Up to Lac d’Emosson, Down to Bern, Switzerland

Zagan the motorhome’s ears (OK, wing mirrors, we’re using our imaginations here!) are being gently serenaded by a guitarist, strumming away a short distance from our grassy campsite pitch at TCS Camping Bern-Eymatt, about 4 miles from the centre of Bern in Switzerland (N46.96384, E7.38399). Ju’s hanging out every item of clothing we own, having conquered the chess-master washing machines on the site, and I’m writing this having just worked my way through the two and half billion photos we’ve taken the past couple of days. I’m a bit bushed, if I’m honest. Last night’s kipping spot was an in out-of-this-world location, but my subliminal just would not relax and accept the fact we weren’t going to be killed in the night by a big rock falling on us or some such. Read on to understand why folks.

Our old motorhome Dave was 3.1 tonnes and, as we discovered some while after buying him, had no turbo. That didn’t stop the old duffer wheezing himself up the various mountains we pointed him at, although I’d sometimes find myself 2/3rds of the way up wafting his overheating engine and mopping his sweating brow before continuing to the summit. We don’t have that issue in Zagan, his turbo-powered, and newer engine’s pulled us up all the big hills we can find, his temperature gauge edging up a dot or two but the needle stays well clear of the red.

Descents are a different story though. Being 3.5 tonnes we’re 400Kg heavier (I’m fairly certain we’re using our full payload), and I’m finding myself using a lot of 2nd gear, and even some 1st gear engine braking to avoid cooking the anchors with, ah, unpleasant side-effects. That’s fine on many of the more touristy or local back roads as there’s no commercial traffic, but it has been a tad awkward on longer (some are 10 miles downhill), faster descents where lorries don’t want to be doing 20mph for endless miles. We pull over whenever we can to let traffic past, and we’ve taken the opportunity to have lunch on some longer stretches, to let the brakes cool off.

And these past few days we’ve had a lot of descending to do! First up we dropped down the fresh tarmac and hairpins from the cracking French aire at Plaine Joux, having said ‘bye to Ted and servicing the van. From up there we could see the somewhat-bonkers motorway-on-stilts which brings traffic from the valley far below up to the lower part of the Chamonix valley. We could see that the usual return road, a more down-to-earth mountain twister, was devoid of traffic and later found this is often the case in the summer as they work on it to try and suppress rock falls. The stilt road was instead being used as a giant contraflow, which we expected to soon be a part of, but satnav had different ideas. For once, the flipping thing was right, and kept us high up on our side of the valley, dropping down only as we edged eastwards towards Les Houches, site of the downhill Kandahar ski race.

Within only a few minutes we arrived in Chamonix, intent on visiting Mandy and Todd. These guys have lived for many years in the famous town, and kindly invited us to visit them when we were passing through back in our youth (well, six years ago anyway). Once at their house we couldn’t quite believe we’d managed to get Dave down the narrow and steep access road. Back then we drove that poor motorhome just about anyway, we demonstrated in this video taken in Tunisia. This time Mandy must have heard our exhaust scraping and came out to rescue us, siting us outside a neighbour and leaving a note. Just as we’d parked up Todd appeared too, kitted out in his BA uniform and off to pick up an A380 to fly to Singapore, as you do. It’s incredible the folks you meet!

As we sat and chatted with Mandy over a brew, we were reminded how understated and generous these guys are, despite the life they have in this corner of French (Swiss/Italian) paradise. The conversation turned to running at one point (as our lives are currently revolving around it) and it turned out Mandy occasionally sees a bloke called Kilian Jornet on training runs around the valley. I imagine few folks have heard of this guy, but he’s a legend in mountain running circles, having completed umpteen incredible world-firsts, including a double ascent of Everest, on his own, without oxygen, inside of a week in 2017. Chamonix hosts an event called the UTMB (the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc) each year, which attracts some of the world’s best mountain runners to compete on a 106 mile course with over 10,000m of ascent. It’s considered one of the toughest events in the world, and each year 30% or 40% of competitors fail to even finish. Kilian, himself severely understated, has won it multiple times.

