Work & Bike'n'Hike Week - a complicated name for a simple idea: during one half of the day, participants maintain the trails in Adelboden Lenk, while enjoying the trails during the other half. Board and lodging included for a week. And true to the title, hikers also picked up a shovel.

Shoveling and picking in the morning, biking in the afternoon really gets into your bones, announces pensioner André Althaus in the Berner Zeitung. In fact, the camp's program is one for people with lots of energy, regardless of their age. They stay in a hotel or mountain lodge for a week and are catered for at the expense of the destination Adelboden Lenk.

17 participants accepted the challenge, which for the sake of simplicity we will call W&BnHnW here, eleven of them in Lenk, three of them hikers, as Albert Kruker, Director of Lenk -Simmental Tourism, points out. Six went to Adelboden. One of the walkers is 21-year-old student Sarah Best. However, her sore muscles are more from jogging than from building paths, she tells the Berner Zeitung newspaper.

For the two villages of Adelboden and Lenk, the W&BnHnW is at least as much an initiative to promote mutual understanding as it is to maintain the network of trails. "The paths are used and maintained jointly," reads the press release from Adelboden Lenk. Hikers and bikers alike will benefit from the improved quality of the trails, the destinations added in their press release.

A trial has been running in the region since last year to determine what has long been normal in other parts of the country but is still a risk in the canton of Bern: the joint use of trails by hikers and mountain bikers. Coexistence is planned for the less frequented trails further away from the cable cars, explains Tourism Director Albert Kruker. In Lenk alone, there should be over 160 kilometers of trails.

Edition possible in 2024

Among the participants of the W&BnHnW, the atmosphere was excellent across all sporting preferences and age groups. Which is not all that surprising. What hiker who has bikers on their mind would take part in a week like this? In any case, the campaign is a great idea. The signs are good that it will also take place in summer 2024. However, this has not yet been definitively decided, concludes Albert Kruker.