Swisstle Stop Tour

Day One

If I’ve reached for the ‘Safety on Board’ card it’s probably an indicator that things aren’t going well and yet here I am, studying it intently as my wife leans over to me and says, “Did you know that apparently they tell you to brace yourself in that position so that if we crash they can identify you by your dental records?”

My wife, ever the optimist!

Ever since we found out Charly was pregnant a few months ago we’ve been itching to get away, knowing full well that if we want to get on a flight next year we will likely have a tiny human throwing a tantrum with us, and she’ll probably be carrying our child. So here we are, sitting on EasyJet flight 2185 from Manchester to Geneva, watching a lady in a bright pink tracksuit smack an unsuspecting suited gentleman in the head with her mini suitcase, as she struggles to get it into the overhead bin several rows back from where she is sitting. The flight is fully booked.

By the time I grab the ‘Safety on Board’ card we’ve been sitting on a plane that shows no sign of moving for what feels like hours, although I am perhaps more sensitive to this because we have a train to catch once we land that will cost us a small fortune to miss. As my wife delivers her cheery line about dental records, the pilot’s voice breaks through the sound of kids playing with their seatbelt buckles and people fiddling with the air con nozzles above their seat to announce the source of the delay. 

“Sorry for the delay taking off today. We have an awful lot of luggage to get onto today’s flight and the ground staff are struggling to find space for it all. I appreciate we have a lot of cyclists flying with us today and we want to make sure we get all of your bikes and gear onboard. Thank you for your patience.”

I don’t know if I find it more annoying that the pilot just accused the whole flight of bringing too much stuff with them, or that he assumed I was being patient! 

I look out the window of the plane and observe a sea of bikes in hard cases and it slowly dawns on me that we could be here for a while. A quick Google search lets me know that around 3 million people cycle in Switzerland each year and by the looks of it the vast majority of those people are on this flight!

I often feel like cyclists have an undeserved bad reputation as a bit of a nuisance on the road by drivers who feel they have more right to it than they do, but as Charly mutters the phrase ‘bloody cyclists’ under her breath after the pilot’s announcement, I can’t help but agree.

We eventually take off and I start doing calculations in my head to try and figure out how long we’ll have when we land to get to our train. The good news is that we should have an hour which, considering the train platform is just a Toblarone’s throw from the arrivals hall, should be plenty of time. The Swiss are of course known for their efficiency so any hopes of the train being delayed are of course futile, but hopefully that efficiency should come shining through when it comes to getting off of the plane and getting through airport security. Can you see where this is going?

I’m not sure who Murphy is, or what happened to him to make him such a pessimist, but as I am sure many of you know his first law is that ‘anything that can go wrong will go wrong,’ and my God did he get that right. 

Our flight touches down in good time but unfortunately the pilot decides to park the plane in the first spot he sees, which means we have to get a bus to the arrivals hall. Not to worry, we are at the back of the plane and I am delighted to see that the backdoor is being opened with steps being driven towards it. Except hang on a minute! The door is now being closed and the steps are driving off. Did the crew just feel like messing with us? 

As we are at the back of the plane it takes nearly 15 minutes to get off, putting us on the third and final bus to the terminal. Regrettably, a dream liner from Saudi Arabia manages to squeeze in front of our bus meaning there are now hundreds of people ahead of us in the queue for border control, but my faith in Swiss efficiency means I am still feeling optimistic. What I didn’t take into consideration is that the very efficiency I have put my faith in is the same efficiency that ensures that border control staff clock off for lunch bang on time regardless of the queue size in front of them. 

There are now only three members of staff processing what feels like a never ending queue of arrivals, and these particular members of staff are yet to have their daily quota of Gouda so are, of course, running at half speed. Fortunately, Charly and I have only got hand luggage with us so there is still a chance we can get to our train as long as we suffer no further delays. It’s at this point we lose yet another member of border control, I assume to the call of a fondue lunch, which seems to encourage people to start jumping the queue in front of us. Being British, Charly and I naturally take great umbrage with this and condemn the queue jumpers in the most severe way we know, tutting, hard! In fact, Charly must be really annoyed because I’m pretty sure I heard some huffing too.

