Mount Pilatus

Tonight, there is not a part of me which does not ache. Not from walking, not from lifting, not from any kind of exertion, but from several hours spent laughing to the point of hysteria and beyond with Friend. There was a time when we did this regularly. When we shared a house, evening after evening would be spent with tears of laughter rolling down our faces, utterly incomprehensible to our housemates and workmates. It's been far too long.

I can't explain what we were laughing about. It doesn't matter. There was an absent plate of chips, the promise of a kettle, and a distinct lack of hel. Totally unfunny to anyone not the two of us. So instead I'll tell you why the unlaughy muscles ache- Mount Pilatus. Legend has it this mountain was haunted by the ghost of Pontious Pilate. It seems a little unlikely, but oddly appropriate for our Good Friday expedtion. A bus, and then teeny tiny gondolas up the side of the mountain. Mog and I in one, Little Fish and Friend in the next. Panic at seperation reduced by regular waving through the windows. Mog and I livened things up by singing Tell Out My Soul; behind us LF and Friend enlivened the countryside with shouts of "Wheeeeee!" and "Bump bump bump"; shouts which floated up to us faintly over the sounds. Of cowbells, sheep bells, and the tinklerushroar of the Spring Thaw. Beautiful.

And at the top, a truly truly awesome view. Mountains rising above hazy clouds, lakes and valleys like Lego from a stepladder, snow and ice and ageless cold. Amazing. Oh, and a rather nice outdoor restaurant where we ate Rosti and took the above photo. Out of interest, we took the pulse ox, and Mog demonstrated her ability to maintain her sats at high altitude. This should be handy next week. We didn't test our own. Perhaps we should have; it might have persuaded us against our next decision, which was to walk down the lower third of the mountain. Yes, with the girls and their chairs. No, we didn't think this through. The walk was advertised as being easy and taking 1 hour 10 minutes. 30 minutes in, having acheived perhaps 500 yards, we realized that walking down the side of a mountain is perhaps not something to me done with two children in chairs. We then had the somewhat questionable pleasure of climbing back up the same mountain and finding cable cars to take us home again. It's prettier when seen from above anyway I'm sure.

Staggering off the cablecars we wobbled down the road to the bus, which gave us enough time to recover before climbing the stairs back to our hotel rooms. Given how hard we have found this; it does seem a little unlikely we'd ever have managed the side of a mountain. We'll do our best to remember this in the future.

We should have packed, should at the very least have done some sorting out, but instead we shuffled the girls into bed in short order, and then giggled and got extremely silly with the kind of silliliness which can only come when you know each other inside out. And now we ache. And wheeze. And now we must sleep, as tomorrow we move to Interlaken. Rumour has it our next hotel has a lift. I can't tell you how happy that makes us.

Tia