Switzerland

The trip to Switzerland has been great so far. We arrived on Saturday evening and although it was pooring with rain in Geneva up here in St Cergue where Tom and Nat stay it was snowing. Their Chalet is up in the Jura mountains to the north of Lake Geneva. The village is actually at about 1200meters so its quite a climb up from the lochside. I'm not a great fan of traveling even though it was a pretty short flight so it was great to get a warm welcome and some nice dinner from Nat Tom and Sunny the dog.

Overnight there was a big dump of snow which kept up all day Sunday. We managed out for a couple of walks with the dog and a trip sledging with Oli which was good fun. On the drive up to St Cergue I found myself looking at the winding road thinking what a great place it would be to bring the bike. On Sunday morning I was glad I'd left it at home as there was snow everywhere. Its been cold and wind since then so far from ideal for bike riding anyway. Definitely come back in summer or autumn though as the roads are perfect and loads of potential loops round the mountains from here.

This morning Tom and I headed out to one of the local cross country ski centres to give that a bash. Tom has a set of skis and it was cheap and easy to hire a pair for me. We had a morning doing Classic XC on one of the red routes. It was really good fun and although my technique was obviously poor I got the hang of it pretty fast and we managed about 16km in a couple of hours. It is something I've fancied trying for a while but never had an opportunity before. I think next time I'd like to try the skating skis and they appeared a bit faster but the classics were certainly beginner friendly! The pic at the top is Tom on one of the trails.
Robin Wilkins
my blog: http://thewheelabout.blogspot.com