Rest day, sort of. We decide to rest our legs and my sore tummy and stay a second night in our funny little hotel in order to yes, definitely visit Romainmotier, one of Andreas’s must-see spots.
What a knockout! A tiny, picturesque village curled into a fold in the hills around an outstanding abbey. Stunning from every angle and with frescoes inside and a long long history. Really only the photos will do it justice, and then probably not. We meet a lovely kind and gentle old nun serving in the bookshop there, and a zany young woman with half her head shaved serving in a coffee shop, who had been to New Zealand alone to work. We kept going back into the church, it was so interesting and beautiful and then walk around the outside getting the feel for the history.
We had gone there by taxi (Oh mate, you want the bus, geez sorry, there’s only one each way each day and it went an hour ago. Next one tomorrow.) But we were going to catch the bus back much later in the day. So starts a fairly hilarious sequence of events. We are checking the timetable when a busdriver going the other way pulls up and offers to pick us up on his way back.
Thanks, great, so we settle and indeed he does trundle back into town and stops for us. He can only take us to the village just up the road, but another bus goes from there and we can get on that and hey presto, back to Orbe. Are you starting to feel that this could get complicated?
He drops us off and comes with us to make sure all is well. That is when we discover that the connection only goes to Orbe on Friday (of course!). Two ladies standing nearby suggest that we go on the train. They are on their way to a day out in Lausanne and we hop on the train with them. Hmmm, this train seems to be going in the wrong direction. No no chorus the ladies, you have to go this way then change trains and go back in the direction of Orbe. Oh dear, we didn’t expect that.
But the two ladies are delightful, one Chinese woman married to a Swiss university lecturer living in Romainmotier (It’s too small for me, I come from Beijing. But its lovely! Yes, but I don’t notice it now.) The other, her neighbour, is a bookbinder with a studio in Romainmotier. We spend the trip laughing and chatting.
We get off at the right stop and wait to go back again, hopefully onto a branch line towards Orbe. On the way the scenery seems awfully familiar, but we hope for the best. We are covering a fair bit of countryside at this stage. Off at the station and onto a light rail for the last few minutes back to the town. Now we do all this for free as we keep leaping from train to train with seconds to spare, not daring to wait to use the ticket machine and hoping that if we are bailed up by the ticket inspector we can plead our case.
Finally off the train, we have spent a couple of hours circling Orbe but yay, are finally back there. If you need any up-to-the-minute info about the train network in the Orbe area, get in touch, glad to help out.
We just have enough time to climb the tower, all that’s left of the old castle, and are startled to see Mont Blanc and a few mountain ranges on the horizon lit by the last rays of the sun. That tower was high! You could chuck down a lot of boiling oil on any enemies that come to bother you. But, here’s a question – how did they get the boiling oil up there ?
Orbe to Lausanne 30 September 2010
We wake before dawn to the sound of the market stalls being set up in the square below our window (any Friday for the last 1000 years probably). How can a few Swiss men with one truck and a couple of trestle tables make so much noise ?
Anyway we get up and off, by which time there is delicious looking produce laid out everywhere, lots of little stalls, a mobile butcher. Fresh bread. We walk out through the old town, we know our way around these streets now, and leave.
We are off the road after about 2 km and across the fields. A very beautiful walk follows. It’s so nice to follow a path through the forest, crossing little streams, emerging onto fields and back into forest again. The colours are turning more now, another couple of weeks and they will be spectacular.
There is just absolutely no-one around, it seems amazing that in Europe you can walk almost all day without seeing a soul or hearing almost any human sounds. We sit by the side of a field and eat our simple lunch. I have yogurt and fruit, Renato (pour soul) has to make do with rye bread and a slab of gruyere cheese. Life’s hard.
We know we have a distance and accommodation problem today. The stage is almost 40 km, so we have to break it, but can’t find any village big enough to have somewhere to stay. So we opt for walking most of the day and then get a train for the last stretch into Lausanne. We really want to use the internet there, we’re astonished that there are not internet cafes everywhere. But it’s gonna have to be Lausanne.
So we arrive, book into the only place we can find a hotel room, a supposed 4 star nearby. We don’t want 4 star but we are desperate. So we book in and it is truly a vision of the 80’s. Every surface is silver; matte, shiny, chequerboard, curtains of chains. It is truly chilling, as if someone 30 years ago said, Let’s make it look, like, really really futuristic and let’s get Ugly Interiors Inc to design it.
It is absurdly expensive, and actually a suite (great for all our luggage!) but it is a roof over our head for the night. A lot better than a park bench which had seemed the most likely option for a while.
We go out to a packed and very cheery restaurant nearby, ignoring the heavy rain that is now falling, and back in our room fall instantly asleep.
Lausanne to Vevey. Friday 1 October
We wake up every day fresh and eager to get going. By the end of the day with aching feet and tired out we are so ready to stop, the last km into town is just plodding, wishing were in our room. Then after a hot shower we are chirped up and head out to explore the town.
Now sitting in the last of the sun in Vevey at a table beside the lake. R has beer, I have a mineral water. Children are playing and squealing on the lawns, it’s a plaza. People are wandering around, riding bikes, sitting on benches. And directly opposite on the other side of the lake, but close, is a magnificent bank of mountains, several ranges, with snow on the top.
We have seen a lake ferry come and go and are incredibly tempted to take a trip on it to our next destination tomorrow.
So, looking back on the day. Out of Lausanne, straight down to the lakefront and then begins a very beautiful walk along the exact edge of the lake, a narrow path. In places it is even right at the waters edge, on little beaches (or what passes for them here, just a slope of grey pebbles trailing into freezing water).
Massive mansions in huge landscaped gardens all along, with private boatyards, there sure is money here. We pass the headquarters of the IOC, with a particularly ugly fountain front wall. People walking dogs. Quite a lot of old style hotels, I imagine in the 1930’s they would have been full of elderly English widows living a genteel lifestyle.
After about 10 km of that fabulous lakeside walk we head up into an amazing area. The steep steep hills are all terraced with grapevines, it’s an awesome thought to consider how hard it must be to work them. Damn that boat has just blown its horn, maybe we will end up taking a ride on it tomorrow.
We can’t find one turn and walk a long way beside a road, not too bad but not nearly as nice. Then we strike out up into the hill to try to find the trail again. Was that a good idea? Well it was awfully pretty, tiny villages, postcard views of vineyards and farmhouses against the lake. Eating bunches of grapes picked warm from the vine. But it was a heck of a long way pretty much straight up. 100m doesn’t sound like much but when the gradient is practically vertical it feels very far. Challenging but I wouldnt have missed those breathtaking views. Why do I think that word breathtaking might get used a few times more in Switzerland.
Find the place we have booked into, very basic old pension but ok. Clean enough, shared facilities, never a favourite. 90 Swiss francs seems too much but we’re too tired to look for anywhere else. So we settle in. I do all the washing in the bath, trying not to notice the nest of black hairs in the plughole.
The shower is pretty funny too, on a timer, every 30 seconds it cuts out and you have to press the button again. Good pressure though, when I try to run the bath for the washing I don’t notice that there are no bath taps and the shower springs from the wall, flailing around and spraying me all over. Renato hears me squawk and when I go back into the room soaking wet, he observes drily, Did you decide to wash your clothes while they were still on you?
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