It’s easy to look at what people are doing and to travel two hours on a train or in a car. In practice it’s a way of exploring the local area and seeing things that you wouldn’t otherwise see. On the flipside sometimes it is nice to stay local.
I went from seeing that a hike was in Gstaad that would take two hours to get to, to seeing a hike that would take an hour to get to and participate in, to another.
If you’ re looking for an uphill walk that is more physical than from Nyon to La Dôle and Leukerbad to Lammenhütte then the walk from Montreux to Jaman will meet your requirements.
I did this hike with a group of people from Berne, Chateau D’Oex, and Geneva. It’s meant to take three and a half to four hours but we did it in a little over 3hrs, despite snow conditions.
I almost always go for walks that are a loop because I don’t like to go back and forth. I prefer to have new sights for the entire walk. Today I thought about how I could go for a walk but rather than come back by a variant of that route I could come back with a bike.
If I use my own bike I would need to drop it off where I want to use it from but if I plan my walk from one Publibike point to another then I could ride home, or vice versa.
Today I went to Geneva. I considered going by car, and then either going to do the Fort L’écluse via ferrata or dropping by decathlon. In the end I took the train and walked around Geneva. I went to Geneva to pick up the things for the Vernier run on Friday morning.
I chose to go by train, rather than by car, because by car it would have taken the same amount of time but used petrol and I would have paid for parking.
Hiking from Vallorbe to Orbe is possible by following the foot path that goes along the River Orbe. If the river looks a little slow, and stagnant compared to what you would expect there is a simple reason. There is a hydroelectric dam that is slowing the flow of water. When I walked along it I noticed that there were logs and other debris floating. With the recent storms and rains they will need to remove debris from the water.
On Sunday, after Saturday’s via ferrata I went for a walk along the Areuse river. The hike started in Noiraigue and went along the Areuse river and two gorges. In reality it’s one gorge but there are two parts to the gorge seperated by a long flat bit that is more friendly to people who are slightly, or quite afraid of heights.
This experience wa organised via GoSocial rather than Meetup.
Yesterday I caught a train from Nyon to Bex without the need to change from one train to another. In the process I had an opportunity to re-acclimate myself to being surrounded by others, indoors, without a mask. Luckily the wagon wasn’t too crowded so I wasn’t overcome with the desire to mask.
When I saw that there was a hike from Bex to Aigle I didn’t expect it to be as nice as it was.
Yesterday I tried an experiment which could have been a silly one. I tried to do the Lavaux hike from Puidoux to Vevey with Trail Glove 7 shoes. They are barefoot minimalist shoes so I could have regretted it. I didn’t but mainly because of the preparation before hand.
The Preparation I have worn through one pair of Trail Glove 7 shoes before switching to the pair that I am using now.
Today I met with a meetup group to walk through the Lavaux vineyards from Puidoux to Vevey and the experience was good. The logistics of buying a train ticket confused me but other than this the experience was good.
I was able to catch a train from Nyon to Morges, change in Morges for the train to Puidoux before then getting off the train in Puidoux. The advantage of changing in Morges is that I just had to get off one train before getting onto the next.
According to streetlight data walking in the US has declined over the past three or four years. The decline was by up to thirty six percent from 2019-2022. The clearest reason for this is that 2019 and 2020 were walking honeymoon periods. By this I mean that for the duration of lock down and “work from home” people had more time to walk since they spent less time commuting, but also because the natural habit of getting into a car to do something had declined.