The last weeks have been hectic yet dull as I’ve been learning to juggle a not-so-tired-anymore ten week old and his increasingly tempestuous (cough terrible) two year old sister. There are differences to when she was young – he smiles so much! eats so easily! who’d have thought the two might be related! – but there are also similarities. The primary one: walking. When Adelaide was teeny I walked everywhere with her as it was a surefire way to get her to sleep (bus roulette, anyone?). With the Tedster there’s little choice; toddler sisters demand movement. We traipse the streets (well, the streets that lead to slippery dips) of Luzern until one out of the three of us are exhausted. The upside of this is that when Tim’s dad – the kids’ Grumps – who is visiting expressed interest in checking out the local bush, we were happy to oblige.

We made our way to Adligenswil – about 20 minutes away – for a hike through the no-longer-snow-covered forest. I’m not so bold as to call it spring quite yet, but there’s something going on.

Hiking in Switzerland is a very common pastime and we ‘grüezi mitenand’-ed people constantly (not least because we were somewhat map deficient and may have circled back on ourselves a few times). Tracks are well marked, and hobbies well catered for: we came across bird-watching towers (enthusiastically investigated by Grumps) and exercise circuits as we walked.

As always with hikes – here and anywhere – it’s the intimacy of the landscape that makes it worthwhile. Tim fell for bedraggled trees, Grumps found himself lost amid towering trunks and, every now and then, corners were turned to spectacular vistas, reminding us of where we were.