It goes without saying that we miss our train by a grand total of 90 seconds! Had this been the UK, 90 seconds late would mean that we would still have time to buy a coffee before the train arrived, but we are in Switzerland so we have no choice but to head to the ticket office and prepare ourselves to fork out a small fortune to get on the next train. 

We arrive in an empty ticket hall where I walk up to the counter and start to explain our situation, only for the man behind the counter to interrupt me and ask if I’d taken a ticket to join the queue? I look around at the empty room before letting them know I hadn’t, at which point he informs me he won’t be able to help until I take a ticket. A little flustered from rushing through the airport, I don’t question his logic and make my way back to the entrance of the hall to grab a ticket, much like you would at the butcher. I go straight back to the front and present him with my ticket, at which point he gladly accepts my life savings in return for a seat on the next train.

Note to self, the Swiss are real sticklers for the rules, even when the rules make no sense!

As we get on the train, I can’t tell if I love Switzerland or hate it. The journey so far has been anything but relaxing but now I’m stepping onto the cleanest train I’ve ever seen, complete with massive windows which I know will soon be filled with views so spectacular they don’t seem real, and I can’t help but envy the commuters who get to ride on these trains everyday. This thought is interrupted when I hear a posh English accent come out of the woman sitting across the aisle from us. The woman is travelling with her two children (who I soon learn are called Isla and Astrid – I told you she was posh), who she is noblely trying to detach from their screens. 

“Right Astrid, I don’t want you to spend the whole journey looking at your phone so why don’t you do your reading.”

I can’t help but feel this request would have been more effective had the woman not had her head buried in her own phone as she said it.

We eventually arrive in the town of Montreux where they are currently holding their annual Jazz festival. More importantly, it’s where we are meeting my wife’s sister, Tori, with whom we will be staying with for the next few days. Montreux itself is stunning. It is set on Lake Geneva against a backdrop of imposing, yet beautiful, mountains. So stunning is the town, that you almost wish your parents had the good sense to emigrate here before they popped you out. I say almost because the town is so picturesque that, much like the rest of Switzerland, it doesn’t quite seem real. Switzerland has always felt a bit like Disney to me, both in that it feels a bit too polished and, a bit like Walt Disney himself, it has uncomfortable links to Nazi Germany which it hopes everyone will forget.

We find Tori sitting by the lake and, in classic Tori fashion, before we even finish our ‘hellos’ she informs us of her two step plan to cool down: eat ice cream and get in the lake. In her defence it is pushing 30 degrees, so it goes without saying that Charly and I are more than on board with this plan and we soon find ourselves with ice creams in our hands, contemplating the best spot to get into the lake.

I’m not sure the sight of me licking ice cream off of my lips whilst trying to put my swimming shorts on under a towel is one that complemented the Montreux vista, but I was too busy trying not to accidentally flash a bollock to care. Once I’m appropriately dressed I plunge myself into the cold lake and quickly realise there will be no need to worry about flashing a bollock when performing the reverse operation.

We spend the next hour or so taking in the views from the lake before walking up and down the promenade and looking at the stalls set out for the festival – and by that I mean Charly and Tori are looking whilst I follow them like a lost puppy wondering when I might next get fed. Is it appropriate to feed a puppy copious amounts of cheese?

We soon head to the train station to make our way to our lodgings for the next few days, otherwise known as my sister-in-law’s spare room. Tori lives in the mountain village of Le Chable, which sits at the base of the same mountain which is home to the more well known town of Verbier – famous just as much for its status as a world class ski resort as it is for the world record it holds as the place where the phrase ‘fuck me, how much did you say that beer was?’ is uttered the most. 

We have to get two trains to Le Chable with a 3 minute connection between them, so it goes without saying that the Swiss reputation for punctuality goes right out the window as the first train is delayed by 4 minutes. Not for the first time today, I started to curse Switzerland, only for it to redeem itself by holding the second train for us. It’s starting to feel like Switzerland is playing hard to get, using its good looks and a bit of flirtation to grab my attention, before ignoring me all night and texting me in the morning. I’m getting mixed signals.

