Swiss Walks

I’m on the Apple Activities March Walking Challenge this month. The app has decided that I must walk or run 298 kilometres. It’s an average of 9.6 kilometres a day. This is both easy and challenging at the same time. Walking 10 kilometres takes about two hours.

When I had a broken arm I walked more than two hours a day, because I had nothing else I could do. I also walked that much because I couldn’t bike, take the car or drive the scooter. As a result, I needed to walk for everything.

The walk from Paquis to Decathlon can be almost straight if you take the most direct route. You walk from anywhere in Paquis to the train station and from there you head up towards Balexert and from there you head along the cycle and walking paths that veer slightly to the right, take you over the motorway and then to the airport, by the private aviation terminal. From there the rest of the walk takes a few minutes.

For the first time in my life I am cat sitting. I’m used to village cats and this is a city cat so I don’t know how much time I need to spend with the cat, how much I need to play and more.

When I look after toddlers I know that I have to be attentive to them from the moment they wake up to the moment they nap or sleep. It’s a challenge to have that level of endurance.

I was going to take the scooter but it was stuck by three SUVs so I had no option but to lazily give up and go on a 10 kilometre Sunday Ingress walk. I couldn’t be bothered running up to the second floor, getting the car keys, moving the car, getting the scooter out and then moving the car back. This is especially true since it’s going to rain tomorrow.

Today I went for an Ingress Photo Walk before the rain and I eventually did have to go home because the phone was starting to get wet and there was no urgency to continue playing the game and walking.

I did spot a few things that were slightly out of the ordinary. The first thing was the mushroom beneath. I have spotted a few of these but this one did not have a bite taken out of it. They’re large and flat and you can see the corrugation, or whatever the correct term is, beneath. They have had enough moisture to grow over the last few days.

Sometimes a walk above the woods is easy. I don’t mean walking while flying hanging from a parapente. I mean walking at an altitude where there are fewer trees.

The walk from the transmission mast of La Bariellette to La Dôle is an easy walk that I have done many times. Sometimes I have done it at dusk. Sometimes I have done it with snow and sometimes I have done it when I was walking through clouds. Usually people do it when the weather is nice

In July this year I took half a million steps as I was banned from driving. I’m using that phrase for comedic effect. As I had one arm in a sling driving was out of the question for a few weeks and then it was out of the question because my tendons and muscles were in need of physio therapy.

Carbon Footprint

By not using the car for around one and a half months alone I avoided using at least one tank of diesel for every month of injury and one scooter tank of petrol per week of petrol.

If you’re looking for a reason to walk from one village to another the practise of using old phone boxes as free libraries are common in Switzerland. This means that if you’re shopping around for books in Switzerland you can either go to the shops and buy them with the car or you can go for a walk and see if any of the nearby villages have the books you’re looking for.

When I cycle towards Geneva i often pass by a forest near Chavannes centre. Usually I only skirt the exterior of the forest but I have twice passed through it on a bike on my way back from Geneva. Yesterday I drove the scooter to Chavannes centre and parked it where scooters and bikes can be parked.

I walked from there towards the roads that are closed to traffic and at first i tried going downwards towards the motorway and found a path through the woods but it was blocked by a sign saying, forbidden entry, danger etc. I don’t know whether it was put there by children or whether it was serious so i turned around and went back up the road, towards the jura. I passed by a road but skipped that path. I then found a path cut through the forest overgrown with vegetation so I pushed through.

Spring and Summer are playing with us. A few weeks ago it was warm and sunny. It felt as if summer was finally here and that we could start planning outdoor activities that don’t require enormous amounts of fossil fuels, like skiing and snowboarding do. ;-)

Looking down towards the Lac Leman. You can see the white lines at the top of waves being pushed along by the wind.