A day out from Basel over the Gempen Plateau

Passing Hochwald, the footpath descends gradually until you get to the small settlement of Herrenmatt and the memorial to Switzerland’s worst-ever aviation disaster*. From Herrenmatt you have a 300-metre descent to Duggingen, from which there are train services to Basel SBB.

*             10 April, 1973: Flight 435 from Bristol to Basel. On the approach into Basel the Pilots of this tourist charter flight misidentified radio beacons and ploughed into a forested hillside, somersaulting and breaking up, killing 108. Many of the 139 souls aboard were women, members of different guilds based in the small Somerset villages of Axbridge, Cheddar, Winscombe and Congresbury.

Despite the late spring date, there was heavy snowstorm in the area. Many who were able to climb out of the wreckage began to sing hymns in the blizzard. There could have led to more deaths due to hypothermia but for a local boy who led the survivors to his house.