There'd been no rain for weeks; it was the moment to make a move and enjoy the mountains.
Well past dark by the time I reached the other end of the country, street lamps twinkled from villages high in the sky. The yellow postbus rumbled over the dark cobbles of Andeer and stopped in the village square to let me off. Only a few lights on; a biggish hotel was sternly black but I'd seen a friendlier place a short way back. Not a soul about - normal enough in this wintry temperature - as I followed the narrow bends of the tall canyon formed by solidly massive patrician houses.
Hah, that's not so bad: a warmly-lit cosy dining room of yellows and light beiges where I dump my bag and settle down comfortably for dinner. Wide low windows with lace curtains (so people outside can see how cheerful it is inside?) and thicker red ones that will be drawn last thing at night. Little glass pots of evergreen-leaved miniplants on the tables, bigger ones on the window ledges and in niches around the room and a hand-painted design on the plaster pillar that holds up the light-coloured wood above.
After dinner I stroll through the silent village - on the centuries-old road from Italy to Germany through the Via Mala. In some upper rooms a gentle light shows cupboards and a carved wooden ceiling, while the ground floor windows are sometimes ensconced behind thick decorative wrought iron bars. No traffic as I amble up the bypass road with Orion's sword and belt flashing brighter than disco lights. It's a mistake to think of the night sky as being dark; its brightness here contrasts with the blackness of the rounded wooded horizon that hems in this valley - even the few snow-covered peaks hardly stand out. The church clock strikes the hour against a background tinkle of cowbells from barns and yards. In this frigid air there's a sense of peace and tranquillity undisturbed by the occasional vehicle rushing past on the expressway above, their lamps briefly picking out bare trees.

The church on a low central outcrop is plain; the pews pleasantly facing towards the middle where a bible and a few flowers stand on a small table. As the sun rises above the high ridges one can now see how prosperous the village once was and how the thick-walled houses along the lanes have been frequently restored or reworked. One in particular (dating from the 1500s) has its plaster-coated walls covered with sgraffiti - the outer layer of white plaster is scraped away to leave contrasting geometric designs.
But now it's time to catch the bus that takes the schoolchildren home for lunch - each of the merry crowd has his or her ticket punched by the smiling driver - and after a few minutes we turn left at the Hinterrhein's narrow Rofla gorge into yet another deep wooded gorge that protects half a dozen hamlets from the main San Bernadino traffic. The first two are Romansh-speaking (a Latin-based language) as their name Ferrera shows - a reference to the iron-bearing rock here. But the German-speaking Walser tribes, migrating in the middle of the 13th century from the Rhone valley, pushed further into the dead-end Avers valley up this very same tortuous narrow track where the bus now has to blast its echoing posthorn to guard against blind-bend accidents. However, once past the dark forests and towering icefalls the land slopes more gently and today's brilliantly-lit vast expanses of bare snow rise easily to the surrounding pinnacles. Apart from a couple of hairpins at Cröt, where a side valley takes off south towards Italy, the road rises steadily too, reaching the height of 2100m at Juf, one of Europe's highest all-year-round villages.

The cafe was expensive and not very hospitable but the coffee set me up for the stroll back on the almost ice-free road, glorying in the hot bright sunlight. I hadn't intended to walk very far - it's 28km back to Andeer - but it was so pleasant just ambling along with that wide open view that my pace gradually got longer and faster. Every so often there'd be a cluster of farm buildings and an occasional chalet to rent for winter or summer breaks, and at Juppa there's a couple of small, ideally uncrowded, skilifts used by folk from the region. Another side valley takes off here and you can make, as from Juf itself, a long day's circular tour in the summer - shorter winter footpaths have been prepared too. At Am Bach a fine bright green conifer adorned an under-snow garden, at Pürt a dog was snoozing at a roadside porch and as you enter Cresta there's a fine isolated church on a knoll above the deepening river. This is the metropolis of the Avers valley, probably a score of thick stone or sun-darkened wooden houses and the valley (as opposed to village) shop. They must have been a hardy lot, those Walsers, because the snow's on the ground six months of the year and only recently have snowploughs made winter travel possible. In the summer cattle are fattened and hay is harvested from the slopes, but the land cannot be tilled. There was a time when contraband was brought through this region between Switzerland and Italy - a healthy trade apparently - but motorway transport and bilateral agreements with the European Union have ended that.

So on down to Cröt, where in the upper storey of one of the houses you can see a blocked-up 'Seelabalgga' - a small hole in the wall's dark logs that was opened up to let the soul escape when an inhabitant was about to die. Now the valley narrows sharply and in the shadow of the hills it becomes cooler. The road winds more and, having crossed the river again at Campsut, it steepens. A roadman ensures the drainage channels are not blocked; the thick ice clinging to the roadside rocks will soon fall off. A few tunnels, one almost 500m long, to go through - the old track around the cliff is clogged with snow - but they are well lit and there are no cars.
And so to Innerferrera on a small tongue of land that just catches the sun. The postbus had had to make wide swings here to caterpillar creep between the solid ancient houses planted any which way, a centimetre or two on either side. Though there's an inviting-looking cafe, I decide I've just got time to get to the next hamlet if I hurry - there's little to look at anyway as the forest shuts out the view down here. And I arrive at Ausserferrera just before the bus appears to take me the last few kilometres, glad that I've enjoyed a fine day and seen the diversity of the scenery.

I decided to go by train to Davos the following day to see the landscape on the way; it was dark when I came through the other evening. Bus to Thusis, train through the deep Albula valley of the Domleschg to Filisur and another up the Landwasser valley to Davos. No problem, the timetables are coordinated to connect everywhere, but the Landwasser is narrow and the gloomy tunnels are many.
And at Davos you arrive in a different world - a city world where hotels of all ages and styles vie with each other in showy kitch and the spaces in between are filled by ugly concrete boxes facing in any direction just to use the scraps of land. All, in this classy mountain resort, is tightly bound by the two encircling roads, streaming with noisy cars and buses. Walking along, passing the fancy clothing boutiques and high-priced jewellers, the exhaust gas stench is overpoweringly present. People come here ostensibly to ski - the pistes are very good - but it's difficult to see the close-by hills from the town itself; you have to climb a little from the narrow flat plain. Then you can see, over those dreary drab blocks, the dark spruces and firs and the lighter leafless larches. Steep white gullies rip through them from the bare hummocky snowfields above and, still higher, after the lines of heavy girders of the avalanche barriers, the pylons of the skilifts reach to the topmost points. This afternoon the sun is shining (melting the ice on the pavements and making them very slippery) but years ago I spent a ski week here and I know the nights are breathcatchingly cold.
Enough of that! I take an earlier train back to Filisur's village, back to sanity.

Filisur is an interesting little place, with many old and distinctive houses. There are numerous examples of sgraffiti and heavy carved wooden doorways as well as plenty of small first-floor bay windows from which the woman of the house could keep an eye on the road while darning the heavy stockings. Its population is apparently increasing (500 inhabitants now) but, apart from at the station in the sunshine above, I saw no one in the already shadowed streets. A new catholic chapel, very plain and pleasant, and an interesting old, now protestant, gothic one with fading wall paintings and attractive modern (1973) stained glass windows.
Time to plod back up to the sunlight, have a coffee at the friendly cafeteria and make my way, by train and bus, back to my snug little room and dive under the duvet. Tomorrow's journey will start by continuing up the Hinterrhein valley through the ice and snowfields before plunging down, still in Grischun until just before Bellinzona, into the summer-like warmth and greenery of the Italian-speaking area, with its own, grey stone, architecture. But now it's time for dinner.