As it goes, Switzerland did have a final trick up its sleeve to woo me this evening as Tori took me and Charly up to a typical Savoie mountain restaurant so that we could eat abundant amounts of cheese in the form of fondue. The place is called Chez Eddy and you have no option but to sit outside, which is no problem for us as the evening is warm and the views are glorious. As we order the large fondue for 3, Charly asks if the moulton cheese comes with a salad, to which the waitress simply laughs and says ‘no.’ The Swiss’ aversion to vegetables is one I can identify with, so I am more than happy not to have anything green get in the way of me and my cheese.

We eventually make it to Tori’s apartment where it is decided that a cup of tea will help with digestion before I slip into a cheese-induced coma, wondering whether or not Switzerland would be in a cruel or flirtatious mood tomorrow.

Day Two

Although Le Chable is in Switzerland, it’s so close to France that if you stand in the middle of the village and listen closely you can hear the sounds of protest and people beating the crap out of their car for no apparent reason. Much to mine and Charly’s delight, this means that Le Chable has its fair share of very good boulangeries which gives us all the motivation we need to leap out of bed in the morning and make our way to Michellod, the boulangerie of choice.

As we walk into Michellod we are presented with a wall of different breads and bakes and as we queue I start internally practising my best French to dazzle the woman behind the counter. In France this would be a futile task, you can say a sentence in near perfect French and they will look at you like you’re trying to communicate with farts. I remember once trying to ask if a restaurant had a table for four people and being greeted with such confusion that I wondered if I’d had a stroke.

“Avez-vous une table pour quatre personnes s’il vous plaît?”

“Cat?”

“Quatre”

“Kater?”

“FOUR!”

“Oui monsieur, we ‘ave ah table for forwer.”

You’d think the fact there were four of us standing there might have made it clear what I was trying to ask, but apparently not. I can’t imagine you’d see a Brit pretending not to know what a French person was asking for if they wanted a table for ‘forwer’ or ‘fwive’ people. But then again I can’t imagine a Brit would do anything other than stare blankly had someone used a French word in front of them so I can’t take the moral high ground on this one .

We arrive back in Tori’s apartment with our spoils of two croissants, an escargot aux raisin and a baguette tradition, but I am feeling dangerously under caffeinated so I set about making some coffees whilst Charly sticks the pastries in the oven to keep them warm. We have the apartment to ourselves as Tori has already left for work so I go about setting the table for two when it suddenly dawns on me that I can smell burning. Panic stricken, I leap across the room to find that the oven is on grill mode and our pastries are very much burnt on top!

At this point I would just like to go on record and make it very clear that this was NOT my wife’s fault! This was all very much the fault of, as Charly calls it, the “stupid Swiss oven” and, in fact, had nothing to do with her. She does not, and will not, accept any responsibility for the burning of the pastries, and despite Tori’s claim that you have to manually turn the oven onto the grill setting, the oven must have done this all by itself as it couldn’t have possibly been Charly. Anything else you’d like me to add dear?

Fortunately, years of experience burning toast means that we are able to rescue some of the pastries, which are no less delicious than they would have been if they weren’t burnt, just a little bit more caramelised. We then set about making ourselves some oversized gruyere and ham sandwiches with the previously mentioned baguette and set off for our first adventure of the weekend.

Switzerland is, once again, in fine form. The sun is out, the views are spectacular, and Charly and I are very pleased to find that, because we are staying with a local, we are able to get very reduced-price lift passes to take us up the mountains either side of the valley. This is excellent news because the resort of Verbier has to have one of the most expensive lift passes in Europe and we would have had to consider selling our unborn child if we wanted to catch a glimpse of the top of a mountain.

