Great things are done when men and mountains meet.

No doubt Blake had a less literal interpretation in mind but mountains as a challenge for which to rise was foremost in mine as I departed Zurich on a rainy Wednesday pleased to be underway again and undeterred by the weather.  


Setting out in the late afternoon I headed directly to Luzerne where I was glad to have organised a stop over with another host, Marcus, who saved me from needing to camp in the rain and risk getting all my gear soaked before the climb over the mountains. We spent a pleasant night drinking beer on his balcony with his girlfriend and an anglo-american student couple who were couchsurfing.

Luzerne is picture postcard pretty

said postcard of Kappelbruke

A pheonix with a new frame.

The moment I had been waiting for had arrived.

With frame and forks safely arrived that morning my new favourite Swiss bike mechanics set to work and had her ready to roll the very same day

They were perhaps a little less excited than I was.

With slighly more trepedation than I had anticipated and slightly more twitchy about errant traffic pulling out on me I was reunited with my valient steed.

9 1/2 days in Zurich

While waiting for my new bicycle frame to arrive in Switzerland I busied myself getting to know Zurich.

Walking her busy streets occupied most of my time and frankly there are worse purgatories than lapping lake Zurich for the fifth time.

I think that coot is following me

Home from home.

"I look upon Switzerland as a sort of inferior Scotland" - Sydney Smith, an English wit from Woodford. (Rare breed indeed)

North Zurich

Switzerland with it's neutrality, polyglot languages, wealth and direct democracy seems to inspire a lackluster antipathy among the British.

Nothing to match the heat of our centuries old squabbling with the French, war won jingoism of common relations with the Germans nor the faded patriarchal contempt for our American and Australian ex colonies. Even the hangover from our 17th Century rivalry with the Dutch has been etymologically preserved in our idioms more boldly. Or have I rambled into double Dutch?

Still I detect a slight derogatory twinge in the average British stereotype of the Swiss.