Gletsch is where a Bond car drove around a hairpin. The 1964 film Goldfinger used the road near here for its famous chase, with Sean Connery's Aston Martin DB5 winding along the Furka pass, and the old Hotel Belvédère, a big, handsome building from the age of grand Alpine tourism, stands at the foot of the climb. It has the look of a place that has been waiting for travellers for more than a century.
The hamlet sits where the Grimsel and Furka roads meet, at the head of the Goms valley, at an altitude well above 1,700 metres. It is a tiny place, with a hotel, a station and a few buildings, but the setting is superb. The Rhône glacier, from which the great river starts its journey to the Mediterranean, once reached right down to the hamlet, and now has retreated far up the valley, so the ice that tourists once visited by carriage is a long way off. A cave carved into the ice is open in summer.
The riding here is the great attraction. The road to the Furka climbs in a long sequence of hairpins with the glacier in view, then crosses the pass at about 2,430 metres. The surface is good, the barriers are solid, and the corners are generous, but at weekends the traffic is dense. In summer a steam railway runs on the old Furka line between Oberwald and Realp, a lovely thing to see puffing across the hillside.
Come in the morning, when the light is clear and the roads are quiet. Cold wind comes off the glacier even in August, and snow can fall in any month at this height. Passes in this region close in winter, typically from late October to late May, so check before you go. A cup of coffee on the terrace of the old hotel, looking up at the ice, is one of the best small pleasures of the Alps.