Hiking on the Bürglen Chapel Trail (Kapellenweg), Canton Uri

Monday March 16th -- With this current pandemic situation we are being asked to distance ourselves from other people, and are also spending less time in offices. People are traveling more by car if necessary, and less by public transit. But since we are dependent on public transit, we are just being extra careful. For now, it hasn't been a problem with keeping distance on public transit, which we are keeping to a minimum and are careful to not touch anything (or to cough or sneeze or talk to anyone!)

Since we both basically had Monday off and the week is too beautiful to stay indoors, we traveled to the town of Bürglen in Canton Uri, a short trip for us. Who knows how long we will still have this opportunity? Bürglen is the supposed birth place of William Tell, and besides having a Tell Museum and Tell Chapel, as well as a Tell Hotel and Restaurant, the town has created a themed trail called "Kapellenweg" or "Chapel Trail" (not Tell-related) which you can walk in a 3-hour loop up the hillside and through the community to visit a large number of chapels (an additional detour into the Riedertal Valley to a popular pilgrim's chapel takes another 90 minutes, but we walked down that valley recently and visited that chapel, so no need to make the detour this time).

[Here is the link to our hike in the Riedertal Valley: https://swisstravelgirl.blogspot.com/2019/07/hike-into-riedertal-valley-from-haldi.html ]

As usual, we did our own variation of the trail, choosing to stay on a narrow and unofficial trail on the hillside instead of returning to the main road, which was a much better choice. The trail was not long in terms of kilometers, but required several steep ascents and descents, so we got a real work-out, and in terms of the weather, it was very warm and like early summer, almost too warm, but it worked out well for us as we started late (1 p.m.) and finished just before the sun disappeared over the steep mountains at 5 p.m.

Bus Stop in Bürglen: Start of the loop is the Parish Church of St.Peter and Paul

This is a very pretty church with a splendid backdrop of snow-covered mountains (Also, Restaurant TELL) 

Details of the St.Peter and Paul Church in Bürglen, taken during a previous visit to this village (we have been here often).

Next to the church and in front of the "Hotel Tell" is "Tell's Chapel", the start of our loop to discover many chapels in the area, some of which require a steep hike up the hill

First we headed West, then up the hill to a cave and a chapel, then down and up and down several times before returning to the main church in Bürglen. Distance was only a little over 7 km, but there was a lot of elevation involved!

To the West, a former monastery and the majestic Mt. Gitschenen in the background

Special brown-coloured signs indicate a themed trail, this one involves many chapels and churches and caves set up as sacred sites

On our way up we were treated with most spectacular views South down the Reuss Valley

Heading up to the first chapel: Spiess Chapel. It was like in summer

Little Spiess Chapel in the middle of the woods. A very pleasant location

Heading into the Schächental Valley, one of our favourite valleys. Below is the town of Bürglen through which we are looping back. At the back on the right is a side valley called "Riedertal" where there is another popular pilgrim's chapel, which we visited on a different trip.

VIDEO: 

Panorama view of the Reusstal and Schächental Valleys, 

and the towns of Altdorf, Schattdorf and Bürglen

Coffee break on a bench looking down on the old town of Bürglen with the St.Peter and Paul Church. From here we head down to the river and then up again

Another steep climb to the highest point of our hike, with a very good view into the Riedertal Valley, which we descended on a different hike last summer

An absolutely wonderful hike with great weather, superb views, a large variety of trails. We did pass a few other hikers on this lovely trail, you try to keep the "hellos" more subdued than usual!

Near the most Eastern part of the loop we pass under both Bürglen cable cars. This one goes up to a large alpine meadow called Alpe Selez. My Mom overcame her fear of cable cars when she rode this one with us a year ago. This car holds only four people!

The other cable car to Biel-Kinzig carries 8 people

The final chapel "on the hill" before heading back down to Bürglen: The Beigen Chapel

Heading down to the valley to the base station of the two cable cars, before returning to Bürglen

At the main road and the parking lot of the cable car stations we cross the old stone bridge over the Schächen River

Another pretty chapel on the Bürglen side of the river: Loreto Chapel, over 350 years old. This is a popular "Mother of God" pilgrim chapel

Beautiful pastoral landscape of Canton Uri

Looking back to the hillside we had crossed from West to East

Heading back to the Church in Bürglen we can spot the place on the hillside where we had a coffee break before descending the first time back to the river (spot from which the video was made)

At this time of year, the backdrop of snow-covered mountains is particulary spectacular

The last stretch back down to our starting point.

A superb closed loop hike to visit various chapels and sacred sites in the Bürglen area

We had read that Bürglen has its own William Tell monument (the more distinct one is in Altdorf nearby) but we missed it. And then I found this old photo of my nephew from 2015, so it's there!