day 6 – Valle Verzasca

June 29, 2015

From the house we look across the lake to see an endless horizon of mountain peaks and some wild sunsets.
What i guess we thought we were coming to see, full-on, in Switzerland.
Ticino like almost every other Swiss canton can vaunt its Alpine scenery and we chose to check out the Verzascatal, a dammed alpine valley that we could see leading off into the distance east of Locarno. Straightaway is the dam which is 220m high and has starred in a James Bond film. 20km or so further on the road comes to an end at the village of Sonogno, then there’s just mountains. Everything in the village is built from or carved out of rock. Lower down the steep-sided valley we stopped and walked up the river bed, climbing over giant boulders and plunging in and out the cold river. We played Ducks and Drakes in pools with the rounded pebbles. At Lavertezzo there was an incredible stone bridge and we waited until a boy finally jumped the 20 meters into the water.