Saying ‘bye to Mandy, we headed off along the valley floor, out of Chamonix and across the Swiss border on the B road which joins the two countries. I guess one day there’ll be a motorway through here, or at least a tunnel, but for the moment it’s a relatively quiet crossing used mainly by tourists, which suits us. As soon as we’d driven past the empty booths, pausing at the STOP signs but seeing no-one to stop for, we pulled in and Ju popped into the small shop of a petrol station to buy a vignette – a sticker which you pop on the inside of your windscreen and it gets you a year’s unlimited motorway travel in Switzerland, for 40 Euros (oddly not Swiss Francs) in 2019. We’ll be in the country for a couple of weeks or more, so it made sense to us to get one, although we could have stuck to A roads, but that becomes unfunny after any distance. On returning to Zagan, Ju reported she didn’t need the V5C, just the money, and the lady selling them was surrounded by every type of Swiss stereotype you could imagine – Toblerlones, Milka bars, cowbells, flags, cuckoo clocks, you name it. Being so close to France and with the petrol prices much higher in Switzerland, we don’t think she sold much fuel.

From there we went up. Having stayed at the incredible hydro-electric Barrage d’Emosson back in 2013, I had happy memories of the place and wanted to go back. I’d somehow forgotten about the endless miles of often single-track road to get up there though, and how we’d managed to drive into Finhaut on the way up, a teeny weeny village with roads not designed for a lumbering wagon like ours (big signs now suggest you drive around – possibly installed after our last visit). Ju was already, erm, somewhat aware of my wincing at the long descents, and was a tad perturbed I’d just added another 10 miles of hairpins to the long Col de la Forclaz we needed to also do to get down to Martigny in the Swiss Rhone valley. Husbands eh?

Once at the top we grabbed a spot looking out over the dam, alongside a crumbling cliff (where we saw a mountain goat on our last visit) and a patch of still-melting snow (it’s June dammit!!!). We sat and stared out over the dam, considering the long old drop in front of us (N46.06832, E6.93536). After a while I legged it off for a run across the dam and up to the old one, hopefully adding on some trail to see the dinosaur prints Mandy had told us about. Sadly I was halted half way across the dam by a fence as it was being worked on. We later saw some runners bypass the fence, but I wasn’t up for messing about up here in the snow and ice and retraced my steps to go through the tunnel behind us and around the other side of the lake, being halted again, this time by thick snow across the trail 3 miles later. By the way, whoever put that model T-Rex in the dimly lit tunnel would have had a good laugh when I just about backflipped at the sight of it coming at me out of the gloom.

Later on, having had a wander about and some grub, the rain and hail came. The car park emptied out and we shifted sideways a little from the cliff face, levelling out on ramps and adding chocks to the back wheels. Come 8pm we were all-but alone in the silence, just the noise of distant waterfalls and rain pattering on the drum-like roof for company. The Mont Blanc massif, normally another eye-watering sight, was shrouded in mist, and we called it a night having sorted some bits of work and read for a while. The heating went on, and it dropped down to about 6°C overnight, no surprise as parts of the lake were still frozen.

This morning the rain, which had eased off in the night, returned so we didn’t hang around, driving off the mountain side, and down the Col de la Forclaz without incident. 2nd gear most of the way though, with lots of pulling over for following drivers who typically gave a few winks of the hazards in thanks. Once in Martigny we flowed under the green motorway signs in relief and hammered our way here, past lush vineyards, sea-like lakes and high mountains which had me in mind of a mate’s dad’s lifetime railway model building effort back home. One incident stood out in the drive, when we passed a sports car (twice, he overtook us then slowed again) the guy was steering with his knees, smoking and typing on his phone.

Phew, long one! Ju’s just finished off checking us in and been given our unlimited travel passes for the Bern public transport network. I’ve not asked her how much the campsite was, ignorance is bliss, and am seeing these tickets as a freebie, woo hoo!! The Formula E (like Formula 1 but with electric cars) takes place tomorrow and we’ll head in later to scout the place out. It’s 18 mins on the bus from outside the site, so an easy journey for this tired old blogger.

Right, best go, there’s a world to see. Cheers, Jay