Permanent Tourist

Photographed from the point where the narrow, single-track road turns a hairpin and heads back out towards the lake at the foot of the valley. The Justistal is always a bit of an adventure by car, with a hair-raising narrow road, blind corners in the forested parts of the route, and a sense of being well away from anywhere a tourist would end up. This valley was on the top of our list of places to visit once we’d bought our new car, so we headed up on a Sunday drive a couple of weeks ago, taking us to Interlaken, through Beatenberg, along the narrow mountain road, down to the lake shore and onward to Thun city and home to Spiez. The stop-off at this point was crowned not just by the beautiful sunshine on the high cliffs of the neighbouring Niederhorn, but also by the sound of red stags roaring to one another, from one side of the valley to the other.

(Update: this video is of a bull elk, not a red stag, but you get the idea.)

This shot was a bugger to edit, as the foreground was in deep shadow whilst the mountains in the far distance were in full sunshine. So, HDR to the rescue and a little fine-tuning in Lightroom before putting it online.