Weeks before reaching Switzerland I explored the beautiful City of Salzburg and crossed Grossglockner Pass (8,218ft) in Austria, including the detour climb up to the panoramic Franz Josefs-Hohe viewpoint of the magnificent Pasterze Glacier.
A great ambition of mine to one-day climb the Grossglockner Pass had now finely been fulfilled. Next were the Passo Del Giovo (6,870ft) and the towering Passo Del Stelvio (9,055ft) in Italy, with its gruelling forty-eight! numbered hairpin bends. In the Italian Dolomites, I joined up with a couple of Kiwi’s (cyclists from New Zealand) and cycled around the Italian Lakes for several days with them.
I crossed the Italian and Swiss border on the ascent of the Simplon Pass (6,578ft) and dropped down to the town of Brig. The following day I rode up the Rhone valley, via the picturesque villages of Monster and Oberwald, in the direction of the Grimsel and Furka Passes. It was a gorgeous, bright and clear sunny day, but quite chilly. The surrounding mountains where capped by fresh snow. The scene looked just like something from the Swiss holiday, brochures.
My plan was to only ride part way up the Grimsel and wild camp for two nights at the base of the Rhone Glacier. At an altitude of five thousand, seven hundred and seventy feet on the Gletsch plateau (One thousand, three hundred and sixty-four feet higher than Ben Nevis in Scotland.) and only just below the perpetual snow line. I found a nice sheltered spot next to a river with a fantastic view of the glacier and the amazing snaking road of the Furka Pass.
There were cows roaming around the plateau I could hear the noises of their bells. One very inquisitive cow came a bit too close to my tent as I sat in the doorway with my Primus stove cooking my tea. That night as I lay in my warm sleeping bag listening to the pleasant sounds of their bells in the far distance, I was grateful that they were now grazing much higher up the mountain and I was no longer at risk of being trampled to death while I slept.
The following morning I awoke to find a light covering of fresh snow on the tent. After a breakfast of traditional Swiss muesli and yoghurt with fresh blackberries that I’d picked near by the evening before, I set out up the zigzagging road of the Furka Pass. This side of the Furka Pass starts from the small hamlet of Glatsch, on this occasion I was only cycling to the summit and back.
The gradual climb was very enjoyable, especially as I’d left all my heavy luggage behind in the camp. Without the weight of all the camping kit, the tent, sleeping bag, clothes, plus food and over a litre of cooking fuel, I felt like a freed balloon!
There was very little traffic, and at times I felt that I had the whole mountain and the pass to myself. September and October are quiet months here in the Alps, between the summer holidays and winter skiing; there is a brief lull in the number of tourists.
High on the climb on one of the hairpin bends there was a viewpoint that was over looking the glacier, which was very impressive with white, grey, and blue glittering ice. The Rhone Glacier was formed by an accumulation of snow in a valley over a period of thousands of years, this great mass of ice very slowly flows like a river down the mountain.
At the end of the twentieth century the glacier is now about half the length that it was in eighteen hundred, when the glacier almost covered the entire Gletsch plateau. The alpine landscape was formed by a massive sheet of earth shaping glaciers of the last Ice age, creating high plateaux, U shaped valleys and high pinnacles of mountains. Making the Alps an excellent playground for mountain climbers, skiers, ramblers and crazy English touring cyclists like myself.
I stopped for elevenses in a cafe next to the huge Hotel Belvedere beside the glacier, for hot chocolate and a bite to eat, then I pushed on up higher. The views were incredible looking back down the mountain, and also looking across the plateau towards the Grimsel Pass. With the increasing altitude it was gradually becoming quite cold as I climbed and just before the summit it began to snow very heavily. The weather can change very quickly in the Alps. I had my lunch on the summit (7,975ft) in the very expensive Cafe in the Refuge Furka Hotel.
