Where to find the Travelling Turtle Adventures:

🕵️‍♂️ #FinalProblem2024 bsky.app/profile/poli...
🌍 #ContinentHop24 bsky.app/profile/poli...
🚞 #NarrowWay bsky.app/profile/poli...
🇪🇺 #Schengen200 bsky.app/profile/poli...
🦤 Old Twitter journeys x.com/politic_anim...
🎞️ YouTube youtube.com/@travelling_...

Where to find the Travelling Turtle Adventures

🕵️‍♂️ #FinalProblem2024 bsky.app/profile/poli...
🌍 #ContinentHop24 bsky.app/profile/poli...
🚞 #TheNarrowWay bsky.app/profile/poli...
Older journeys over on Twitter x.com/politic_anim...
The YouTube videos youtube.com/@travelling_...

Habeo video! To celebrate/strain the servers, here is the Swiss postbus horn action you missed out on during #FinalProblem2024. Fun facts: the horn was first used on a postbus 100yrs ago this year, it is based on the William Tell overture (not the famous bit) and the 3 horns are underneath the bus.

Can’t believe I managed to fit so many forms of transport into retelling #FinalProblem2024, yet somehow missed this quintessentially Sherlockian form of travel. Apologies.

If you didn’t keep up with @politicanimal.bsky.social’s #FinalProblem2024 journey as it progressed, make some time to read it all now. Well worth it.

And we will leave Holmes where we left him, at Reichenbach. As Conan Doyle put it: ‘I thought if a man wanted to meet a gaudy kind of death that was a fine romantic place for it.’
The thread ends here. Thanks so much for coming along!
Video in due course. #FinalProblem2024

…some hapless cook left an oven unattended while making Meiringen’s other claim to fame - the meringue, which may or may not originate here. But we are settling down for lunch with a ‘tête-à-tête’ meringue at the legendary Frutal tearoom… #FinalProblem2024

We know that three months after the Reichenbach incident, most of the village of Meiringen burned to the ground. This was either, as has been widely suggested, a reprisal attack led by Moriarty’s surviving lieutenant Colonel Moran, or alternatively… #FinalProblem2024

…and that is - as Holmes of course did - to return to 221B Baker Street, truly lovingly recreated in the basement of the old English Church in Meiringen. #Finalproblem2024

And given that, there’s one more place we need to visit before we can sign off… #FinalProblem2024

So here is where our story ends. Sort of. At the abandoned alpenstock (courtesy of my wife) that Watson finds when he returns from his wild goose return to Meiringen. Of course, public outcry meant it didn’t really end there, and Holmes scales that cliff face. #FinalProblem2024

There’s a funicular now to take you to the falls - run by the local hydro company - but it post-dates Holmes (indeed, it’s opening in 1898 is not unrelated to the falls’ increased popularity after a certain publication) and is on the wrong side of the cascade. #FinalProblem2024

‘It is indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm.’ #FinalProblem2024

‘The path has been cut half-way round the fall to afford a complete view, but it ends abruptly, and the traveler has to return as he came.’ #FinalProblem2024

But that isn’t the key location. We need to climb a little further still… #FinalProblem2024

First sight of the falls. Hydro-electric schemes mean there is less water coming over than when Watson/Conan Doyle experienced them, but they are still a remarkable sight. Halfway up, the force of the water has bored a hole through which most of it now flows. #FinalProblem2024

Up through the steep, lush, Alpine meadows, there is a roaring sound drawing us onward… #FinalProblem2024

Here in the little hamlet of Schwendi Acher, we are joining Holmes and Watson’s footsteps, taking the old path up from Meiringen to Zwirgi and Rosenlaui, now superseded by the well-engineered road that the bus takes. #FinalProblem2024

Meiringen, far below us in the Aare valley, has been a favoured Alpine resort of the English since the 1830s. Bradshaw’s tells me it has exceptionally pure and clear air, and one of the first English congregations in the country. #FinalProblem2024

Very pleasant bus route, the 164. #FinalProblem2024

Holmes and Watson would have climbed the path direct from Meiringen. My aversion to climbing *every* mountain means we are cheating slightly and taking the Postbus half the way up the hill. To be fair, it is very hot. #FinalProblem2024

Frankly, I’m skeptical about mein host Peter Steiler of the Englischer Hof and late of the Grosvenor. These direct instructions to visit Reichenbach, handing over hotel notepaper to the mysterious Englishman. Did Moriarty recruit him when he worked in London? #FinalProblem2024

‘On the afternoon of the 4th we set off, with the intention of crossing the hills and spending the night at the hamlet of Rosenlaui. We had strict injunctions, however, on no account to pass the falls of Reichenbach, without making a small detour to see them.’ #FinalProblem2024

The fire escape arrangements from our hotel last night (15th century wooden chalet style-thing) are an abseil kit. Tempted to borrow it for later waterfall visit. #FinalProblem2024

btw, I thought I knew my London boroughs, but this one seems to have passed me by. I’m guessing a perennial Lib Dem/Tory marginal, where Labour always claims it is about to make big gains never does? #FinalProblem2024

Plenty more from Meiringen tomorrow, when we will be taking the advice of our hosts on any good local waterfalls to visit. I hear good things about Giessbach?
But for now, I need to head up to the Brünig Pass for a rendezvous with my wife.
#FinalProblem2024

‘We reached the little village of Meiringen, where we put up at the Englischer Hof, then kept by Peter Steiler the elder’. The Englischer Hof is widely considered to be the Hotel du Sauvage, which is a)£300/night and b)full, so I won’t be partaking, alas. #FinalProblem2024

Thankfully, no one was killed or badly injured, but there are homes still uninhabitable and the railway will, unsurprisingly, be closed for at least another month. So our final leg up the Aare valley to Meiringen is on a rather luxurious rail replacement bus. #FinalProblem2024

Except three weeks ago, after a very heavy thunderstorm, a stream in Brienz washed 60,000 m³ of rocks down the hill. With the stream bed blocked, the water diverted through a handy railway tunnel, filling it with rocks and cars, and covering the station in mud. #FinalProblem2024

We arrive at the lake head town of Brienz, as Holmes would have done. Three years before he got here, the Jura-Bern-Luzern Railway reached here over the Brünig Pass. From here, it was a short train journey on the 8pm to Meiringen, as it should be for us… #FinalProblem2024