Walking

The daily walk, when people are back, is less pleasant because the roads and paths that were quiet when everyone was on holiday catching the virus were quiet. Now that everyone is back it is a challenge to avoid people again and it could be worth finding quieter routes.

View of the Léman and Alps

I still track my walks with an app or two, but as I walk the same route so frequently something like the Garmin VivoSmart 4 is fine. It counts steps, measures heart rate, and measures oxygen levels, but not very well. It also tracks how tired or full of energy you might be.

The weather was cold and cloudy this lunchtime so going up to the mountains for lunch was feasible. If the restaurant had been filled with people, and if we had shared a table with others, then I would have skipped and driven home. Luckily the road was closed to go up to the mountains so that stopped some people from going up. There were also the benefits of clouds and cold air temperatures. Combined these things meant that the restaurant was less tempting for large crowds. We ate a fondue.

As I looked straight down from a bridge today I noticed that the river is so low that the river bed has become bone dry in places. In other places you see that the gress is turning yellow. When tractors tend to the fields you see that they are stirring up clouds of dust. It is so dry, so often, that it is only a matter of time before forest fires burn down local forests.

Today during my walk I noticed a sticker on a sign for EuroVélo.com. I don’t know how new the project is but I had not paid attention to the URL before. I like the idea of a European Network of Cycling Routes. I don’t need to capitalise these words. I just did, for some reason.

During my walk I was listening to two podcast episodes of a single podcast about hiking the AT and other hikes in the US. It’s interesting and it makes us want to travel to the US to try these walks. The drawback is that A) It requires travelling to the US and getting a visa for long enough to complete the challenge and B) We have plenty of walking and cycling trips in Europe to enjoy, and best of all they should be quieter because fewer people think about using these routes, for now.

The Pandemic is alive and well and I am still walking around in circles. I would go for bigger, more interesting adventures but no one is publicising those events until after the fact. During a pandemic it helps to be misinformed, an alcoholic and a festival goer.

If you like real sports, like climbing, cycling, group hikes etc then you have to wait for months, or at this point, probably years, for the pandemic to end. Last year when the government made the mistake of opening too early you could believe they were silly. By making the same “mistake” again it starts to look like government policy. That leads to the obvious conclusion that at the current level of incompetence the pandemic will never end.

A penguin feeding a chick.

I would never expect to see a penguin feeding a chick in the middle of Switzerland in the middle of summer in Switzerland but I did. It’s just a wooden statue but that doesn’t make it any less unexpected. At first I thought it was just a block of wood to block people from taking a parking spot.

Two new books from the lending library.

Cows resting beneath pine trees.

A Swiss rural scene in Switzerland.

They often announce rain and storms and we often get very little of either. The weather here is dry. The little rain that did fall was sandy. Farmers have harvested their crops but so far the rain is not worrying.

According to Strava this was my 140th hike this year and my 83rd week of tracked activity. I don’t know why it’s only 83 weeks. My habit is older than that. When I set off, it was nice weather and warm. I didn’t set off with much because I expected the walk to be short. It was eight kilometres long. Part of the reason for this is that I did the usual detour by the Huguenot route before walking towards the Jura.

Normally at this time of year, as the snow melts and the temperatures increase the opportunity for spring and summer sports returns. These sports are via ferrata, outdoor climbing, hiking and more. This year is different because although today is Friday no plans have been made for the next two days. There is a excellent chance that I will either hike or cycle alone. Usually I avoid cycling on Saturdays because that is the day when people are anxiously driving between their homes and their shops.