The Reichenbach Falls are a rare thing: a world-famous literary shrine that is also, independently, one of the best short mountain outings in the Bernese Oberland. The circuit below covers both, the water and the detective, in a morning, with the afternoon left free for the Aare Gorge next door.
Getting to Meiringen
Meiringen sits on the Brünig line: hourly trains from Interlaken Ost (about 30 minutes) and from Lucerne over the pass (about 1 h 15, and a beautiful ride in its own right). From the station, the funicular's lower station at Willigen is a 15-20 minute flat walk across the Aare, signed "Reichenbachfall", or a short hop on bus 171. Drivers will find a car park at the base. Aim for the first departures around 9:00: morning light hits the main fall straight on, and the terrace is still empty.
The funicular: 1899, open sides, 61 percent
The Reichenbachfall-Bahn is half the attraction. Two counterweighted wooden cars from 1899, the very year Conan Doyle let Holmes officially return, creak up through the forest on a single track, open to the air, at gradients that reach 61 percent. The ride lasts ten minutes and lands you on a terrace directly facing the 90-metre Grand Fall. It runs roughly mid-May to early October, every 10-15 minutes; the return costs about 12 francs with the usual Swiss discounts. Sit on the right going up for the first glimpse of the fall through the trees.
Up to the ledge
From the terrace, the path climbs in earnest: twenty to thirty minutes of switchbacks, close enough to the water to need the handrails' reassurance. Where the trail crests the fall, a signed side path doubles back to the ledge, the one Conan Doyle stood opposite in 1893 and chose as "a worthy tomb". A white star is painted on the dark rock across the chasm, marking the spot where Holmes and Moriarty went over; beside the path, a bronze plaque installed by the Sherlock Holmes societies states the case with perfect Victorian gravity. The drop below is real and the spray reaches you in high water. It is brief, theatrical and genuinely vertiginous, the rare literary pilgrimage with exposure.
Wear real shoes, the upper path is wet rock and roots. In May the snowmelt makes the falls ferocious but can keep the highest path closed for spray; check at the funicular. And carry a layer: the cauldron generates its own cold wind even in August.
Down past the six other falls
Ride the funicular back if your knees insist, but the better exit is the walking path down, forty-five minutes threading the lower cascades. The Reichenbach is not one fall but seven, and the smaller leaps, mossy, green-lit, nearly private, are where the Romantics actually sat to sketch. The path lands in Willigen a few steps from where you started.
The town: museum, statue, meringues
Back in Meiringen, the Sherlock Holmes Museum occupies the crypt of the old English church on Conan Doyle Place, fitting, since it was English tourists who made this valley fashionable. Inside is a scrupulous reconstruction of the 221B Baker Street sitting room, assembled from the stories' own inventory. Outside, the bronze detective broods on his rock, pipe in hand. Complete the ritual with the local claim to fame nobody expects: meringues, which the town insists were invented here and named for it. Order them with double cream and decide the attribution question for yourself.
The afternoon: the Aare Gorge
Ten minutes from the funicular's base, the Aareschlucht runs a full kilometre through a slot sometimes barely a metre wide, on walkways bolted to the limestone. Enter at the west portal, walk the gorge to Innertkirchen, and take the tiny Meiringen-Innertkirchen railway back. With the falls in the morning, it makes the single best full day in the Haslital. With a second day, go up the Reichenbach valley to the Rosenlaui glacier gorge, the road Holmes and Watson walked on 4 May 1891, in better spirits than their errand deserved.
The timings, assembled
09:00 funicular up · 09:15 Grand Fall terrace · 09:45 climb to the top · 10:15 the star and the plaque · 11:00 walk down the lower falls · 12:00 lunch and museum in Meiringen · 14:00 Aare Gorge · 16:30 train out, case closed. Total spend beyond transport: one funicular ticket, one museum entry, one plate of meringues. Elementary.