Today, we got the full Alp experience. From a white knuckle car ride up and down a mountain ’road’, to watching the family flip cheese, to dodging cow pats in the milking parlour, to standing in the melting snow of a true Alpine meadow.
The Alp we visited today was RuosAlp, a family run dairy and cheesemaking facility where they make Alpkase and small format goat cheese.
Max and Monica are the mum and dad, who have the most positive and energetic disposition, their daughter Nina is in love with the alpine lifestyle and the herd, and the 12 year old Remo zooms around on his bike herding cows, repairing the roof - and is indispensable the operation. At 12.
This may seem obvious, but Alps are high. So far on the trip we’ve been mostly in the foothills. Now we entered the real Alps (Bernese Alps). The temperature drops, the snow still lingers (in June) and the roads/tracks get narrow with steep drop offs.
At some point the old tarmac road turns into gravel, which turns into dirt. We didn’t get as far as where it turned into grass.