Bilt – On a walking holiday in Switzerland

He. She Belter Walking Club I went out on a seven-day walking holiday. This time a little further from home, to Swiss Alps. The base was Val Sinistra in the Engarden Mountains, located in the canton of Graubünden, near the village of Sint. They had stayed at the previous spa. The prestigious health resort was built at the beginning of the last century on the mountainside and served as a spa for the upper class until 1972. After it fell into disrepair and became uninhabited, Dutchman Pieter Kruyt bought it and turned it into a kind of alternative holiday destination for hikers, nature lovers and (winter) sports enthusiasts ). Although the whole radiates faded glory and the comfort is very simple, the grandeur of the past remains clearly present. The project currently relies largely on volunteers.
From this location, at an altitude of 1,500 metres, they made six strenuous hikes in the surrounding area. In the village of Zort, on one of their tours, they passed by Casa Mengelberg, where the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra was staying at that time. They took the ski lift to 2,300 meters above the tree line where they ended up in the snow, then descended again to 1,700 meters along narrow hiking trails and picturesque mountain sides. Along the way, their attention was drawn to the whistling of an alpine badger. What particularly struck them were the colorful alpine meadows filled with flowers that we can only dream of here, despite our roadside edict. They walked for five days under a bright blue sky, only their last walk was in pouring rain. So it's time to go home when the bad weather is coming! (Robert Kenable)