At the top

That is our St. Urs cathederal. St Urs is the patron saint of the town of Solothurn and to be quite honest I don't really know what he did to get the title but I did find this link which might help to explain things a bit. After arriving at the top of the tower I paid my entrance fee and walked out onto the platform. There is an iron barrier around it but not covered so if anyone wanted to jump over there would be no problem.

My intention was taking photographs when I got to the top, but that was not so easy. First of all I was still shaking from the effort of climbing the stairs and it was a long way up, so had to get used to it. I discovered that the best position was to lean against the wall to steady myself and click away which I did, so here some photos.

A view towards the South of the town showing the River Aare and our new bridge which took a couple of years to build and was finished in Spring - see this blog and this as well.

The bridge on the right is known as the bycycle bridge because no traffic is allowed - only pedestrians and bikes. Now and again the odd tourist drives over the bridge in his car and usually his photo is in the local newspaper the next day.

A view towards the "Zeughausplatz". The large building in the middle of the picture is a museum with a large collected of armory used in the middle ages. I found this link where there is even an english version telling all about what there is to see.

This is a view towards the North showing the first chain of the Jura mountains in the background. There are seven chains all together and behind the last chain you reach the town of Basel. The tower is the Riedholz tower and once formed part of the town's defence system in days gone by.

Still following the Jura we are now looking towards the East. Towards the right you can see a small white bulding in the middle of the picture. This is castle Waldegg - if you following the path towards the right and keep going until you are just out of the picture then you reach the village where I live.

And here is just a view across the rooves of Solothurn. The town is one of the oldest in Switzerland and when building work is done they always seem to find some sort of Roman remains somewhere. We have a square called the cemetary square as it used to be the town cemetary in the middle ages. It is quite fun when they start renovating as they always find a couple of skeletons somewhere. I remember when a restaurant was being renovated. They found two skeletons and you could see them through the windows. Funny to think that people had been eating lunch and dinner for years in a restaurant with two skeletons under the floor boards.

After my photography exercise on the tower it was time to descend. Actually I was quite surprised how well it went. Naturally one step at a time but it was with a sigh of relief when I was back to ground level. I had to walk through town to get to the park house, and felt very relieved when I found myself sitting in my car again.

It was worth the effort, although the next morning I found to my surprise that I did have some muscle ache in the legs.