Tour Du Lac

Saturday, July 23 - Sunday, July 24 2011

The Tour de France was in full swing once again this July but unlike last year, it did not pass right next to Geneva.  So, instead, we decided to hold our own ‘Tour du Lac Léman’ (a.k.a Lake Geneva), a bicycle trip around the lake!  For fairly inexperienced bikers like us, looking at the sheer size of lake Geneva is intimidating (over 110 miles / 180 km around), especially to think that one can ride around it in anything less than a few days.  However, we know a couple of people who have done it in a day and survived, albeit they were in good biking shape and had proper speedy road bikes, unlike us and our mountain bikes.  Our compromise was an overnight trip and, even better, we decided to throw our first Swiss camping experience into the mix as well (we were extremely excited, especially since our plans to camp on the overnight hiking trip were thwarted due to the heavy rain & lightning storm). 

The most significant reason for this trip was to celebrate our 4 years of marriage!  For those keeping close track, yes this trip was a little delayed past our actual anniversary of June 30 – it’s just the timing that worked out.  On our actual anniversary day we biked up to a great Italian restaurant in Geneva’s ritzy suburb of Cologny, where multi-million dollar homes are the norm.  It was a nice meal with great service and a chance to reflect on 4 years (time flies!). 

It’s becoming a trend that each year we try to do an adventure trip for our anniversary.  In 2008 for our 1^st anniversary, we camped out and rode our bikes around on Orcas Island; in 2009 we hiked up to the top of Mount St. Helens; and last year, well, we moved to Geneva. 

Packing everything we needed for two days onto our bikes—including camping gear, a change of clothes, food and enough water to get us from town to town—was certainly a new adventure, especially considering the distance we were planning to conquer in two days.  Ang took on the planning of logistics in full force like she normally does (you should see the packing lists she produces—very well thought out) while Dave slacked a little on the route planning (more on this later).  To help carry everything we ended up getting cargo racks and panniers for the back of our bikes (which, once loaded up, added quite a bit more weight than we had anticipated). :)  Here are some shots of us loaded to the brim and ready for action!

 

We set off from Geneva a little after 8am on a perfectly clear, but not too sunny, Saturday.  The weather report called for rain showers throughout the weekend—but determined to go on our much-awaited trip, we packed our raincoats and didn’t let it stop us!  The little bit of research we did do ahead of time told us that going clockwise around the lake was better than counterclockwise.  Check.  The rest we kind of made up as we went.  To his credit, Dave did check good routes and printed out maps of some of what he anticipated to be tricky parts during the trip, but in general he thought using the lake as our compass was all we needed… not quite! 

Our biggest mistake, if you could call it that, was following the Route du Rhone bike path that we mistook for the “around the lake” path (turns out there isn’t an official one of those even though this is a pretty popular route).  It wasn’t really a mistake for the first few hours because the route actually kept us right on track and off the main roads (which is why we thought it was our route).  We hit some problems when it started leading us up into the hills around Lausanne (think of Lausanne as the San Francisco of Europe, solely based on the hills)… which wouldn’t have been all that bad but having a lot of extra weight at the back of our bikes and realizing how much further we had to ride, it became a little discouraging.  Luckily we had a smart phone with GPS that helped get us on track eventually (another reason Dave relaxed a little on the planning). :)

Once we figured it out, the route itself was really enjoyable.  The first day we wound through quaint little towns (visiting some of the same villages as we did on our Swiss Wine Hike last year) and a variety of beautiful farmland.  Due to our ‘detour’, we didn’t see the lake as much as we thought we would on the first day, but that just made it even more special when we did.  

Our last obstacle of day one was to figure out how to reach our campsite.  It wasn’t so much a directional challenge, more of whether it was physically possible to do so.  See, when Dave was planning out campsites, he didn’t really consider the difficulty of elevation into the equation.  Sure the campsite was an 800-meter gain from the lake, but how hard could that be?  Turns out that was very hard considering 1) the weight we were carrying, 2) the fact that we were on mountain bikes, 3) that we already completed about 8 hours of riding, and 4) we still needed functioning bodies to ride the entire next day. 