It’s strange to be getting on a ski gondola out of season. It feels a little like listening to ‘Stay another Day’ by East 17 in the middle of July – it’s not strictly a Christmas song but it does feel like you should be wrapped up warm. Despite feeling like we should be carrying skis, we get on the gondola and head up to an area of the mountain opposite Verbier called Bruson, our logic being that it should be quieter as it is the less well known side of the valley. At the top of the gondola we jump on a chair lift, which also feels wrong without skis on, a bit like turning up to school in your slippers (which I have done). As we near the end of the lift, our dreams of a tranquil vista quickly evaporate.

Back in 1905, there was a group of lunatics (otherwise known as runners) in San Francisco who made a bet with each other, which, thinking about it now, makes my head hurt. I personally picture this bet taking place in a pub, because the only conceivable way this wager came about is with a group of blokes, pissed on beer, running high on their own bravado and machismo. The legend goes that this group of runners challenged each other to see who could run over a mountain to the recently opened Dipsea Inn, via the trails of Mount Temalpais, fastest, and thus the The Dipsea Race was born. Although this isn’t the first time people have challenged themselves to silly races (people had been fell running for centuries in the UK), it is one of the first races referred to as a ‘trail race’ and consequently has to take some responsibility for the absolute madness that is trail running.

The reason I bring up this highly disputed piece of history is because as Charly and I reach the summit of our chair lift ride we are confronted with a sobering scene which demonstrates just how bad the trail running pandemic has become. As we disembark we are greeted by a flood of runners, all red in the face and panting heavily as they make their way along the trail Charly and I had earmarked for our hike. There’s a small crowd gathered to cheer on a group, who I’ve judged as criminally insane, but I join in with the clapping and yells of ‘Allez! Allez! Allez!’ to try and get into the spirit of things – although I’m not sure how much I should be encouraging people who are clearly ill.

Dismayed that if we were to go on our planned route at this point we would be run down by people wearing water bottle belts and carrying walking (running?) sticks, I decide it’s probably best if Charly and I get a drink at a bar situated at the top of the lift. We order two 500ml bottles of Coca Cola, the plastic kind you can get in any corner shop for about £1, and are charged over £10 for the privilege. Between this and the army of trail runners, I’m once again starting to question why we chose to come to Switzerland in the first place!

Eventually the runners seem to have passed, and Charly and I start the scenic mountain hike we set out to do. We are hoping to walk a 14 kilometre loop (you always need to talk in kilometres when you’re walking because it sounds further) which will see us climb just over 400 metres (over 1,300 feet would sound more impressive but even as a Brit who talks about beer in pints and petrol in litres, I can’t swap between imperial and metric on the same walk).

This is Charly’s first big hike since we found out she was pregnant so she’s a little anxious about how difficult the walk might be and thus wants to take it slow. I, on the other hand, find that I can get quite competitive when walking and I’m usually unhappy to let anyone overtake us. I spot a couple, at least in their sixties, a few hundred metres back and decide that as long as we stay ahead of them, I’ll be happy.

Ten minutes later the older couple are gaining on us. Charly is unfortunately suffering with a round ligament pain (effectively a really bad stitch in your lower abdomen that you can get during pregnancy) and is consequently struggling to get up the hill in front of us. At one point it looks like she is standing completely still, but a closer inspection of her feet show that she is, in fact, still moving forward. I don’t want her to feel the pressure of the silent race I’ve found myself in, but she clearly knows me too well because as the couple pass us she says ‘sorry,’ which makes me feel slightly embarrassed. That is until she lets out an almighty fart, one that, given the altitude we are at, could have had serious consequences for the people below. She is suddenly cured of all symptoms she was suffering. It’s safe to say that, post fart, we absolutely smoked those pensioners, as well as a trail runner that seemed a little worse for wear.

I’ve never been entirely sure why I like walking up mountains but I find something about the experience very enjoyable. My latest hypothesis as to why I put myself through it centres around the main reason why I do anything, food! More specifically, when it comes to hiking up a mountain, I’ve come to realise that all I am trying to do is find a cool place to eat food, and Charly and I have found a peach of a spot today. We tuck into our oversized sandwiches followed by an apple which fuels the rest of our hike over the next few hours. Once again, Switzerland decides to impress us with some of the most spectacular views you could hope to see as we make our slow descent towards a well earned cup of tea.

