Sunday 28 January

Golly! Were we tired! Again! We woke up later than we had intended. This meant we had to have a change of plan for the day. Heidi suggested we could go for a walk around a little lake in Pfäffikon. In German it is called der Pfäffiker See.

 
It was a really lovely thing to do. Even though the day was a little bit cloudy for most of the walk we saw the countryside and it was lovely. There were lots of people walking around too. There were even the usual joggers! Heidi and Timbo were having a lot of grown-up talk. I think Timbo is lucky to have such a good friend.

This art work had no title, but it looked impressive.

Timbo likes to photograph these jetties.
I like this one as he made sure it is off centre.

The landscape was magnificent, lush greenery and sunlight sparkling on the mountains.

Timbo said it was rather early to see catkins.

There is a rather nice café in the small village of Seegräben. It has a very cute tiny church.

The church at Seegräben

The good thing about the café is it is about two thirds of the way through the walk round the lake so the last third seems to take next to no time once you have had some refreshment inside. But we were sitting down having our nibbles and drinks a lady spoke to Heidi. It turns out she only lives round the corner from Heidi. Talk about a small world! 

The light was dazzling when it broke though the clouds.

On the last leg around the lake we saw a stork building its nest, which seems to be made, among other things, from dogwood branches. There were heaps of dogwood shrubs on our walk, not only just below where the stork was building the nest.

A stork on the nest.

A blowup of the stork from the other photograph.

We also saw a lady swimming in the lake. Now I know I have got fur which keeps me warm, but I was not so stupid as to be walking around semi naked. You would not catch me swimming in that lake on a cold day like this.
 

This looks far too cold to go swimming for me.

Heidi took us back to Winterthur through some very nice countryside. Timbo thought the landscape was astounding as we went through valleys gouged by glaciers thousands of years ago. Back in Winterthur we said good bye for a little while. We came back to Zürich, and had a snooze again in the hotel.

Tonight we had dinner with Heidi's sister, Elsa. So on this trip we had met all of Heidi's siblings each evening. The restaurant in the hotel, Swiss Chuchi, basically serves nothing but fondue and raclette. It is not a good idea to bring a vegan friend here to eat. Again we had a wonderful evening with wonderful company. At least this time I do not have so far to go after my dinner.