Earlier this summer, I spent two weeks cycling from Basel to Lyon via Geneva, a total of 500km and with over 6,000m of climbing. It was fabulous and I strongly recommend. Here is my diary for the first week. I hope that it inspires you to get out and ride.
Saturday 17 July: Brussels to Basel by train
An early morning start to be at the Gare du Midi in time for a 7am train. And as usual, my body makes it even earlier, waking me up several times in the night just to check whether it is time to leave yet. Of course, when my alarm finally goes off at 5.45, it is just when my body is finally settling down to a restful sleep.
So I am up, bleary eyed and slightly disappointed that the magical dawn that I dreamed of to start my adventure has instead turned out a rather unimpressive grey. As I ride out across the sleepy city, I wonder who are these lonely souls who are out at this time. Most likely the people keeping things ticking so that you and I can have our bread and groceries on time, our Wi-Fi connection, and get to where we need to be.
Then onto the station platform and dismantling my bike: spreading the bike bag on the floor, turning the bike upside down, removing the pedals, removing the front wheel, and then using a short bungee cord to tie it to the frame before wrapping the whole thing in the bag and doing my best with a long bungee cord: a very ungainly shape. Lugging it onto the train, I manage to tie it somewhere, but not ideal, but there are few people around and the conductor does not seem too bothered.
Luckily, even after Lille, there are not too many people on the train, and people are pretty careful. It is not always like this.
I get to spend rather longer in my connection point, Strasbourg because my scheduled train has been cancelled, leaving me to kick my heels outside the station for an extra hour.
Then I finally arrive in Basel and off for a coffee with my friend M who moved there six months ago and is amazingly relaxed and happy. Then a brief walk along the banks of the – very swollen with rain – river. But walking around, I have the feeling of breaking invisible rules: where to cross the road, where to wear a mask, which direction to walk on a pavement… I have the feeling of people quietly tutting at me and wagging their fingers censoriously. Oh, Switzerland, you’d be a lot more fun if you could just loosen your arse a bit.
Breaking more invisible rules, I catch a tram out to the middle of nowhere… or the commuter town of Flüh to be precise. There is no one around, apart from two Filipinos who appear from nowhere, my friends J and A, who proudly lead me on a hike around the town that will hopefully soon be home for them. It is delightful, and a big change from the stress of Brussels. We have a lovely dinner and then I head to bed, exhausted.
Sunday 18 July: Basel to Balsthal: 44km distance, 567m climb
I wake up to sunny skies, shut shops and the feeling of breaking rules…
Usually the ride into and out of big cities is a mean one: a solid hour or more of busy roads, industrial detritus, shopping centres and industrial estates followed by lugubrious suburbs, neat central bike routes giving way to overgrown broken up paths and then a fight with car drivers as you pass motorways.
But not Basel. I pedal calmly out through a set of covered passageways and edges of car parks on the edges of a railway track: all delightfully sophisticated. And then a delightful ride out along beautifully maintained bike paths with pleasant views of hills in the distance. Masses of people out on their bikes on a Sunday morning enjoying weather that got sunnier and sunnier as the clouds cleared.
I’m not going to pretend that it was spectacular: it wasn’t. It was a jolly little Sunday ride through pleasant scenery and the odd happy little town like Liesthal. With shut shops and perfectly behaved Swiss looking at me sternly as I somehow managed to break more invisible rules.
I didn’t even begrudge the steady afternoon climb: it was nothing nasty: just a solid 3-5% for 300m, enough to get your legs in and then rewarded with a quite glorious descent, curving down nicely with a captivating view of Balsthal and its castle.
When I get to the town itself though, I rather regret not stopping longer on the hillside. The place is deathly quiet and hardly anything to see. Luckily my hotel is also the local restaurant and serves up a ‘throw it all in’ bacon salad: hot bacon speck, croutons, tomatoes and other goodies in a vinaigrette that is halfway to a Panzanella; followed by a chopped steak in mushroom sauce and rosti, served with boiled veg cooked to perfection and swilled down with some rather ordinary local red wine. The price though is an eye-popping 78 CHF or around 75 Euros… a good thing that it is about my only real meal of the day.
The hotel is great, but empty, the air from a fast-flowing stream going right past my room window making up for the lack of A/C.
Monday 19 July: Balsthal – Tramelan: 58 km, 1109m
Despite the good hotel, a slight worry with a tickle in my throat that started on the Friday night now heading towards a cough: the last thing I need. I google the symptoms: unlikely to be COVID but also good if you stay off the bike.
No chance.