Later that evening, once Charly and I are showered and have demolished that all important brew to bring us back to life, we meet up with Tori and head out for dinner. We ascend up into Verbier via gondola where, as we leave the lift station, we are greeted by applause and yells of ‘bravo’. My first thought is that the town must have heard about mine and Charly’s impressive performance in the foot race we entered with the elderly pensioners, but as we turn onto the main street through Verbier we are greeted, for not the first time today, by a river of grimacing trail runners who are only metres away from the finishing line of their ordeal.

I don’t know whether I’m impressed with the effort that these runners have put in, or if I am worried for their sanity. I am watching people who have just finished running a 42km race that covers over 3000 metres of elevation, which is not an easy thing to do, and all I can think is ‘wouldn’t it have been easier just to pay some people to beat you up?’ I applaud nonetheless and join in with the calls of ‘bravo’ as my mind focuses on what Tori has promised to be ‘the nicest pizza you can get in the mountains.’

Tori is somewhat of a popular character in Verbier. In fact, I don’t think I have ever been to visit her without someone stopping us on the street to catch up with her, which usually results in me and Charly standing around searching for something to add to the conversation, which is exactly what happens as we make our way to dinner.

We bump into a group of about 7 or so of Tori’s friends, one of whom has just completed the trail run which is passing by us as we speak. As I offer my sceptical congratulations it becomes apparent that two of the group have done a triathlon today and the others are all doing some hideous feat of endurance before the summer is up. It appears that if you live in the mountains, you are obliged to punish yourself for living in such a nice area. Yes, you get to wake up to stunning views, but you need to suffer to make sure you don’t become too happy for your own good.

We eventually make it to the pizza restaurant, much to the benefit of the trail runners whom I was starting to consider shoving out the way as it became apparent that they were the final obstacle between me and my dinner. Of course, as we arrive Tori runs off to see yet another friend who has completed her penance for daring to live in the mountains. I soon learn that there are multiple runs finishing this evening. Along with the 42km run mentioned earlier, there is also a 76 km run that climbs over 5,300 metres of elevation, and a frankly ludicrous 140 km run with over 9,000 metres of elevation! In other words, there is going to be a steady stream of runners passing through Verbier all night, the most tired looking of which started their run at 10pm the evening before.

I feel tired just thinking about this, so we finish our pizzas and make our way to bed, cheering those who pass us as Switzerland demonstrates how weird and wonderful it can be.

Day Three

I wake up in the morning in a cold sweat, sitting bolt upright, only to realise that the overnight feat of endurance I had taken on – getting lost while running up and down mountains – was only a dream, a very bad dream.

The morning starts much the same as the previous, with a trip to the boulangerie for more pastries, but this time we have Tori with us to supervise the warming of pastries when we get in. Surprisingly, this morning the oven decided not to turn itself onto grill mode which only fuels Charly’s suspicions of the great Swiss oven conspiracy theory further.

The plan today is the same as yesterday, to hike in the Swiss mountains and find somewhere cool to eat our lunch. I’m also hoping Switzerland will finally give me a definitive answer as to whether or not it’s the best place in the world to live, full of glorious scenery and mountains of cheese, or, if it’s a bureaucratic hell hole full of people determined to die of a heart attack at altitude.

We make our way into Verbier where early signs are that this is in fact a utopian paradise. The sun is shining, so instead of rushing off on our hike, we head into a pretty coffee shop complete with a veranda at the back overlooking the mountains. Charly goes to the counter to order drinks while I take a seat outside and take out my notebook, doing my best impression of a struggling creative who uses the mountains as their muse. 

As Charly brings me an ice coffee I’m ready to declare that this is where I want to bring up our unborn child, that is until I take a sip of the coffee and it quickly becomes apparent that it is the worst thing I have ever tasted. I’m not sure how they did it but it doesn’t even taste like coffee. I’m not exaggerating when I say it tastes like sour vomit. Suddenly the £5 I paid for an awful coffee I can’t drink feels like a tragedy and I find myself cursing Switzerland again.

