Although this article is two years old La Tribune de Genève wrote again about it and it appeared in my Google Newsfeed. I am not opposed to making cities pedestrian because I love to walk more than I like buses, trains, or other forms of transport.
I actually do like trains. When I lived in London I liked to take the tube everywhere. I wish someone had encouraged me to try cycling in London because I would have used a bike to get everywhere.
The Foggiest idea, or a pun, after a walk this morning through Geneva on a foggy day. “The Jet D’eau will be off”, I thought. It was pumping out water at its usual rate but you’d find it hard to see. The grey/white fog, along with the white water, converged and became one.
On a day like today, the Jet D’eau is not the only thing that is hard to see.
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.
After watching the video below this paragraph I want to speak on the pleasure of walking without stopping at a road crossing. In modern cities you can’t walk for more than a minute or two without having to stop at a road crossing, a traffic light or other feature. The result is that a stroll or walk is filled with stops and starts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVJ_rgEUSJE
As people move towards urbanised centres, and as more and more people live vertically, on top of each other so the need for gyms, swimming pools, indoor climbing centres and other features become essential.
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.
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.
Images I saw of the Creux de Van made me want to visit the location in person. Yesterday despite the mediocre weather I went there. From Neuchatel you drive towards Noiraigue. Free parking is available. For the first hour you are walking up a steep winding path. A few trees have fallen, stones and mud are also present until you reach the top of the cliff. From there you see a glimpse of the cliff and views to come.
There are four phones on my desk that are well adapted to tracking hikes. There is the nexus one, the e51, n95 and n97. The reason I mention this is battery life. In my experience if you go on a long hike at least one of the phones will die. You could buy an extra battery or two to make sure that this never happens but a more practical solution is to take all of your phones, install the tracking application on them and swap phone once the battery dies.