I opened my blogs this year with the words “Excuse me is it always this cold?” If I am honest that summarises, in part, this year in Adelboden! This area of Switzerland and neighbouring Italy experienced its coldest summer since 1985 this year! Some of the groups reading this won’t recognise a cold Adelboden as they regularly had temperatures in the mid 30’s! Others will remember dancing in the snow at the top of the Schilthorn, hailstones the size of marbles and waking up to see a completely white Engstliegenalp! More »

The first of the world centres to be built in 1932, Our Chalet is neatly tucked into the Alps in Adelboden. All of VA’s guide groups paid a visit to Our Chalet this summer and the ISGF were to be no exception. We embarked on the “grand tour” with our two autumn volunteers Ony from Madagascar and Julie from Denmark. More »

Swiss night and the cheating continued! It turned out this was to be a somewhat reoccurring theme of this trip!

First though we learnt a song in original Swiss German – no mean feat!
To continue our musical journey we welcomed the alpine horn player with his enormous alpine horn. Clearly a talented man- as was proved when the Our Chalet staff tried blowing the horn!! Needless to say we were all very impressed (with him, not them!)! More »

“You are never too old to play campfire games” I announced to the group! Several faces looked up from their fire making activities with eyebrows raised. Without wishing to make too fine a point, the average age of our group is 70 but suggest for a minute that any of these fine ladies are too old for anything and you are quite literally “playing with fire”!

As their decades of camping experience proved they were surely experts at both creating fire making materials, and crafting a fire and they certainly showed me a thing or two. More »

If you can imagine me I am stood on the most sunny Adelboden morning overlooking clear skies and mountains. My feet are damp from the dew on the green mountain grass which glistens in the sun. And the hills are alive… with the sound of the our chalet song. Stood to either side of me are 16 guiders of the ISGF and volunteer staff here at our chalet and together we greet the morning and raise the trefoil in a salute to guiding and guides everywhere.

Breathe in deeply and taste this alpine air. I swear this is a cure for anything!

Adelboden… I’ve missed you!

Just when I think I may run out of cheesy titles for these blogs… the stories write themselves. In fairness to Adelboden, the scenery is heavenly and deserves something far more profound and poetic than clearly I am able to provide. Just look at the pictures for this blog – they could all come out of a holiday brochure – it really is this beautiful. More »