Europe's biggest waterfall is a day trip from Zurich

Some of the best things in Switzerland take effort to reach: a summit, a glacier lake, a hut three hours up a path. The biggest waterfall in Europe is not one of them. The Rheinfall sits on the Rhine just below Schaffhausen, about an hour from Zürich by train or car, and you can be standing in its spray before lunch.

Biggest needs saying carefully, because the fall is not tall. The drop is 23 metres. What it has is width and weight: the whole river goes over a lip 150 metres across – the widest waterfall in Europe – and in summer around 600 cubic metres of water fall every second, which is why it is usually counted the most powerful on the continent. It was cut at the end of the last ice age, when the Rhine was forced into a new bed. You hear it before you see it.

Getting there is almost suspiciously easy. Public transport drops you within a short walk of the railings; by car you are parked and looking at the water in minutes. The walk around is short, and a castle stands right above the falls with terraces hanging over the lip. The moment that makes the trip is the boat: small ferries push out into the churn and land you on the rock that stands in the middle of the falls, where you climb the stairs and stand with white water tearing past on both sides. You will get wet.

It is busy, because it is loved – by locals as much as by tourists – and on a summer afternoon you will share it. Go anyway. Living in Switzerland, it is easy to treat the falls as scenery on the way to somewhere more dramatic. That is a mistake. Europe's biggest waterfall is on the doorstep. Do not save it for guests.