After a decent power breakfast, I head out: a beautiful 10k slowly up through a quiet valley away from the main road. Sunflowers. Swiss flags everywhere. I almost want to yodel in delight. But yodelling on Mondays between the hours of 10 and 11 is probably not allowed. At least without a licence.
And as I ride, I get passed by tractors trailing agricultural machinery like monstrous blown-up tools of the Spanish Inquisition or some depraved South American dictatorship.
I really have no idea what these machines are called but each of them looks fearsome.
Wenglers, spacklewickers, grunding machines, ruttlemeckers, brundlers, rottleblatters, werbstingers.
Then a long but moderate uphill towards Moutier, followed by a smashing long descent. I loiter briefly in the town. But only briefly as close inspection shows that it is in fact pig ugly.
Then an absolute brute of a hill: 6km of straight unrelenting uphill along a mostly quiet main road, averaging at 6% and often kicking up to 10% and all in baking sunshine. Nothing to do but get on with it and take plenty of breaks. And fume at the odd smug biker on an e-bike, whirring past and wanting their face to be smashed in.
Then the bike route turns off the main road and up and up, and at a certain point, it gets even steeper – 10-12% – and I think: “You know what? I’ve proven enough times that I can ride hills like this. I don’t need to kill my legs on Day 2 just to prove it again.” So I get off my bike and walk for a bit. Because I can. Because Rule Number One for the Natty Bike Tourist is to have fun. It must be obeyed.
I keep passing signs for ‘Tour de Moron’ and I laugh and even take a picture of myself with the signs pointing at my head. And when I get to the hotel that evening, I discover that the biggest moron was me, for not taking a look at the Tour de Moron because it sounds quite magnificent, a spiral walkway tower looming over the surrounding countryside. So I resolve to be more open and do better research in future. And to avoid doing over 1000m of climbing on Day 2. You are always learning, always making new mistakes.
Finally I reach the brow of this enormous hill and cruise down to another fantastically ugly town: Tramelan. You know a town can’t be much good when it sounds like an Iron Maiden tribute band.
Luckily, I am staying in a cultural centre on the edge of town. My room is a bit youth hostel and I have to leave the door to the balcony open all night to get any air, but when I wake up at 5 in the morning and see mist hanging over the farmlands ahead, it is quite magical.
And so is my dinner: a fine Greek salad, wonderfully fresh and oven-burnt bread, cordon bleu chicken and chips, and a few glasses of fine wine. For purely medicinal purposes. Though bizarrely Google seems to recommend against drinking alcohol while you have a cold: the Puritan bastards. Again, I have to remortgage my house to pay the bill, but it is worth it.
Tuesday 20 July: Tramelan – La Chaux: 33km, 606m
The climbing is not yet over, but at least a relatively short ride.
It starts badly with two long and tough hills climbing out of the valley and away from Bam Bam Tramelan, Oooh Black Betty Tramelan at 7-8% each time with only a brief lull between them, and then shortly after I crest the second climb, start a beautiful descent and take a right off the main road onto a quieter farm road, I hear an almighty ‘BANG!’ like a gun has gone off, and out of nowhere, I have a totally flat tire, and a rear one to boot. (Always a pain because you have to tease the wheel in and out of the chain.) When I pull out the inner tube, it is completely wrecked, split wide open. Luckily it is sunny and there is no one around, so I go through the motions of replacing it with one of the three spares that I take with me on tours, before using my mini-pump to get it to a level where it is at least roadworthy.
But gradually the day redeems itself as I follow the Route 54, which bills itself as the ‘Arc Jurassien’, away from the traffic, on mostly good asphalt with a few kilometres of well-trodden gravel and along a long plateau: the reward for those climbs. Windmills, cows, glorious views to the distance on both sides. Sunshine, mid-20s Celsius, and I have it all to myself. Or mostly. The odd e-biker whirs past me, smugly and still wanting their face smashed in.
In fairness to the unfit bike cheating monkeys, I am not exactly belting along: my average speed for the day comes to a rather unglorious 13.8kph. But some of that is because I am chilling: sitting back on the bike and just letting the scenery unfold. Have fun.
I stop for lunch at a bench, looking out into the distance and carve myself lunch from deliciously fresh bread, a tomato, and local cheese. At one point, a girl jogs past, leading a goat on a lead. As you do…
In the afternoon, a long slow descent, alternately being overtaken and then overtaking a family: the two boys speeding past me repeatedly and then having to wait for their parents to catch up.
