A Spot of Romansch: Andermatt to Chur

September 8, 2023

My destination today was Chur, claimed to be the oldest town in Switzerland, and certainly a place which had been on my 'to visit' list for years and years and years, but which I'd somehow never managed to get to. (In fact, I did get as far as scheduling not one but two stays here in 2020 and 2021 -- but then they both fell victim to pandemic travel restrictions.) So I was very excited about finally (touch wood...) making it through its gates, even after discovering (in trying to tell a fellow-guest, at breakfast, about my plans for the day) that I've been pronouncing it utterly, and apparently entirely incomprehensibly, wrongly for my entire life. (It turns out that the 'C' is silent...)

Between me and there lay one last (for this holiday) big climb: the fairly benign Oberalp Pass. I'd cycled this once before, but on a pretty miserably wet day, so it was nice to experience it again in the sunshine. It starts with hairpins, right from the centre of Andermatt, which quickly (but remarkably unpainfully) lift you up above the town.

Looking back down to Andermatt. The zig-zags on the hill at the back are the start of the Furka Pass.

This touring cyclist -- much more heavily laden than I was -- was setting a very steady pace up the hairpins, which shamed me into keeping going too. (We did both stop a bit higher up, though, to exchange sugary sweets and touring tales: he'd come via the Furka yesterday.)

After the hairpin stretch, the road straightens out. In my memory I'd equated this with flattening out. My memory was false. Still: there were train-spotting opportunities to take one's mind off things.

Things really did flatten out just before the top, though, and, after a quick spin through a not-too-scary tunnel, the pass appeared. It's not the most lovely of passes, to be fair (though my standards have got quite high on this trip), but it does meet my most Essential Pass Criterion: it has a friendly cafe, which serves perhaps the most gigantic helpings of pie I've ever encountered.

You might be thinking: 'Maybe the pie isn't big, maybe the fork is small'. You'd be wrong: the fork is normal sized; the pie is ginormous.

This isn't, it turns out, a safety aid for dramatically lost seafarers, but a replica of a lighthouse which once stood at the Hook of Holland, at the mouth of the Rhine. (The source of the Rhine is just up that hill, apparently. I didn't go to check.)

Once I'd recovered from the climb and from the pie, it was time for some downhill, first weaving round some hairpins (fun, but made a bit stressful by the swarm of 'Alpine Rally' car drivers coming up, not all of whom seemed to have mastered the art of sticking to their side of the road. I think I met/complained about them in last year's journal too...), and then onto a lovely straight, fast, descent, whizzing down through the Romansch-speaking towns and villages of Graübunden.

Most of the descent was like this. Lovely!

I'd decided, again, to ignore the official cycle route for the first bit of the descent, since it was off doing its Swiss Cycle Route thing up the valley sides, and since the main road was absolutely fine (helped by having quite a few sets of roadworks: these very usefully held up the cars and let the cyclists keep on going). At Ilanz, though, I left the main road, first to have a quick look at the (very pretty, eerily deserted) old town, second to have some lunch (perhaps the most expensive, albeit most elegant, cheese toastie I've ever eaten), and third to rejoin the proper cycle route.

I admit that my motivation for doing this was primarily that the main road had now got rather too busy (and also was about to head up a giant hill), so what followed was an extremely pleasant surprise. What I thought was going to be fairly staid riding along the valley turned out to be some of the most scenic stuff of the trip: weaving round river gorges and through some very pretty villages.

Just after Ilanz, the Rhine goes into a deep gorge, while the road stays high above.

Looking back up towards Ilanz, over the Rhine and its cliffs.

There's something very satisfying about the lack of round numbers.

Then the road plunged down to a river valley (the Rabiusa, a tributary of the Rhine), crossed it, and found a rather vertigo-inducing way up the other side.

I'd wondered why there were cameras at the bottom of this road checking that no trucks were trying to come up. Now I understood.

After a few kms of really spectacular riding, things became slightly more prosaic with a run down through the woods to Bonaduz, and then alongside the Rhine again to Tamins. Here, a combination of roadworks, afternoon heat, and a short but evil climb left me feeling a bit frazzled when I got to the village square, so when I saw a sign saying something like 'Cyclists! Do you need a break?' I didn't need asking twice. Following the arrow, I walked into a little room equipped with chairs, a table, and -- perhaps the greatest four words in the English language -- an Honesty Ice Cream Fridge.

Choose your ice-cream, leave the money in the box. What a concept! What a country! (The other fridge had drinks, and -- because you never know when you'll need one -- sausages. Out of shot is yet another fridge with cold beers in it.)

After hanging out in this Magical Room for a bit, I decided I should probably finish the ride, which was now -- really properly -- downhill all the way to the end (apart from one tiny tiny uphill to get through the outskirts of Chur and into the old town).

My hotel was right in the middle of town, and getting to it was a little bit fiddly -- but worth it: it's an old guild-house, on a tiny square full of happy people having happy sunny drinks. The rest of (old) Chur seemed thoroughly lovely too: full of interesting buildings and cafes and restaurants. And even some thoughtful touches for Overheated Cyclists...

A cooling station. I could have done with these all week!

Slightly to my disappointment, Chur turned out to be German rather than Romansch-speaking (not that I can speak or understand Romansch; but I was looking forward to encountering it again). But there were still plenty of Graübunden specialities to enjoy: I dined on Capuns (a sort of dolmades-type thing, but the stuffing is a type of spaetzli dough rather than rice), followed by Pizokels (more variants on spaetzli), and then just managed to make it back to my attic room before collapsing in a happily carb-laden stupour.

I decided to pass on the hotel guidebook's suggestion. My legs have done enough swinging for the day.

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Today's ride: 97 km (60 miles)
Total: 607 km (377 miles)

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