Things to Do at Lake Thun (Thunersee)

Lake Thun stretches like a turquoise gem between the Bernese Oberland's craggy peaks, its surface shifting from deep sapphire on overcast mornings to an almost impossible milky teal when summer sun hits the glacier-fed water. Stand on the Interlaken West promenade. You'll catch the cool, mineral smell of the lake mixing with woodsmoke from chalet chimneys and the occasional waft of fondue from the waterfront restaurants. The cog-railway whistles echo off the surrounding mountains, paddle steamers thrum past with their distinctive low chuff, and on quieter mornings you can hear cowbells drifting down from the alpine pastures above Beatenberg. Each shore feels different. The northern bank, with Spiez and Oberhofen, has a sun-warmed, almost Mediterranean quality in summer, with vineyards (yes, vineyards, this far north) tumbling toward the water. The southern shore, shadowed by the Niesen's distinctive pyramid peak, stays cooler and feels more brooding, the kind of place where you might find yourself sitting on a bench for an hour longer than planned. It's roughly 18 kilometres long. The lake gets surprisingly deep, over 200 metres in places, which explains the cold even in August. What tends to surprise visitors is how working a landscape this is. Lake Thun isn't a museum piece. The BLS ferries run year-round as actual transport, locals commute by boat in summer, and the medieval castles dotted along the shore aren't empty monuments but house museums, restaurants, and even a working post office in Oberhofen. As you'd expect for Switzerland, it's all impossibly well-organised, but there's a lived-in quality that saves it from feeling like a theme park.

Interlaken West station sits roughly a five-minute walk from the lake's eastern end, with ferries departing from the dock right behind the station. Trains from Bern reach Interlaken in under an hour and run frequently. From Zurich you're looking at about two hours with a change. If you're coming from Spiez (the western lake hub), trains run every 15-30 minutes and the journey is short. Driving is straightforward, with the A8 motorway running along the northern shore. But parking near Interlaken in summer can be a headache and isn't cheap. The cleverest approach is often to base yourself at one end and use the boats as your transport for the day. Slower than the train. The views are the point.