Switzerland Guide
The Bernese Oberland
Château d'Oex
A family ski and sports resort located where the road from the Col des Mosses joins the valley, Château d'Oex (pronounced day) is a quiet place in a spectacular location. The wide, sloping valley bowl in which it sits generates exactly the right kinds of thermal air currents for perfect hot-air ballooning, and the town is acclaimed as one of the world centres for the sport. When Bertrand Piccard, from Lausanne, and the Briton Brian Jones made their record-breaking 45,000km round-the-world balloon flight in 1999, the takeoff point, and nerve centre of the whole operation, was Château d'Oex. Every January, the town hosts perhaps the most beautiful sports event in the Swiss calendar, the annual Hot-Air Ballooning Week, when eighty or more colourful giants catch the thermals to float peaceably over the hills and valleys round about. For speedier thrills, the town and its slopes are linked in to the Gstaad ski pass: as well as easy and intermediate pistes all around the town, there are a few testing runs down from the La Braye cable car, spanning the valley up to a height of 1630m.