our all-day ticket took us from bus to tram to water taxi on the lake to mini-railway up a hill! The city is pretty but not beautiful, looks newish without feeling new, grand without being ostentatious. For a place full of bankers and business, you certainly can’t feel or see it. We had lunch on the edge of the lake, right in the middle of the city, and it felt like being back in Hobart, Tasmania, when we used to spend time at the waterfront. We found ourselves falling silent, just chilling next to the water (while swans pecked my shoes – no-one else, just me!) in the amazing warm weather and feeling incredibly relaxed - haven’t found anything like that since we left Tassie. The next afternoon we went swimming – right in the middle of the city! The river Limmat runs through Zurich (forming the lake) and while the current is strong, you are able to swim in certain areas. We spent our time in something of a river obstacle course – in order to swim downriver first you must go up, and that entails making your way along a wall and platform beside the river, complete with chains on the wall to help you fight the current and slippery footing, and even a rope section where you have to jump in the river and pull yourself around the wall! At the end, you jump in the river and the current takes you back to the start where you grab hold of a staircase and haul yourself out. Awesome!! So much fun, and so great to swim in open water again after sooooooo many years. In this day and age of lawsuits and hyper-occupational health & safety rules, it was great to find something fun left for people to do – and for free! Xander was also very pleased that after all the years of asking and pleading if he can throw me in the water, I actually let him toss me over the rail. We spent the evening in a different swimming area further upstream, where Kerstin made sure we tried the amazing tuna burgers – big slab of fresh tuna with a wasabi sauce, wow! On our final night, we went to a great club that had free entry – ok it was Wednesday but still pretty amazing! Best of all, Kerstin lives out of the city and up a hill, so her view is not only of the city at night (another beautiful sight I haven’t seen since leaving Tassie) but also the Swiss Alps – wow again. Big thanks to Kerstin for showing us an excellent time in an excellent city, and for letting us hog her computer and fill the house with laundry (our clean bike gear thanks you!!). Kerstin has also added to our challenge list and has given us something to do on October 31st (Halloween, our favourite holiday) – we want to know what it is but we aren’t allowed to open the package!!!!On the morning we left Zurich, Kerstin remembered that the H.R. Giger Museum lay in the direction we were heading. Giger is the creator of the Alien movie monster and is Xander’s favourite artist. The lure of seeing a museum set up by the painter himself was too much to pass, and it turned out the location was very worth visiting itself – Gruyeres, home of the cheese, with
a walled chateau housing museums and shops and nestled under part of the Alps. The museum was fantastic, and next to it was a Giger-designed bar, where we couldn’t resist spending more money for hot drinks as the rain plummeted down and a massive thunderstorm took place! It seems we have a knack of creating reasonably good weather when we aren’t camping…..We stopped at the nearby campground, only discovering once we settled that we had a fantastic view of a mountain plus a river beside us and forest all around. What a spot! After a very soggy night, we woke to a gorgeous morning and set off to take a slow road towards France. I picked it because the map showed it going past mountains – I didn’t realise we would go over them!! We spent the day travelling only about 100 miles, going up and over and through the Alps through the most amazing scenery I’ve seen in a long time (wow every 2 seconds). We stopped in Aigle, 
Switzerland (CH), for lunch next to a chateau in a town full of vineyards (bet it’s not that warm all year round!) and surrounded by mountains, only to find ourselves back up the mountains again travelling from Martigny (CH) to Chamonix-Mont Blanc (FR) on a mountain pass that had me terrified! Not only were we scaling a mountain, but we were right on the edge to start with (driving on the right hand side) and on some corners the bike actually leaned towards the edge!!! I have a big enough problem travelling over very tall bridges in a 
car, let alone this! The pass was stunning once again, and as we approached Chamonix we started seeing the French Alps and their glaciers – more wows! We spent a few days in Chamonix on our trip 10 years ago, so we didn’t feel the need to stop here (it’s horridly touristy) and figured we’d find somewhere outside the mountains to stop for the night. Our slow rate of travel and the general topography meant we didn’t get much further and were still surrounded by mountains last night, in another lovely small campground but once again in the rain and thunderstorms! I have to admit to being very tired by this stage, having not slept well for two nights, and my temper was rather frayed and taking itself out on poor Xander. I made sure I got an early night!! We’ve not seen any of the typical black&white Swiss architecture as we’ve travelled, but up in the mountains have been plenty of chalets, including one near our campsite covered in deer antlers like some kind of hunting lodge. Architecture has definitely been nicer around here!
