Brienz and Ballenberg

Brienz sits at the eastern end of its lake, twenty minutes from Interlaken, and has three things worth the journey: a steam railway, an open-air museum, and a woodcarving tradition that is still a working trade rather than a souvenir industry.

The lake itself is the other reason — Brienzersee is steep-sided, almost undeveloped and an improbable turquoise from the glacial flour suspended in it.

Brienzer Rothorn

The last steam-operated rack railway in Switzerland, climbing from the lakeshore to 2,244 m in about an hour on coal- and oil-fired locomotives, some of them from the 1890s.

It is slow, sooty and entirely delightful, and at the top the view runs the whole length of the lake with the Bernese Alps opposite. Runs roughly June to October, weather permitting, and it sells out on fine summer days — book.

Ballenberg

The Swiss Open-Air Museum, a short bus ride from the village, and better than the description suggests.

More than a hundred rural buildings from every part of the country have been dismantled where they stood, moved here and rebuilt: farmhouses, barns, a sawmill, a cheese dairy, a chapel, each with the garden, livestock and field boundaries appropriate to it. The site covers 66 hectares and the buildings are grouped by region, so walking across it is walking across Switzerland.

There are craftspeople working — a blacksmith, a weaver, a basket-maker, a cheesemaker — and the animals are old breeds. Allow half a day; it is far larger than it looks on the map.

Open roughly mid-April to end of October.

The woodcarvers

Brienz has carved wood since the early nineteenth century, when the trade was developed deliberately to give the valley an income beyond farming. The Schnitzlerschule is still the national school for it, and there is a violin-making school here too.

The shops in the village sell the real thing alongside the tourist version, and the difference in price tells you which is which.

Giessbach

Across the lake, reachable by boat, the Giessbach falls drop through fourteen stages beside a grand nineteenth-century hotel. The funicular up from the boat pier, built in 1879, is the oldest public funicular in Europe.

The path behind the falls gets you wet and is free.

Getting there

• By train — Interlaken Ost 20 minutes on the Brünig line; Lucerne an hour and a quarter. This is the GoldenPass route.
• By boat — from Interlaken Ost along the lake, about an hour and a quarter, and much the better arrival. Covered by rail passes; see the lakes.

When to go

June to October, when the Rothorn railway runs and Ballenberg is open. Outside that the village is quiet and both are shut.

Combine with Meiringen and the Aare gorge, fifteen minutes further up the valley.