My legs are getting back to normal, Thomas left early this morning, Russ, Franz and I went to the thermal baths across the road (we stayed for an hour and a half, Franz for something like four hours, and the visit was well worth it -- very interesting architecture made of local stone, hardly anyone there when we arrived at 11AM, and only half-full when we left, a nice range of spaces and temperatures, lovely views of the mountains, a sunny day... Just really nice), and many games were played in the afternoon. That's the quick summary of today.
A few further notes:
o the time estimates on the Ticino trail signs were even more wrong than mine... and the information given by the locals was even worse. For example, 2h25m on a signpost turned out to be closer 4h10m... through no fault of ours... and our host in Camperio told us that the walk down to Olivone would take 20m when it actually took more like 40. I mention it not as an excuse, but rather to say that hiking times in Ticino are more difficult to estimate than you think, even when you know they are more difficult to estimate than you think. :-)
o we have seen surprisingly little wildlife thus far... no chamois or ibex, few birds, and only a couple of marmots. Lots of sheep and cows though. And the flowers have been at times lovely.
o we have seen some stunning dams -- three so far, in the Valle Verzasca (the one Bond jumped off in Goldeneye), above Campo Blenio, and above Vals. Amazing constructions... the amount of work each of them must have taken to build is enormous. Good thing there are very few earthquakes in the Alps, though: if those dams ever collapse the destruction doesn't bear thinking about.
o although we are in one of the most idyllic spots on the planet, and feel far from the outside world, we have not been able to shut out current events completely. What with the Munich attacks, Erdogan's crack-down in Turkey, continuing Brexit aftershocks, and Trump's take-over of the Republican party in the US, the contrast is so great it is almost disorienting.
o we saw very few hikers while in Ticino -- on average 2-3 a day -- but while coming down from the pass to Vals we came across eight, despite it being a day of showers and thunderstorms. The Röstigraben is clearly alive and well... all around the German speaking part of Switzerland. Overall, we have seen very few tourists in the mountain villages and valleys and nowhere has our accommodation been full... despite fine weather and high season (the exception being Valle Verzasca on Sunday afternoon, where many cars were coming down the valley as our bus drove up... but my impression was that most of them were Swiss). I think the very expensive Swiss Franc (20% higher versus the Euro than in the past several years) continues to wreak havoc on tourism here. And of course, the "lucky" Brits who had booked their Swiss holidays before the Brexit vote are now paying almost twice as much in sterling terms as they had been expecting.
And now I'm being called back to games... perhaps more observations / insights later....
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