In the spirit of minimizing travel during the pandemic staycation : we hired a car and took some of our annual leave in Switzerland. And as a side note, we hired the car from Zurich airport and never have I seen that airport so devoid of people β spooky. Scroll down for the route details and various other laidback options. But back to our trip, which took us to one of my favorite places in Switzerland: Ticino.
This time we stayed in the outskirts of Locarno in a converted studio of some very friendly locals. From Locarno there are many valleys that you can drive up. Since the weather was threatening to hit us with thunderstorms we went for the valley with the lowest probability of one according to Swiss Meteo: Onsernone Valley.
It was really fun to have a car on this occasion because what a drive up this valley it was! The valley is really at the back end of nowhere and the road was not wide enough for two cars in most places. As we made our way up we wound our way through tiny villages with lots of old stone houses, very idyllic and perhaps reminiscent of a simpler past.
The drive up from Locarno station is about 53 Google minutes but it probably took us 20 minutes more than that as driving the Google estimated speed on those roads is a challenge and we kinda just took our time absorbing all the scenery!
Our destination was a little car parking spot just before the village of Spruga. The car park is on the side of the road and fits just 4 cars. The good thing is that the path started at this mini car park. If the car park had been full we would have parked up in Spruga and walked down to the start of this path. The first part of this hike to Alpe di Salei is roughly meters up through the woods without much sideways in between and is really the kind of hike I enjoy.