Then the town of La Chaux: home town of Le Corbusier apparently, and my guess is that he was inspired by the sheer ugliness of the place to become an architect and build better places. The town is boring and ugly. I would put a photo here to show you but how to convey the sheer soulless ugliness of the place, the “savage mish-mash of old buildings and severely ugly modern ones” as I wrote in my notes? I search in vain for some kind of centre – and let me be honest, some kind of place selling decent, wholesome artisanal ice cream – but in vain.
Dinner is at least decent: a salade melée, a fair côte de bœuf with pepper sauce and of course a local Pinot Noir. For purely medicinal purposes. My hotel is fine: a little dated but quiet and the manager does not blink when after a day of no symptoms whatsoever, putting on a face mask causes me to start coughing again. This is settling into a rhythm: after a few kilometres of riding, I forget about my cough for the day, only for it to reappear magically as soon as I get indoors, and annoy me throughout the night.
Wednesday 21 July: La Chaux – Pontarlier: 63km, 729m
Out, out, out, as fast out of La Chaux as I could manage. Away to the fields and the hills.
A gentle undulating start followed by a fierce but relatively short hill out of the neighbouring town of Le Locle and then I decide to depart from my planned route along the main road and to follow the 54 on quieter roads. I figure that this will save me the traffic and some of the brutality of the hill and so it proves: gently climbing but well-paved roads along the edges of woods and then along farm roads to the soundtrack of cowbells. Quite marvellous. And then a super descent along to the main road.
In fairness, once I join the main road, it turns out to be a joy, sweeping up and down along another splendid plateau with not too much traffic. At such times, it is a joy to be alive, to be out there in perfect weather. The landscape is serene, but I pass a sign indicating that I am in the Siberia of Switzerland: one can only wonder how cold and harsh it gets in winter.
And more tractors with obscene devices trailing behind, teeth ready to whirl in all directions to what purpose I do not know. Manklers, Scruntlewackers, Vittelsneckers, Brusbing machines, Cow gurtlers…
Oi, Bert, ‘ave you finished scruntlewacking them cabbage fields yet?
No, Dick, the vinkler came roight off mid-scruntle and there ain’t a scruntlewack repair shop for moiles around and you know that well… Best I be gettin’ on with brusbing them sheep.
And there in the middle of everything in a hamlet, I come across a dairy: the Fromagerie des Chaux and some plastic-moulded cows and a sign for a 24/24h distributor. My interest is piqued, so I pull up, resting my bike on the other side of the road, a fierce and unpleasant smell of what I can only describe as ‘pungent cheese manure’. Not as bad as a tannery but pretty noxious.
There, hidden in the shade of a small shed at the entrance to the dairy is a vending machine. A vending machine selling cheese. Bread, dried sausages, crackers, water, but above all, cheese.
And why not? It is true that I have already bought a sandwich in La Chaux, but when am I ever going to get the chance to buy cheese from a vending machine again? And local cheese as well. So I pick out a slab of “Le Sybérien” for 8CHF and out it comes…
Then on along more rolling countryside. After passing the not-very-interesting lake of La Brévine, I settle onto a long steady climb through rather boring landscape: bland fields and trees, and it is getting hotter and hotter. Nothing to do but sweat it out and drink lots.
Then in the hamlet of Les Cernets, my GPS turns me off the 54 and uphill in the direction of the French border along an even more deserted road: a funny way to approach an international border.
And then things get even weirder as my GPS shunts me to the left up a steep gravel track… I check my phone and this is indeed the ‘correct’ route that I planned. In the sweaty heat, I decide to walk and chunter along for a solid 500m of narrow rocky path, musing about this rather clandestine way of crossing an international frontier, until the path starts to descend and 100m on, I see the electric wire slung across the path.
And then I see the cows right on the other side. And they see me. And they get up off their haunches. And suddenly, everything gets all Deliverance…
I consider the cows. They consider me. There can only be one winner.
So I turn the bike round and wheel it back along that narrow steep rocky path, vowing to get revenge on the cows. At least it is more downhill this time… I rejoin the 54 and sweep downhill to the main road and finally say goodbye to the 54 as I head over to the French border, ready with my signed declaration of not having COVID, and hoping that I don’t start coughing. And no one is even there as I pass the border. And yet somehow, there is a murmuring of tut-tutting and a waft of wagging fingers. More rules broken.
Along the main road, but it is wide and a beautiful wide curving descent with a decent hard shoulder, pretty much all the way to the Doubs valley and the wonderful Château de Joux towering over from the opposing cliffside. Then I smugly cycle past a fantastically long traffic jam of frustrated drivers into Pontarlier and my first day’s rest, and a dinner of steak in shallot sauce…
So who won there, cows?
