Chamonix to Interlaken

It’s been several days of average weather lately, but I’ve made it from Chamonix to Interlaken. That’s France to Switzerland, and then from the French speaking part of Switzerland into the German speaking part.

After spending a few days in Chamonix (one more than I planned due to the snow), I headed over a couple of passes into Switzerland. The roads were clear of snow by now,  but there was still a bit on the side of the roads, and it was pretty cold! Glad I bought some full-finger gloves in Chamonix.

So it was over a couple of col’s and into Switzerland. It was a nice descent down into Martigny.

As soon as I hit the bottom of the valley it was onto the awesome Swiss Cycle network. There are 9 National Cycle Network routes, and they’re either paths separated from traffic or on relatively minor roads. You can find out more info here. They also have Mountainbike networks, a walking network and even canoeing and rollerblading! So far I’ve followed parts of Routes 1, 4, 8 and 9.

As I was going along one of the route’s, I ran into my first really long distance cycle tourists. A French couple heading to India for a peace march in October, they’re a week into their trip. You can find their blog here (in French).

It was a flat ride down the Rhone (which I’d left in Lyon) to Montreux and Vevey, where I stayed with a really nice French couple I’d found through Warmshowers. Here’s a photo from the climb up the hill to their apartment. They were great, and really accommodating.

It was a typical (for the last couple of weeks) cold ride to Fribourg the next day. The cloud was low and so visibility was reduced, so you have to focus on things closer to the road.

I stayed in Fribourg, a city that seems perched on the steep hills above a deep river gorge. The bridges are pretty high to cross the river.

Today’s ride was much the same weather wise. Low cloud, threatening to rain, and even when it wasn’t low cloud the air was still too hazy to see far.

Then it was down to Lake Thun, which I cruised around to Interlaken. It’s pretty hard to believe I’m in Interlaken- one of the places I was really looking forward to getting to. It’s sort of the stepping off point for visiting/viewing the Eiger- a big mountain in climbing, especially the North wall/face and lots of people have died attempting to climb the mountain. Unfortunately I don’t like my chances of seeing it- the cloud’s really low with rain. I’ll maybe go for a ride up to the town below it anyway, and see what happens.

From here I’m looking to keep following the National Cycle Route 9 – the Lakes route to Lucerne, then pop up to Zurich for a couple of days. From there I’ll ride down to Chur – partly because I like the name – then if people ask where I’m riding I can say: “Chur Bro!” (NZ joke). Then up to St Gallen where I’m doing a work-related visit to a company called Leica (who make survey equipment)..

Here’s the map of my photos so far.

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