June 27, 2012
I take it all back...: Lausanne - Saillon
I TAKE IT ALL BACK. Today we rode for half the day with uninterrupted views of the lake and, for the other half, on quiet, narrow roads beside the young Rhône. The roads, once the river's tow-path, are now closed to all buy cyclists, walkers and the rare tractor.
We left Lausanne in the sunshine we were denied yesterday and we bowled, the wind at our wheels, along the banks of the lake. It lapped, exceptionally clean and transparent, at glistening grey rocks on the shore before retreating only to return with the damp tongue of seas everywhere.
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Sea birds wheeled and disputed territory above and beside us. An occasional small boat and, at one moment a rowing four which left white trails across the blue water, the oars creating little commas in the water. The opposite shore, France crept nearer with each kilometre until we could see individual houses looking across at us and winking in the sun. Above them, in places like Evian, sheer mountains rose into their clouds and out the other side.
In the old, ochre-kissed square at Vevey we stopped for coffee and croissants. It should have been for hot chocolate, for it was here in 1857 that Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate. Until then he'd made candles, but that was a dying trade mortally wounded by oil lamps. At a loose end, he invented milk chocolate and in 1875 enlisted Henri Nestlé as his marketing man. Their collaboration brought about the Nestlé company, which still has its headquarters in the town.
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Nearby Montreux is more famous, for its jazz festival, but a lot less appealing. Big men in white T-shirts were unloading crates of stainless steel from hired vans that parked across the road. Beyond the town, the crescent-shaped château of Chillon made up for the town's ugliness, a feature obviously appreciated by the Japanese, who had come by the thousand with cameras and guidebooks in hand.
To be honest, I had never heard of the place, although it is Switzerland's most visited ancient building. I'd like to tell you what the second most visited is but I can't think of any. It turns out even the Swiss didn't rate the place, still less the Japanese, until Lord Byron wrote a book about a monk held prisoner here in ghastly circumstances, It says something of me that I'd never heard of the book either...
We've been watching the Rhône grow smaller but more aggressive. It bounces angrily over rocks in a translucent blue-grey colour, the result of the glacier ice that feeds it. In time we will climb to those glaciers. For the moment, though, we found ourselves in more arcane surroundings. For, riding along a path beside the river, I saw an oval-shaped building of corrugated steel, higher at its ends than in the middle. I've seen places like them before.
"You know what?" I said. "That looks for all the world like a bike track."
And it was not only that but the headquarters of world cycle-racing, the offices of the Union Cycliste Internationale, a building unkindly nicknamed the Château Verbruggen after the bombastic Dutch chairman of the UCI who led to its being built. We'd known that we were riding round Aigle, the village that gives its address, not that the place was right on the bike path. Since it offered not only a chance to see the steep indoor track, the training circuit for riders from all over the world, but a chance for cold drinks as well, it was irresistible.
From the café we could hear a dim rumbling from the interior. It meant nothing to Karen, who had never seen an indoor track, but I recognised it straight away. It was the sound that wheels make on the taut drum of the bankings, the wood unsupported and the sound free to escape. Climbing stone steps to the seating revealed riders in Australian national shirts making a ragged attempt to stay together in team-pursuit formation.
I asked Karen what she thought of her first brush with international track cycling.
She hesitated for half a second and said: "Great legs!"
"And that's as far as your assessment goes?"
"No. They've got cute butts as well."
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