Ardez to Zernez

From Ardez, leaving the silhoutte of its famous castle in the background, we walked high up along one side of the valley to Guarda, the town made famous by Schellen-Ursli, the famous children's story. There is a free museum with self-service coffee and cake in the former animal stalls of an old house, and an expensive hotel with a pilgrim stamp. Moving on, round mountain streams, we crossed the river at Lavin sadly looking as if it had seen better days. In Susch there is a modern tower which, from the train, we had wondered what it was as the town appears to have three church towers. This one is, however, modern art! It also seemed to have Catholic Church which appeared to now be converted to housing, but we could not find out more. We also met a game warden and asked him about the signs warning that there were bears; he told us that there are not bears at the moment and that when there are, they come over the border from Italy - we felt relieved! We continued our way along the Inn river. It could have been a very pleasant walk but it was very hot and we probably did not drink or eat enough so were very glad to see Zernez, our base for the week, come into sight!