2nd August 2008

Milan to Vevey, Lac Léman, near Lausanne

I am sat on a café terrace in Vevey by Lac Léman with an amazing view over the lake under a blue sky with a panorama of mountains before me.  I should be very happy and awe struck by what’s infront of me but I have just burst into tears over nothing and people are looking at me.  Infact I seem to have started something as first one kid and now another has begun wailing which has made me laugh again.  Tris has just gone to a cash point in search of Swiss Francs.  We have not long arrived and the owner of the café was overly rude to us in public after we realised all we had to pay with was a large 100 Euro note.  I feel like a hostage until Tris returns and out of indignation I am refusing to drink my drink.  I apologised to Tris for my melt down.  He knows it’s tiredness.  We feel tired every day and we’ve been thinking about going home recently and not having to pack and unpack the bikes each day and charge all our equipment.  We don’t complain, we knew it would be tiring.  “It’s all part of the challenge” is our motto!

We’ve had a fantastic day of riding.  We made Switzerland in good time after an early start.  We managed to leave Milan by 9am after packing the bikes and having photos with the lovely Petra who looked after us so well during our stay and was so enthusiastic about our challenge.  She got up early especially on her day off work to be there for our departure.  By 2pm we had arrived in Vevey.  We’re not used to arriving at our destination so early.  The roads from Italy to Switzerland were not very busy and the views were awesome.  We passed through the Col St Bernard on the way here which is some 30 kilometres long at a height of 1752 metres.  The tunnel is only partially enclosed at times which allows spectacular mountain views.  We love tunnels with all the tunnel lights and car headlights, they always seem exciting on the bikes.  The weather today has been perfect and the air is cooler in the mountains.  I actually had goose pimples in the tunnel which makes a change from sweating like a beast all the time.  We saw snow capped mountains too today. 

Just after the col the road winds its way down through valleys with plenty of tourist stop offs for refreshments.  We chanced across a beautiful rustic chalet with a terrace full of flowery shade where an eccentric local character called Yann invited us to join him at his reserved table.  He entertained us whilst we had our drinks and introduced us to Madame Catogne, the owner, who he claims is his 7th wife and his dog, Nelly, (the only woman to stay with him longer than 6 months).  We talked about mushrooming and asked if Nelly was any good at finding much sort after cèpes.  “On no!!”, he replied loudly, raising his bushy eyebrows, ”She is only good at peeesing on them!”.  I told him my grandmother was born in Chamoson, which was part of France before the second world war and he said it wasn’t far away.  I thought about visiting it for a while but we don’t have time – that’s another trip.

The bed and breakfast where we are staying is lovely, very clean, roomy and well priced.  The owner, Heinz, is German and very welcoming.  Unfortunately, our short visit to Switzerland was otherwise not memorable for entente cordiale.  We decided to have a pizza in the evening and found a cheap restaurant where again the staff were po faced and rude.  As we sat on the terrace, large spots of rain fell so we decided to go inside as did other people.  The owner began to flap, “You can’t just sit anywhere you know!!” he said rudely to the group of people gathered in the doorway.  I am fluent in French so I understood.  The meal was good but the service was poor with a great deal of flapping and there were no smiles until money exchanged hands once again.  We did meet some friendly people on our way back to the B and B when we got lost but we decided whilst Switzerland scored 10 out of 10 for it’s scenery, it’s welcome scored low compared to the other countries we have visited.

We got to bed at a reasonable time but we only have one adaptor that fits Italian and Swiss sockets so I was up twice in the night changing round various appliances like our blue tooth headsets to make sure everything was ready for an early departure the next morning.  We thought they all had the same plug system in Europe but no!  Tomorrow we head for Clermont Ferrand after visiting Geneva.  All our plugs should work there but we are staying in a cheap Etap Hotel so I expect there will be just the one socket!