Posts about Thunersee

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.

  • Firsts of August

    1st August is Switzerland’s Bundestag (or federal day), so Jo and I usually take advantage of the day off work to celebrate our adopted home. Here are some photographic mementoes of the day trips we’ve made.

  • Catching the ship from Faulensee to Sundlauenen, hiking through the forest past St. Beatus Caves to Merligen, and then home by paddle steamer.

  • Thunersee and Brienzersee – Pure Switzerland

    The region I’ve been calling home for sixteen years.

  • Niederhorn, Switzerland

    Heaven is this

    Sitting, cross-legged, a couple of arms’ length from the edge of a two-and-a-half-thousand foot drop to the valley floor, watching clouds drift across the lake into the distance.

  • 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.

  • A fresh eye

    This year’s aim: see new places and try new things. Close to home, this means going out from home and documenting the village where I live as much as possible. Despite living here for nearly five years, the only parts of Faulensee I’ve really photographed have been the views from above the village or from home.

  • Completely inappropriate to the season, but what the heck. A beautiful sequence of clips filmed – mainly with a drone – in and above Beatenberg, looking over the lake shores I call home. The film was made by Maximilian Eckmann whilst staying in a local holiday apartment.

  • Faulensee, Switzerland

    Low water levels in Lake Thun in winter reveal large expanses of foreshore.

  • The wider angle

    First shots with two new acquisitions: a super-wide lens and an RR90 shutter release cable.

  • Niesen Kulm. Switzerland

    The Niesen casts a clearly triangular shadow when the sun is low in the sky.

  • Jo found that because we’d saved so many points on our supermarket card, that we could “afford” a kayak using points alone. A few days later, and a large and heavy cardboard box arrived on the post woman’s scooter trailer and we had our dinghy: an Intex Challenger K2.

  • Where my love for the square image format comes from, and how it is achieved in the Fujifilm X-T1 digital camera.

  • 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.

  • Schlächtenwald

    There are plenty of little, almost unnoticeable roads around here, which lead up valleys and through forests to remote farm buildings and dead-ends. I like to pore over the Kümmerly + Frey maps – the Swiss equivalent of the British Ordnance Survey – to see whether there are any worth driving up.

  • Big old hill

    One of the most challenging hikes I’ve done: up the steep and winding path through the forest from Beatenberg to the summit of the Niederhorn.

  • A group of canoeists, kayakers and stand up paddle-boarders in a range of coloured boats on Lake Thun this morning.

  • The triangular Niesen towers over the Lower Simmen Valley and the towns of Spiez and Faulensee, on the shores of Lake Thun in Switzerland. The glowing clouds behind the mountains in the distance aren’t illuminated by towns, but by lightning storms above (respectively) Lenk and Gruyères.

  • 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:…

  • Filming from the air

    Filming from the air

    Sitting at my computer this afternoon, I spot, out of the window, a yellow plane droning lazily around above the village. Not a full-sized plane but a metre-long radio-controlled model, with a GoPro camera attached, filming today’s glorious winter day on the lake. I couldn’t resist taking a few photos for the pilot and chatting…

  • I took a walk up through the woods from Heimwehfluh, near Interlaken. The top of the walk, after half an hour or so of wheezing and muscle aching, was high above the end of Lake Thun. Aside from enjoying the walk, having some exercise, and enjoying the view, I also discovered that the golf course…