately familiar with Wengen. Perhaps they can be more helpful:

myswissalps.com/forum/easy-walks-and-hikes-in-wengen#Jn.

and

myswissalps.com/forum/easy-walks-and-hikes-in-wengen#cg

Hello Hoppies,

There are certainly some relatively flat walks, like the one Slowpoke suggested. However, the options for doing this without any public transport are limited. That's because such walks are mostly a horizontal trail on a slope. So you don't ascend or descend from the slope, you rather walk from one point to the other at more or less the same altitude. You need transportation to get back to the starting point. There may be a few exceptions around Wengen: I would suggest to study this map well. I don't know these trails in detail, but it looks like you could walk from Wengen to Wengwald for example, then take a different trail back, with limited altitude variation. I'm sure the local tourist office can help you with some suggestions as well.

If you would be based in Mürren, you can easily walk to Grütschalp, or just to Winteregg. This is only slightly down. An easy train ride of a few minutes gets you back to Mürren. Of course you can also walk to Winteregg, have lunch, and then the same way back without needing the train.

An easy walk in the valley is Lauterbrunnen to Stechelberg, and Wilderswil to Zweilütschinen.

Anyway, it's good to read about your plans. Age does not matter; in Switzerland everybody walks. Of course physical condition does matter. I hope you'll find some trails that suit your needs, and that you will have a wonderful time there. If you have further questions, please feel free to post them here.

Thank you.

You say “if we were based in Murren”. We wonder whether Murren would be better for us than Wengen although we had originally set our minds on Wengen.

I think what we are really after is two things. The first one is to have a hotel in a place where we can perhaps go out for a walk for an hour or so, enjoying the peace and tranquillity and the “out of this world” beauty of the high alpine scenery; then coming back and relaxing at base. The second object is to be able to spend perhaps half our days with easy access to the transport system to take us to other places, like walks in the Lauterbrunnen valley, Grindelwald, Murren (if we are in Wengen and vice versa), Interlaken and Lakes Thun and Brienz but no further afield than that. We know it all depends on the weather!

We get the impression that possibly Murren would be better for the first object but Wengen for the second because it appears that Wengen is more easily accessible to the transport network. Any further comments would be helpful. We shall also have to consider what travel passes would be needful.

Wengen is indeed a bit easier to get to than Mürren. From Lauterbrunnen, Wengen can be reached by a direct train, Mürren requires one (easy) change from the cable car to the narrow gauge railway. The trail I suggested from Mürren is very nice and fits your requirements. Other than that I think Wengen offers more options (see here for the trails around Mürren please). And if you're willing to travel a bit, so you could visit Mürren even when based in Wengen. Both villages are wonderful; Wengen is a bit larger than Mürren.

As for passes, I suggest to look into:

• the Swiss Half Fare Card or Swiss Transfer Ticket Combi if you also need a train trip from Zurich airport and back;
• the Regional-Pass Bernese Oberland;
• the Jungfrau Railways Pass.

How long do you plan to stay and do you indeed also need transportation from an airport? That may narrow down the choice.

Perhaps Hoppies should look at Grindelwald. There are more roads running with limited elevation change there....although the scenery does not appeal as much to me as it does in Wengen.

map.geo.admin.ch/ ?X=166300.00&Y=645040.00

How about on the floor of the valley - at Lauterbrunnen? Are there any hotels at Stechelberg? Trummelbach?Here's a link, FWIW:stechelberg.ch/en/ accomodation-dining/hotelrestaurant.html

Thanks Slowpoke and Annika. I am grateful for all the help. Thanks for the link to Kim11 - I found her post extremely good. Having weighed everything up we have decided to go to Wengen and have booked a couple of weeks in August.

<<"Having weighed everything up we have decided to go to Wengen and have booked a couple of weeks in August.">>

That is my favorite place to stay in the B.O.

Probably because of the views, but we just like the town. We also like the easy access to Männlichen.