On the road with Mike & Till ... Looking for Aliens in Gruyères

October 2014. We'd long been wanting to visit the HR Giger museum and bar, so when Till had some holidays in October we decided to jump in the van and head down to Gruyères, about a 2.5 hours drive south from Winterthur along the A1 Autobahn to Kanton Fribourg.

Gruyères is medieval town located in the French speaking canton of Fribourg in the south west of Switzerland. It sits high on a hill overlooking the Saane valley and the Lake of Gruyère. It is famous for at least three things - cheese, the Gruyères Castle, and the HR Giger Museum. We went to see all three of them: First we had a good look around the castle, then we had a good look around the museum, then on the next day we visited the cheese factory. Plus we had cheese fondue for dinner in the Chalet de Gruyères and we stayed the night in the Camping ground Haute Gruyère.

Gruyère

The main street of Gruyères

The courtyard of the Chateau de Gruyères

The gardens of the Chateau de Gruyères and the wonderful view beyond.

The HR Giger Musuem

The Aliens

The HR Giger museum has been located in Gruyères since 1997 and has the most extensive collection of artworks from Giger's various creative periods ranging from the 1960 up until his death in 2014. It contains much of Giger's famous film designs which he created for the Alien movies. It also contain the Oscar he won for Best Visual Effects for Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien.

Camping haute Gruyère

The only van staying that night in Camping haute Gruyère (in the rain)

La Maison du Gruyère (The cheese factory)

La Maison du Gruyère

The museum and cheese factory in the House of Gruyère was really worth the visit. We read all about the cows, the milk, the mountains etc., which was all very interesting, but the really interesting bit was the chance to see the cheese being made on an industrial scale and to see where it is stored.

The cheese dairy has four vats with a capacity of 4,800 litres. The master cheese-makers and their team produce up to 48 wheels of Gruyère a day which are then matured in the cellar which has space for 7,000 wheels of cheese.

Camping du Lac on the Lake of Gruyère

Camping du Lac

After our visit to the House of Cheese we took a nice drive around the Lake of Gruyère, stopping a couple of times to take in the sights. Towards the end of the afternoon we pulled into the camping ground right on the edge of the lake. We set up the van for the night and tested the auxiliary heating. The heater worked perfectly and it was very warm in the van throughout the entire night. It worked so well that I decided there and then that winter camping will be something worth trying.

And so after a couple of days on the road visiting a medieval castle, an alien museum, and a cheese factory, we headed back up the A1 Autobahn to Winterthur.