I was glad to get warm in front of the large log fire. Whilst there I got talking to three Japanese cyclists, (two girls and a bloke) who were also touring Europe by bike. They spoke reasonable English, but they had a problem understanding my English with a scouse accent.
Before leaving the Refuge Furka I put all my extra warm winter clothing on for the long descent back to Gletsch. Descending is probably the finest part of alpine cycling, not a pedal to turn for fifteen miles or more. Very quickly you can pick up speeds of forty to fifty miles per hour plus; because of having to brake on the hairpin bends the wheel rims can become quite hot.
Also, with a combination of the speed and the cold air, wind-chill can be a problem. I had to be very careful on this descent, as the road surface had become quite icy. I didn’t wish to come off and break my neck or something, because there were still many miles to cycle and many more passes to be climbed.
Cycling along the rough track heading back to camp I passed a large herd of hungry looking mountain goats. I started thinking to myself I hope that they haven’t eaten my tent? More importantly the vegetables I’d left just under the flysheet of the tent? Fortunately they hadn’t, so I was still able to prepare my vegetable, pasta, and garlic dish for my tea that night. I needed to eat well whilst I was cycling here in the Alps, as food is the fuel that powers my poor legs.
The next morning I continued up the remaining half of the Grimsel Pass from the Gletsch plateau, where the road climbed quite sharply with many hairpins. I stopped at the exact same spot as in the past to take photographs and once again to gaze at the Rhône Glacier. I felt quite satisfied now that I’d climbed the challenging Furka Pass.
During the nine years since I last toured Switzerland and crossed the Grimsel Pass a lot of the ice from the leading edge of the Rhone Glacier had melted back. The glacier wasn’t so impressive now as I had remembered, particularly after seeing the enormous Pasterze Glacier in Austria the previous month, and the various glaciers I saw in Norway in the spring at the beginning of this long tour.
Following on from the Grimsel Pass my route through Switzerland was via Interlaken and a further detour to Grindelwald to view the Eiger and a couple more glaciers. Over the Col des Mosses (4,757ft) to Lake Geneva and across the border to France, then briefly back again in to Switzerland to Geneva itself. Then south over the high cols of the French Alps to Nice on the Mediterranean, including one of my favourite passes in the French Alps, the Col du Galibiar (8,392ft). Ahead lay the Pyrenees with many more high cols to be climbed. I must have been mad!
The Pyrenees is a mountain range that I’ve had a desire to cycle tour for quite a few years. The later part of this exceptionally long tour enabled me to travel from Perpinan in France to Pamplona, Spain, cycling the entire length of the Pyrenees. From Santander (northern Spain) I caught the long ferry crossing to England. It was interesting, I found the many short but often steep undulating hills of the British roads, on route from Plymouth, cycling back to Liverpool were sometimes harder work than the long climbs in the Pyrènèes and the Alps.
Climbing the Furka Pass and wild camping on the Gletsch plateau, was one of many memorable experiences of my grand tour of Europe. The one other place that stands out in my memory was wild camping on the shore of the Sognefjord, for a rest-day just before the Sognefjell Pass in Norway.
The scenery was magnificent, the beautiful snow capped mountains were reflecting in the still waters of the fjord. I felt so happy and contented; I simply didn’t want to move on. This was how I’d imagined Norway would look when I was first planning this crazy tour. Days later I eventually continued over Sognefjell Pass, since there was still a large part of Scandinavia and the whole of continental Europe to be explored.
The Sognefjell Pass (Norway’s highest road.) started from sea level at Skjolden, there was over nineteen miles of climbing to the summit, (4,691ft) and on the last section the bike and I were dwarfed by twenty-five feet high walls of snow. Just two days before, the Sognefjell pass was still closed by the winter snow and ice.
Wild camping by the Sonefjord in Norway.
In all I travelled through eleven countries and two small principalities: Norway, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, Monaco, Andorra, Spain and England. The total distance cycled was five thousand, one hundred and seventy miles.
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Chris Blackwood 2002. This content is intellectual property. No part may
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