We think this is a little walkway for a cat to get inside.
We set out and tried hitchhiking, but three is a crowd in lifting. We were still trying when the bus stopped and we all jumped on it. From Maloja to Promontogno and from there with a smaller bus to Soglio. It was rather expensive in swiss franks.
Soglio is high up in the mountains and a normal bus won’t be able to get there. It’s another one of those mountain villages, where you must have been born in to live there. The streets are narrow and the houses high with very thick walls. History is all over the village. I did notice in many of these small villages how many new houses were built recently. You have the old heart of the village and the new houses rising up like mushrooms around it.
Soglio is high up in the mountains and a normal bus won’t be able to get there. It’s another one of those mountain villages, where you must have been born in to live there. The streets are narrow and the houses high with very thick walls. History is all over the village. I did notice in many of these small villages how many new houses were built recently. You have the old heart of the village and the new houses rising up like mushrooms around it.
In most of the shops around here you can buy all kinds of ointments and health products made from herbs from Soglio. I never found out who makes it.
There is a little shop on the town square where there is no shop assistant. You go in and when you buy something, you write the product on a list and put your money in a box. It works very well. Maybe because of the novelty value, nobody ever cheats.
In all of the older villages you have a town square with mostly a restaurant with tables and chairs outside. The villagers sit there in their spare time and talk to everyone who passes by. Everybody knows everybody.
Here too the shops were closed from noon till 2:30pm, but there were few shops. It was not for me, but Ria wanted to go to one specific shop,but it was already closed for the season.
We passed a very old house where a lady was brushing the floor in the entrance to a building. René walked into the house, thinking it was a museum or something, but it was a private house! I can understand René’s mistake, it’s a four-story beautiful old house, built a few centuries ago. A house that was built to last.
At the breakfast table this morning someone told us, if we go from Stampa to Soglio not to do the roman steps, it’s very hard. One of our group, René has been to Soglio before, but from another village and he said not to do that route either, because it was very hard. We decided to start in Soglio then it’s downhill most of the time.
After we drank our beer, coffee and water and went to the loo we set out on our journey down the mountain to Stampa. At a very scenic spot we stopped to have lunch and we could look out at Soglio from there. It was warm and sunny, what a breathtaking lunch.
When you walk so high up in the mountains and you look down at the tiny villages, you have such a different feeling. It’s like looking at a toy village with toy houses and cars, you want to reach out and touch it.
We were not far on our walk when the steps began. Made from large and small stones worked into the mountain to form steps. It went on and on and on ……..
It is not such a long walk, on the signpost it said 1h 15min., we did stop several times for me to make photo’s and for René to drink from the mountain streams. We crossed many of them.
The church at Stampa
The castle at Stampa
Someone selling artwork in wood
In Stampa we decided to split up this time when lifting. Ria and I will stand at one spot and René is going further up the road. We did not wait long when a friendly schoolteacher picked us up and when we saw René, she picked him up too.
She lives higher up in the mountains and when I made a remark about the friendliness of the people living in this area, she told me they are with only 1500 inhabitants in the Bergell and that everybody knows everybody.
She dropped us off in Cassacia where she lives and we had to hike from there again. Again we split up and soon an Italian from Lugano picked us up. Oh boy! I sat in front and what a treat his car was. It’s some kind of very posh Mercedes and when we went through the corners of the Maloja pass, the seat moves in the direction of the corner. My initial thought was that the seat was not fixed to the car, but soon I realised, this car is alive! It was great fun to go through corners in this car.
She lives higher up in the mountains and when I made a remark about the friendliness of the people living in this area, she told me they are with only 1500 inhabitants in the Bergell and that everybody knows everybody.
She dropped us off in Cassacia where she lives and we had to hike from there again. Again we split up and soon an Italian from Lugano picked us up. Oh boy! I sat in front and what a treat his car was. It’s some kind of very posh Mercedes and when we went through the corners of the Maloja pass, the seat moves in the direction of the corner. My initial thought was that the seat was not fixed to the car, but soon I realised, this car is alive! It was great fun to go through corners in this car.
While we waited for a lift I took this photo of crocusses with the dam in the background.
That was another day with Intersoc in Maloja.
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