The hills aren’t really alive, but the landscape’s postcard purity goes straight to your head. It’s the prettiest bit of the prettiest country in Europe, and it does a highly professional job of being Swiss.

There are sloping pastures, apparently chomped by a crack team of formation cud-chewers (when they’re not staging intervillage yodelling matches, Oberland farmers compete to see who can mow the steepest, least hospitable tracts of Alp). There is the sunshine spearing off icy peaks and limestone crags. There are the timber chalets, which appear to have arrived yesterday, flat-packed from Ikea. And, of course, there are the clanking cattle, serenading us with discordant campanology. All it needs is Heidi to leap out from behind a bullock.

Casi is our host at the welcoming Hotel Victoria, in Kandersteg, and he’s the man behind the route notes for our traipse across the high passes of the Blümlisalp massif. It’s a three-day linear trek, no more than 11 miles in one go, with luggage moved on for you and optional circular walks at each end. At the terminus of each trail waits a swimming pool and hairy-chested Oberland cuisine — goulash, baked alaska — while at lunchtime there’s a traditional Swiss packed lunch (cheese sandwich, plus chunk of emmental). The walk is supposed to be self-guided, but Casi often strides out with his guests, just for the love of it. “We say that wherever the cows can walk, our visitors can walk too,” he tells me. “If they want, I take them hiking across the glaciers — nothing dangerous of course. Not unless they have paid in advance...”

I hook up with Ali and Sarah on day one, over a boozy fondue at the Victoria. The backdrop to our walk will be the Wall of the Oberland, a famous frieze of mountains that fold out into an immaculate horizon. Its big-name summits, Jungfrau and Eiger, lie to the northeast, but we’ll see most of the supporting cast, including Wildstrubel, or Messy Hair mountain.

We start with what might be my all-time favourite day walk, around a mountain lake called the Oeschinensee. It’s just a boulder’s throw from Kandersteg, via a handy, hill-beating cable car that cuts the circuit to seven miles.

We begin in flower-pricked meadows, where cow bells the size of coal scuttles dangle from chalet gables. The larger a farmer’s bells, Casi says, the bigger his herd. This fact will be priceless if ever they make Carry On up the Alps.

Already, the views are mind-altering. One minute we’re in a stark pink canyon, ideal for a western-style shoot-out; seconds later we’re in the high Alps, dazzled by three mammoth glaciers.

We stop for milkshakes at a lakeside hut, and grin inanely at some huntsmen at the next table. They’re sporting baize-green breeches, felt hats and twirly moustaches — perhaps grown to ape the spiral-horned chamois they have come to hunt. Nearby, burly brown cows sunbathe beside the shimmering blue-green Oeschinensee. Casi claims it’s the most beautiful mountain lake in Europe. He’s biased, but who’s arguing? My highlight, though, is day four: the walk to Lenk, home of the purple cow from the chocolate adverts. Fingerposts say that our climb to Hahnenmoos Pass should take a couple of hours, but we find one Swiss hour equals 90 minutes of British walking time, possibly because we keep stopping to snaffle wild raspberries, point at green woodpeckers or wow at scarlet butterflies. And it’s somewhere around here that we have our Julie Andrews moment.

The details: Inntravel (01653 617906, www.inntravel.co.uk) offers a seven-night self-guided walking holiday, including three nights at the Hotel Victoria, from £568pp, half-board, based on two sharing and including route notes and luggage transfers, but not flights. The trip is available from June 9 to October 7.

Fly to Zurich or Geneva, with airlines including EasyJet (www.easyjet.com), Swiss (0845 601 0956, www.swiss.com) and BMI Baby (0871 224 0224, www.bmibaby.com). Bus and rail connections to Kandersteg from either airport cost £46pp return; book through Inntravel.

Other operators include Headwater (0870 066 2650, www.headwater.com) and HF Holidays (020 8905 9558, www.hfholidays.co.uk).

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