Crisp 2, Cows 1 (aet).
Thursday 22 July: Pontarlier
A beautifully decorated hotel room: grey walls accented with vibrant orange and complemented by navy blue sheets, and all with old wooden furnishings. A tasteful mix of modern and antique.
But a poor night’s sleep, coughing away and running out of cough drops.
Breakfast with the owner and a New Zealander staying there while her husband is on a project nearby. It is very pleasant and wonderful to drink coffee from a bowl and have local cheese, and the owner is very chatty and helpful, including very kindly washing my clothes in her machine.
But no face masks at any time. I feel conflicted. I desperately want to get back to those times, the days when we did not need to worry about such things, when we could relax and enjoy. But this is summer 2021 and the Delta variant is ripping its way through France. I have no idea whether this woman is vaccinated and do not want to have the argument if she is not. It puts a strain on things.
I drop my bike off at the local bike shop which very handily is about ten metres away, asking them to check my brakes, which felt pretty weak on the descent from Cow Frontier, and pump up my rear tire more than my little hand pump would allow.
Then off to wander around Pontarlier. You can feel that you are in France: shops shut between 12 and 2, restaurants open between 12 and 2, shops shut at 7, restaurants open at 7… I head over to the local absinthe distillery, told that there is a fascinating presentation. But when I get there, there is very little information on what is going on and how it all works. Instead, they offer me a quick degustation, including a pine flavoured spirit. I go through the motions but it does nothing for me and anyway is too much to carry in my little pack.
In truth, there does not seem to be much to Pontarlier, so I settle down for a nice lunch by the river, a gorgeous spread of liquid cheese on toast followed by a slightly insipid chicken and lemon stew. And then go to bed for the afternoon. Because I can.
Dinner by contrast, is a total let-down: “French tapas” which turns out to be an excuse to give me a bunch of very small dishes most of which have variants of smelly goats cheese in them.
Friday 23 July: Pontarlier – Le Sentier – 55k, 651m
Back on the bike and back towards Switzerland, spending most of the day skirting the border before finally spinning through near the top of a very long hill.
I was expecting a day of calmly cruising along beautiful lakes either side of a solid hill. But in truth all I get is the damn hill… Either side, the lakes prove to be rather boring and are often out of sight, so I have to settle for a long – and hot – slog along country lanes, gradually regaining some of the height that I so deliciously descended down on the road to Pontarlier.
Still, not a day without incident. Coming up the second long slope, I hear a loud ‘BANG!’ and my rear tire has blown out again, an almost identical total blow out to the first. This time the force of the explosion has tucked the outer tire right into the rim. So having set off with three spare inner tubes, I am now down to one, having not been able to pick up a replacement in Pontarlier. Having replaced it, I pedal nervously on.
And that, I am afraid, was really it for the excitement part of the day. After a short lunch out of the heat in the shade of an IT workshop just outside Mouthe, it was up a long and rather boring hill: pines, tarmac, grass, there you have it: a total sweatfest. And at the top, a plateau with more pines, tarmac and grass… Oh and there is the Swiss border. With no one there. Though in some sense, I felt that I was quietly transgressing some rules….
You don’t believe me about the boredom? Just watch the video above. And those are the highlights.
OK, so there were some cows. Not blocking international frontiers this time.
And my energy was just not there either, sapped by the heat, the boring landscape, the increasingly boring cough and cold, and the fear of another back tire blowout.
You just have those ho-hum days sometimes. And even at the end of it, I got scarcely a glimpse of the famed Vallee du Joux and much more of the rather uninteresting town of Le Sentier and its baking hot main hotel with no AC and unhelpful staff.
Still, I found a bike shop to check my tire and sell me two new inner tubes – and agree with the conclusion that I had reached while pedalling along that the blowouts were caused by a combination of having inflated my tires to the maximum, carrying heavy panniers, and a hot road.
And it was redeemed by a decent pizzeria serving a solid Greek salad, a lovely full ham pizza and two glasses of Gamay for my wounded soul. A decent meal can redeem the worst of days.
Halfway through my ride and even with a persistent cough, baking temperatures, hotels without AC and two tire blow-outs, the truth is that I was enjoying myself. There is something magnificent in being out in nature, under your own steam, quietly accumulating miles and experiences, open to the wide valleys and the narrow hills. The Jura had pushed me, but had also been fair, with some long plateaux to cruise along. And a cheese vending machine. Not that I want to brag.
beautiful! thank you Crisp! so different from Andalucía. glad you met M!