Simplon Pass

The Simplon Pass is one of the few Alpine passes that stays open all year, and it's just twenty minutes' drive away. At 2,005 metres stands the stone eagle: nine metres tall, erected as a symbol of vigilance in memory of the Wacht am Simplon border watch during the Second World War. It's the image everyone who has ever driven through here remembers.

The pass was a trade route for centuries, and in the seventeenth century Kaspar Stockalper made the fortune here that paid for his palace in Brig. His old mule track still exists: the section near the pass summit measures 9.26 kilometres with 525 metres of ascent and takes about two and a half hours. Along the way you pass the Simplon Hospice. A little further on lies Fort Gondo, a wartime infantry fort whose 350-metre connecting tunnel now forms part of the Stockalper Way; on Saturdays from June to October there are ninety-minute guided tours for CHF 10.

In winter the pass summit is surprisingly lively. There's a cross-country trail of around 1.8 kilometres at nearly two thousand metres, running from the Spittelmatte past the Barralhaus to the old hospice, with separate classic and skating tracks and a day pass for CHF 5, ideal for trying cross-country skiing for the first time. There's also a groomed five-kilometre winter walking path and a 3.85-kilometre snowshoe trail. Snowkiting and ski touring feature here too; the open plateau almost always has wind.

In summer the pass opens up more than 140 kilometres of marked walking trails. The 7.75-kilometre Staldhorn route starts almost at the car park, while the Glishorn high-altitude trek, at 17 kilometres and over two thousand metres of ascent, is a serious day out. In Simplon Dorf, ten minutes further on, you'll find the Ecomuseum in the old inn and the observatory of the Oberwallis Astronomical Society.