EE & S Adventures

The day 2 stage was held at the Col du Pillon.  The race was long distance but this could have easily described our trip to the event.  Eric's Garmin had almost ticked over 10,000 steps and 70 flights of stairs before he even started his race!  And that doesn't include the half hour on the train and half hour on the bus. The assembly area was reached after a steep climb from the bus dropoff.  It was on a ridge beside a small mountain lake which was great for a chilly post race dip.  Across the valley we could see the cable car up to Glacier 3000 where we would go sightseeing in the afternoon. Being the highest stage of the week, the terrain was generally open, nevertheless the heath and the steep hillsides (and the altitude) made for fairly tough going. Some bits of Eric's course After our races we walked back down the hill to the cable car station to take two cable cars up to Glacier 3000 (all included in our event entry fees).  Glaci...

Day 1 was a town sprint in and around Gstaad.  The assembly and finish area was in the town square which had hosted the Gstaad Tennis Open during the previous week .  They were still dismantling the scaffolding while the orienteering was being held.  Curiously the square is know n as the Roy Emerson arena - it's a pity that our Australian Orienteers didn't have the same success that Roy enjoyed in Gstaad. Shade was at a premium as we met up with a few other Australians at the event including Jon and Cathy and family who were touring European Orienteering events during July and August. The races themselves were interesting as the organisers made creative use of what could have been a rather simple area.  Eric's first three controls were in the garden of a hotel (the towering castle like structure pictured top of page) including a control inside a small house.  There was even an underground control.  The second half of the race was a lot of...

The Swiss Orienteering week, held every two years, is one of the best races on the international orienteering calendar.  The organisation is great, the scenery magnificent and the terrain spectacular (if rather steep). We booked an apartment some distance from the competition centre in Gstaad in the town of Zweisimmen.  Unfortunately when booking over a year ago we had planned to have a car.  As plans changed and we become carless for this stage of our travels, we realised that our apartment up in the foothills on the edge of town would ensure that we got an extra 6km per day of incidental walking in addition to our races. Looking down to the town from our apartment on our first evening contemplating the upcoming daily commute We had a great place to stay, renting out the ground floor of this nice house After settling in for the first night, the next morning we walked to town and took a train to Gstaad.  Regional public transport and selected chairli...

We didn't spend long in Zurich.  It was an intermediate stop on the way to Swiss Orienteering Week.  We had planned a quiet visit with plenty of rest given the next week was going to be (arguably) the toughest on the whole trip (certainly up with the Inca Trail and El Calafate in the exercise stakes).  And a quiet visit we had with the one full day we had in town coinciding with Swiss National Day.  Everything was closed except for a few shops around the main railway station. Railway station art Swiss National day treats We did take a bit of a walk around the nearly deserted city centre, taking in the main shopping street and a small park overlooking the river where we could see some nice views. Then it was back to our apartment in a leafy tree lined street.

Cesky Krumlov is yet another UNESCO World Heritage site in the Czech Republic.  It's a picture postcard town set in a valley with a winding river and draws many tourists who come to admire the buildings, particularly the castle perched high above the town. The medieval town centre has the usual array of small cobblestone streets and laneways running at all sorts of odd angles.  Plenty of restaurants and tourist shops can be found down every lane and around each corner. One thing that sets Cesky Krumlov apart from other similar medieval towns is the way it's laid out around the river Vltava.  The river curls around and through the town, with buildings built right up to the edge of the water.  Rafting companies offer tours along the river for the tourists with the highlight being a run down the short manmade rapids where the river drops several meters as it twists past the town.  As we only had one day (and it was raining) we didn't go for the raft trip...

The Czech Republic is one of the only countries in Europe where I (Eric) have not visited or orienteered at some point so competing in the last three days of the Bohemia 5 Day competition ticked this particular box.  Choosing these races was a bit more than box ticking though.  The terrain north of Prague is some of the best to be found in Central Europe with huge sandstone features making for very tough and technically challenging competition.  Samuel and Elise certainly found it challenging with their courses much harder than they were used to in Australia.  Sadly Sam only ran one race and Elise two as both were struggling with illness. My challenges were a bit different.  A nasty fall in the first race left me with a trip to first aid to patch up my lacerated ear. This was after the ear was cleaned up but before I could have a wash! Accidents aside, the terrain was as good as promised though the heat made for very tough orienteering particularly o...

Due to various scheduling issues we only managed one full day (and two nights) in Prague which was not anywhere long enough to see this fascinating city properly.  However what we did see on our self designed walking tour we found very interesting.  We started our walk at the rather curious Dancing House which looks like a cartoon building... Continuing on, we walked through some of the streets on the eastern side of the river that bisects the city looking at buildings both old and new.  Eventually making our way to the main shopping street where we found a museum dedicated to metal creations.  We didn't go inside but did take a few photos with the outside displays. After visiting Hamley's Toy store in London, Samuel was excited to find a branch in Prague - complete with slide between floors and a basement with a massive (paid) Lego display.  Samuel had a tour of the Lego while E&E found a seat to take some time out. Moving on to some of...