Plan B – public transportation!  Technology is amazing; all we had to do was use our phone to route directions from our current location to our campsite via public transit, and it gave us the exact time of the next bus heading that direction.  We were lucky to catch the bus within a few minutes, considering it only picked up once an hour and it was already past 6pm—additionally, we were lucky that the bus allowed us to bring our fully-packed bikes onboard.  As the bus wound up steep hills for several miles, it helped confirm our decision to wuss out on peddling.  We didn’t avoid the entire climb though – our campsite was another mile or so away from the bus stop and pretty much straight up (good reminder to Dave for better planning next time!). 

Camping in Europe is a little different than in the states.  Instead of somewhat secluded, individual sites, all the sites are pretty close together.  We miss camping so it didn’t really bother us to have a little lack of privacy.  Also, most (including this one) European campsites don’t allow campfires—a big bummer on that one.  We had about enough time to set up camp, take a shower, and start cooking dinner before the rain started in.  It was a true test to see how waterproof our tent was… because we’re pretty sure it didn’t stop raining until shortly before we woke up in the morning.  (We give the tent a B- after mopping up a few puddles in the morning—but at least the two of us stayed dry!)  Even though the forecast predicted rain throughout the whole weekend, luckily we only experienced rain overnight.

We woke asking each other, “did your legs cramp up in pain during the middle of the night like mine did?”  Yes, and yes.  A perfect way to start the day! :) We packed up our stuff, did some stretching and were back out on the road by 10:00.

Yep, a well-thought-out packing list. :)

The benefit of being up 800 meters in altitude was that we got to go back down!  Besides the ease of riding, this stretch of the trip was one of the more picturesque ones, with great views of the lake and the surrounding hillsides with quaint Swiss towns.  And of course in Switzerland, even in the more populated areas, there are still sheep grazing at will.  

We made it down to Montreux in about an hour and were technically back on the “lake route” (whatever that meant).  We passed by the Chateau de Chillon (below), which we visited way back on our ‘Look/See’ trip when deciding to move to Geneva.  As we rode by, it was weird to think back to that time and realize it was almost a year and a half ago.  Time really does fly.

Montreux is more or less the halfway mark around the lake.  From here it was uncharted territory for the Vissers as we looped our way around the south end of the lake and saw cute little towns that we hadn’t yet seen (and more beautiful farm land).   

An incredible old estate that we happened to ride by

We were surprised at how long it took us to reach the French boarder because in our minds everything on the South side of the lake belongs to France and everything on the north is Switzerland.  When looking at the map (see below, the map also roughly highlights our route), you’ll see how much of the lake circumference is actually Swiss.  Regardless of whether we were in Switzerland or France, the lakeside scenery was fantastic.

At one point in the ride we looked out on the water and saw an incredible boat with three huge sails, which was soon referred to as the ‘pirate ship’ for obvious reasons.  (Pretty sure a few Goonies references were made…)

One of the larger cities on the south bank of the lake is Évian-les-Bains.  Sound familiar?  Yes, Evian, as in the water company.  Who knew such a recognized brand comes from a small French city on the banks of lake Geneva?  Of course we had to fill up our water bottles from their public fountains.  We even stumbled upon the factory as we rode out of town.

At this point in the ride we were feeling it.  How did we know we were tired?  When we finally made it to the popular medieval town of Yvoire, a cute little village we’ve wanted to visit all year and planned to have dinner in that evening, we decided to pass on even setting foot inside the village in order to get home quicker (plus we planned to return via a boat trip – more on that in a future post). 

Shortly after Yvoire we saw road signs for “Geneva” starting at “16k” and it became a serious countdown.  Our legs felt as heavy as tree trunks at this point.  Around 7pm we finally reached Geneva!  Over the course of two days, we biked (with stops and wrong turns) over 18 hours and over 200k (125 miles).  Pretty good for a couple of people that haven’t done any long distance bike trips ever (the longest either of us as ever ridden was Ang and the CF bike-a-thon over 10 years ago and only 45 miles).  I guess our 10-minute bike commute to work each day semi-prepared us for the worst! ;)  Above all the tiredness and misdirection, it was a fun adventure that we absolutely loved and we’ve already started resting up for next year’s anniversary adventure, whatever it might be. :)