We make our way out of the coffee shop, and to my disbelief, I can once again hear clapping and cheering. Can people really still be finishing their trail runs? 

We are once again greeted with the familiar wall of panting trail runners, except this particular group seem a lot shorter than the previous groups we’d encountered. In fact, they are shorter! Turns out that the organisers of this event aren’t content with limiting their punishment to adults, so they’ve organised a children’s race.

As we navigate our way through the flow of children I try to gauge how old they are. They can only be 10 or 11 years old. The crowd continues to cheer as the mini trail runners speed up now that they are within touching distance of the finishing line. Is this a good thing? I suppose it’s good to encourage a healthy lifestyle from an early age, but it does also seem like a cruel indoctrination into a lifetime of suffering. Or maybe I’m just insecure – but that doesn’t feel like a thread I’m particularly keen to pull on.

As with the day before we make our way up in a gondola, this time on the opposite side of the valley to yesterdays’ yomp, and get onto a chair lift that we later learnt we weren’t meant to be able to get on, but no one stopped us.

We’ve decided to take a more ‘off the beaten track’ approach to today’s walk. Yesterday, Charly and I followed clearly marked signposts the entire way around the walk, making it impossible to get lost, but today we are taking a route Tori recommended to us over breakfast before she went to work. To make sure we don’t get lost we save the route onto our phones, using data from when Tori had previously done this particular hike. The route is marked on a map, using GPS, with a thick orange line and all we have to do is keep a marker that shows us on the map, on the line. How hard can that be?

Five minutes in and we are already wildly off course despite being on the only footpath either of us are able to see. As Charly looks on her phone to see where we got lost I notice a line of trail runners making their way down a steep mountain face in the distance. It turns out the weekend’s masochist convention isn’t quite over as yet another quick Google search shows that there is an ‘entry level’ 26 kilometre race taking place today. This one climbs over 1,700 metres of elevation and must be completed within the curiously precise time of 6 hours and 50 minutes.

Determined not to come face to face with this group, we turn around and try to figure out where we went wrong. We get our marker back on the thick orange line and, much to Charly’s annoyment, I check every few minutes to make sure we are still on route, committed to not getting lost again.

Thirty minutes later we are however lost again, although this time it really isn’t clear how. The marker is very close to the line but, no matter how much we search, we can’t find the path Tori must have walked on when she set this route. We continue to flirt with the line, crossing over every so often as we pass what we have now determined is a path that no longer exists. Either that or Tori was following a mountain goat as she set the route because we are now on a rather steep rock field with loose stone and dirt sliding out beneath our feet.

As Charly begins cursing her sister in a way that only a sibling could, I try to find the safest path up the ever steepening field to the top of the mountain where, hopefully, we will be able to see where we went wrong. The only problem with this idea is that it’s bloody stupid! The rocks are still loose and there is a very good chance that when we get to the top there won’t be a clear path down. As we continue our ascent it becomes more and more clear that we need to continue climbing, as turning around would almost certainly see us slip and fall.

We scrabble our way to the top of the mountain, summiting just below a lift station which, incidentally, proves to be an excellent place to pee. Charly is currently 15 weeks into her pregnancy and it would seem that the little one is doing a number on her bladder, so Charly has spent the majority of the last two days claiming various parts of the mountains as her own.

Bladders empty, we attempt to get to the front of the lift station by squeezing around a giant cable car and a crane, which serve as further evidence that this was almost certainly not the way we were meant to walk. Our marker on the GPS now shows that we are quite far off the path we’re meant to be on but as we look down the mountain there’s still no evidence that such a path even exists. We are, however, once again greeted with the now all too familiar sight of a queue of trail runners. It’s beginning to feel like the runners are in fact moths and we are evidently a giant lamp that they can’t help but run towards. I certainly feel that the only way to make sure they don’t come near us again is to burn them.

