August 8, 2016
A few kilometres from Geneva at a mystery place: The day we had been looking forward to
Today was a day I had really been looking forward to. We were going to meet my cousin Andy. If you followed my journal last year you will realise that we rode from Paris to Nice following the route that Aunty Pat and her partner (later husband) took when the escaped from the Nazi invasion of Paris in WW2. Andy is her son and was born in 1941. After the war he and his mother came to New Zealand and stayed for around a year. I remember the time clearly. Andy feel off his bike and I saw that scar again today. Pat died very young when Andy was around 13. Over the years I have seen him briefly a couple of times. Once in about 1979 and then a couple of years later at a railway station in Lyon when we were changing trains. You can see therefore that this was going to be an important meeting.
We left Laussane on the 7.25 ferry to Thonon and when we arrived there was his smiling face waiting for us at the port. We had a cup of coffee talking in a mixture of my very poor French and his just slightly better English. The memory of the whole meeting will be for me that he has a lovely face that seem to smile all the time. Andy had arranged something very nice for us to do. He took us on great bike tracks and small roads from Thonnon toYvoire. Yvoire is an old medieval village on the shores of Lake Leman about 18km from Thonon It has been titivated to the nth degree and is absolutely overrun with tourists. We poked around and sat once more in a cafe drinking coffee and talking.
Then it was time for Andy to ride back to Thonnon and for us to continue on our way. He hopes to come to New Zealand for another visit next year and find his New Zealand relatives. We had no reservations and it was getting quite hot so we thought we would just ride on until we found something suitable. The first hotel was 330 Swiss Francs a night so we decided to give that a miss. Then we saw a sign pointing down here and came to a place with a big H in front of it. In we swooped just to find we were arriving at the Accident and Emergency Dept of a hospital - thankfully something we didn't need. We came to this place - don't know what it is called but it is just a few kilometres from Geneva. It was expensive 165 Swiss Francs and without a doubt one of the worst hotel rooms I have been in but it would do, as we didn't fancy climbing the hill in the heat and trying to find something else. Don't quite know where we will go tomorrow as the way ahead doesn't seem all that clear.
Today's ride: 40 km (25 miles)
Total: 274 km (170 miles)
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