A high-wire family adventure in the Swiss Alps

Farmers once used a cable car network to move between mountains in Switzerland’s Engelberg region. Now tourists can use them to follow a new hiking trail

There was definitely a goat in our bedroom. As the wind rattled the wooden shutters above the mattresses on the floor, where my partner and I and our two-year-old lay huddled, I woke with a start, searching the darkness for the creature whose bleats had interrupted my sleep.

We were in the centre of Switzerland, in the mountains above Engelberg, staying in a barn at Alp Oberfeld. Or – technically – above one, in a converted section of the upper floor, beneath which the 100 goats the Käslin family tend over summer are milked twice a day. I checked the clock on my phone. It was 6am. They were right on schedule.