It had been a while since the hide was delivered and so it was time for the next stage. With reinforcements arriving from Belgium we made plans to start working on the hide to turn it into a place for people to relax in and enjoy Swiss nature.
Manuel, Ruben and his girlfriend Inge met up at Probstenberg, where the hide will be located, for the weekend. Oliver, the owner of Probstenberg welcomed us at this beautiful place and after a warm welcome and a quick look around we started work. The first stage was to clean up the hide. Since It is a former military vehicle there was still a lot of shelving and storage in. It became clear to us pretty quickly that we had a lot of work ahead of us. Luckily everything was modular and the only tool we needed was a Swiss army knife. What else…
Hundreds of screws, nuts and bolts had to be unscrewed and unbolted and the heavy shelving taken out. Oli was kind enough to lend a hand when real muscle was needed. And thus, with small breaks to enjoy the amazing views and nature of the Jura mountains we slowly but surely cleared the hide bit by bit. With Lolo arriving in the afternoon and Oli helping out we got a lot of work done on the first day.

During the evening we enjoyed a very nice meal with Oli and his family enjoying the evening sun. After dinner we checked some cameratraps. A lot of badgers, foxes, pine marten, hare, chamois and even a golden eagle with a roe deer leg in it's claws! When scrolling through the pictures of the third cameratrap. Boom!! 2 lynx. After some further examination we saw that they were both young ones from last year that had recently left their mother. Once again showing the Jura mountains are prime habitat for lynx.

We ended the day with watching a colony of Two-coloured bats leaving their day roost and a small night drive yielding roe deer, fox and a wildcat.
The second day work continued taking out all of the stuff from the inside. As mentioned before the hide appeared to be very well made and so we noticed. It was not giving up without a fight. A dividing wall in the hide had to come out which seemed easier said than done. We thought that unscrewing the sides would do the trick but alas, we were wrong. Very wrong. The wall was glued on the sides. Cut it in halve maybe? Olly saw our problem and stepped in. He decided to go full beast mode hammering and sawing at the wall. Finally, the wall gave way showing the full size and potential of the hide on the inside.
By this time it was already in the afternoon when Valentin showed up as well. We cleaned out the hide and there it was. Ready for the next stage. The design and build.

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