After a day off yesterday, today’s challenge was the enjoyable ascent of Oberalppass, one of the few alpine cols to sport a lighthouse. Yes, it’s 230 miles from the nearest sea, at Genoa, but as you know the Swiss are very keen on safety.
It was another lovely sunny day, with memories of earlier torrential rain a distant memory. Until I put on my trainers, which were still wet and smelly.
(As for our day off the bikes yesterday, we fancied a pizza at one point, but we were reluctant to pay Swiss prices, and had an Interrail at our disposal, wo we went to Milan to have it. Very nice too, in the gallery pizzeria overlooking the platforms.)
Today was about getting to Chur. After a brief downhill into Andermatt, we had the steady ascent of Oberalppass: 650m or so in 11km, or about 2100 feet in seven miles.
After the mighty efforts of Grimselpass and Furkapass on Day 5 (which we could see back in the distance) this seemed a gentle and brief slope.
At the top, there was the reward of a lake. Unfortunately a dip looked tricky as I’d have to walk over icy snow to the shore.
There was, however, the lighthouse, whose ludicrous position two thousand metres up in a mountain range made me happy, like when I think of the newspaper headline ‘Man held over fire’.
It’s there for good reason. An hour’s walk from here is the most commonly cited source of the Rhine, at Lake Toma. (There are other contenders.) The stream becomes the grand river, crossing significant swathes of Europe to reach the North Sea in the Netherlands, 750 miles away.
The lighthouse here, built in 2010, is a replica of one that stood for seventy years at the end of the Rhine at the Hook of Holland (now in a Rotterdam museum). It claims, with authority, to be the highest lighthouse in the world. (And it works, apparently.)
And it sports a motto: MEER ALS GENUG. This is German for ‘more than enough’, but deliberately misspelt (it should be ‘MEHR’) in a sly linguistic joke: the Germans confused Meer (lake, or possible sea) with See (sea, or possibly lake).
(Thanks to Wilfried of yestrip.nl for pointing that out.)
After that was another delight: a long downhill on not-too-steep gradients and not-too-busy road following the course of the Anterior Rhine.
The roads got rather busier and faster though, and we were happy to come off the main road and lunch at Ilanz. After this we had back lanes and side roads for the rest of the day.
Beyond the village of Valendas there was some lovely old-road stuff, winding up and down and round the AR’s southern bank, complete with the odd galleried and tunnelled sections.
This was a lovely, quiet road, the main sound being birdsong. Lubricating my chainset in the toolkit area of the bike-friendly lodge in Hospental has done wonders for my birdspotting.
This bit was one of my most enjoyable rides so far: easy, gentle running through woods and meadows, with the milky waters of the Rhine gushing far below.
The final run into Chur on a bike path along the north bank of the river was a pleasure too.
Less of a pleasure was the heavy rain that exploded on to me as I entered Chur; I had to shelter in a petrol station, and a little later in a supermarket, where I thought I’d better buy a can of beer if only out of politeness. I could hardly use their space for free.
Once again I arrived at our accomm for the night – a hotel right in the historic centre – to find Nigel ahead of me on beer, a deficit I set about righting as swiftly as possible.
Miles today: 62
Miles since Chancy: 292