We woke to another gorgeous sunny day, and more beautiful travel through fantastic mountain scenery down to Grenoble and on towards Valence, by which time we had passed several more amazing mountain ranges – I had no idea France was this beautiful. We’re trying to get through to an area SW of Lyon in the Massif Central where we’ve heard there is a town full of legends and sculptures about werewolves, which is why we keep pushing on at the moment. We then want to spend up to a week in the Pyrenees Mountains, travelling both the French and Spanish sides. These should both give us our mountain fix! While the roads are faster in this area (still rural but fewer towns along the way
means we’re covering better distances), I’ve found it very tiring and have had a rather uncomfortable day, both on my backside and feet (I get bad vibration sometimes through the footpegs) but also my helmet was playing up, and I admit I’m getting a bit sick of being on the bike! If we weren’t pushing to get somewhere nice to spend a few days, I think we’d be stopping here instead. As it is, we’ve stopped in yet another lovely (though busier and noisier) spot in a town called St-Naziere-en-Royans, a lovely town with a massive canal aqueduct passing through it. Unfortunately, by the time we dealt with the bike (see next) and dinner, it was too late for lovely photos (except of the mountains downriver) and we can’t be bothered to go back to see the aqueduct lit up for the night!We’re still having constant niggling problems with the bike, still seems to be about one per day. Before Switzerland, the trip computer played up again but again it was an easy fix (removing the fuse re-set it). Yesterday we started hearing a clunking sound particularly at low speeds that had us concerned. A check this morning found the chain was a bit loose and one of the rear wheel spokes had broken. Xander tightened the chain, but we still had the noise. We kept checking it today, and Xander was concerned that the clutch or chain needed replacing. One worry was Xander accidentally discovering that the rear brake disk was getting very hot. However, in camp tonight he found that the rear wheel had warped (probably from the broken spoke), which was causing the chain to catch and rubbing the brake disk. While working on the spokes to replace the broken one and fix the warping, he punctured the inner tube! Now the tube is repaired and wheel fixed as best as he can, but it all has to settle for a bit before he can tell if the wheel is still warped or not. At least we made sure we got into camp early so he could do this work and we could have an easy night.
Xander has been pushing us hard to learn French, but I can’t say it’s coming easily. It’s a language I’ve never had much affinity for (although I seem to be able to work out how to pronounce words, I can’t understand a thing I hear!) and I seem to find it more difficult than any other language I’ve tried – not helpful seeing as we’re going to need it a lot in West Africa! We were planning to learn it for some months before leaving home, and even borrowed a learning CD from the library, but never found the time to fit it into our daily routine. Then when we left, we didn’t have the CD installed on the new computer so no help there either! All we have is a reasonable French phrase book and trying to get people to help us with pronunciation…..I guess we’ll get there eventually?!
I should make a side-note (for anyone wondering what it takes to make a trip like this!) that while in Switzerland we had time to work out exactly how much money we have to spend on the trip. We did this starting in France, as our time in the UK included staying with friends/family, but also we had bills to pay, refunds to get, and more equipment was bought so it isn’t fair to include it. On our £30 per day budget (which we’ve stuck to pretty well so far), we have enough money for 22.75 months of travel (you can do the maths :-) ) The actual £30 per day will of course fluctuate a lot depending on visa costs, any bike repairs, ferry from Spain to Morocco, and added extras for things like safaris, treks and flight over the Peru Nasca lines etc. To get to that point, we had to spend nearly £7500 on various bits of equipment (a few things like bike spares and costs are still missing from my spreadsheet because Xander didn’t keep track!), plus money has been set aside to look after our storage shed in Oz for 3 more years. We’ve also had to get a lot of vaccinations/anti-malarial tablets, health insurance and ship our belongings to Oz, plus we’re holding aside a separate amount to cover our major travel costs (i.e. shipping bike between continents and import tax into Oz) and 2 more years of health insurance. We managed to sell an amazing £4100 of stuff, and are waiting on a few things to come back like tax refunds and rental house bond (rough figures already added to our total travel amount). Anyone who’s serious about doing a trip like this and wants to know more details, just ask!!! At some point, I’ll get time to update the packing list with what we’ve actually brought with us – new stuff added and a few things removed has made my old list out of date. Again, anyone interested in seeing this if I don’t get around to posting it, just ask.