After staring at Charly’s phone for a while, trying to figure out the best way to get back on route, we conclude that the only way down is to take the path the trail runners are currently running towards us on. What ensues is a thirty minute game of walking a few steps before diving out of the way for some runners to pass, before walking again, followed by more diving. Any sympathy or admiration I had for the fool hardy trail runners is dissipating rapidly.

Eventually, Charly and I find our way back onto our intended path which we now have to ourselves. Having risked our lives on a rocky mountain side before facing a tidal wave of extreme hobbyists intent on running us down, it feels that we now need to find a cool place to eat lunch, and we need to do so quickly. Fortunately this is the Swiss Alps, so everywhere is a cool place to eat food.

We walk for a few more minutes and find ourselves walking down towards a glistening clear lake called Lac des Vaux, which is flanked by two smaller, but equally impressive, lakes. The lake is already surrounded by a handful of picnickers and a fisherman who is trying to catch some of the rainbow trout that live in the lake. We take our position on the lakeside and eat lunch whilst we contemplate if we will get into the perfectly blue water. The shrieks and shrills of people around us, along with the Verbier Tourism’s description of the lakes being an opportunity for an “invigorating swim”, help us decide that perhaps the best way to enjoy the lake is with our eyes. 

With the memory of nearly being run down drifting further from my thoughts, I am starting to fall in love with Switzerland again. That is until we try to walk back down the mountain, which involves walking down an incredibly steep section of “path” before joining a track which is shared by both hikers and mountain bikers. For the most part the mountain bikers are respectful, but a handful seemed intent on running us down before a group of lads decided to jump and skid in front of us.

“Bloody cyclists”, mutters Charly under her breath.

I can’t help but agree.

When we do eventually make it down to Verbier I’m in a good mood. Even the never ending stream of trail runners can’t get my spirits down! The sun is shining so, not unexpectedly, Charly and I make our way to the closest bar so we can sit outside with a beer (Charly’s of course being alcohol free) and yell “bravo” at the runners finishing their ordeal.

I don’t know if I’m suffering from heatstroke or if it’s just the beer taking effect but I can’t help being impressed as I watch the runners make their way towards the finish line. Charly and I have spent the last two days hiking mountains, Charly doing so despite being pregnant, and it dawns on me that, besides the views and the great places to eat lunch, the reason we have done this is because we can! 

For the final time this weekend I am watching yet another load of raving lunatics drag themselves to the finishing line after hours of self-inflicted hell and I finally understand that they are doing so because they can. I begin to applaud and yell “bravo” much louder than I had done before, thanks in part to a new level of sincerity in my appreciation for what they’re doing, but mostly thanks to the beer I’m now drinking.

Charly and I decide to reward ourselves for our hiking efforts by taking ourselves out for an authentic Swiss meal at a place known by locals as ‘the pub.’ We share some chicken wings, a Korean burger and a portion of ribs. Like I said, it’s a very Swiss meal and the perfect way to end our final day in the mountains.

Prologue

Day four is the day we return home. Charly’s sister is working so we decide that rather than risk burning croissants unsupervised, we will travel up to Verbier for a final breakfast with a view, before making our way to the airport. Once again, I go for the Swiss option and order American style pancakes with crispy bacon and maple syrup.

The train journey back to the airport takes place on a double decker train, a novelty to Brits like me and Charly, so we get on the top deck and relive the prettiest train journey I’ve ever been on in reverse. Switzerland is really doing its best to make me want to stay.

We get to the airport in plenty of time and enjoy the best (and most expensive) plate of chips I’ve had in a long time. The love-hate relationship continues! 

Our flight home is delayed by over two hours (of course it is, it’s EasyJet) and when we finally get the call to go to our gate we are greeted by the longest immigration queue I’ve ever seen. Despite Switzerland not being part of the EU, and despite the UK allowing Swiss travellers to use the speedy electronic gates in the UK, Brits are not afforded that luxury when in Switzerland. The long queue, and clear disdain for British travellers, doesn’t dampen my spirits – I’ve had an excellent trip and I’m already talking to Charly about when we can come back. So Switzerland, I hate to say it, but I really do love you. EasyJet on the other hand, can fuck right off!