Posts about Thun

Thun calls itself “The City of the Alps” and stands at the north western end of Lake Thun (Thunersee) in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland.

  • A lovely month full of experiences, but fewer random photographs than usual.

  • It seems to stick in my mind that by the time we get to January, we’re well into winter. But the snow and ice often doesn’t arrive where I live until January or February, although that doesn’t preclude it being pretty damned cold from time to time. January this year marked the arrival of my…

  • We spent the Christmas and New Year period travelling to Scotland and back by road again.

  • I’m certainly no stranger to long-exposure photography. But during the few years that we’ve lived in a flat with a balcony and an unobstructed view of the night sky, I’ve come to realise that I’d never photographed the Milky Way properly. The first time that I can even remember seeing the Milky Way at all was…

  • The shore of Lake Thun at Gwatt is a great place to photograph the sunrise and the sunset.

  • Oberhofen Castle

    A thousand-year-old castle on the lake shore near Thun, with wonderful gardens, terrific views, and a hideously ugly restaurant.

  • Gwatt nature reserve, Thun

    I just came across a short film I made in January and posted to YouTube at the time. Filmed with my X100 and edited quickly in iMovie, it shows the publicly accessible lake-shore nature reserve at Gwatt, some fifteen minutes’ drive from home.

  • Creating long exposure photographs with movement and blur leads to great images. But if you want a pin-sharp photo, you’ll need to be patient.

  • The Swiss aren’t generally as keen on nature reserves as the British. Despite the stupidly beautiful countryside, there are comparatively few places like RSPB reserves (over 200 in the U.K.) and the National Trust (who is the U.K.’s largest individual land owner). We’re lucky enough to live near two of the small Swiss reserves at Lake Thun:…

  • The Swiss MOT

    The Swiss are reknowned for their efficiency and I’m used to the smoothness of dealing with officialdom here. The extent of the efficiency surprised me a little this morning, though, when for the first time since I’ve lived here, I had to take my car to the testing centre. The “Amtliche Fahrzeugprüfung” is akin to…

  • Stockhorn with snow in autumn

    Seasons Change

    The rain clouds lift and show what beauty they have strewn across the higher mountains in our region.

  • Lake Thun (German: Thunersee) is an Alpine lake in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland. It takes its name from the city of Thun, on its north western shore. The lake is fed by water from Lake Brienz to the south east, which lies 6 metres higher than Lake Thun, and various streams in the Oberland,…

  • We were in Thun this past weekend, with a couple of friends from Zürich who’d come down for a day of “strobism” (the art of non-studio-based photography using portable flash units for illumination). As well as locations in Spiez and Gwatt, we sneaked into the dilapidated Selve area in Thun, where old factories, once converted…

  • Along the lake shore path at Gwatt are homes perfect for twitchers: this area is separated from the Thunersee by large reed beds full of nesting birds.