June 30, 2012
Visiting Switzerland's lighthouse: Gletsch - Disentis-Muster
YOU MAY THINK - and you'd be right - that Switzerland is a landlocked country. And, as such, has no need for lighthouses.
But at the top of the Oberalp pass there is not only a lighthouse but a copy of the one that stands at the mouth of the Rhine, in Holland. That one, in Hoek van Holland, is useful; the Swiss one is there out of brotherly love and to make the point that the Rhine starts its lengthy journey across several countries from just that point.
Our day started not with that climb, though, but the rest of the Furkapass. That, you will remember, is the source of the Rhône.
Just one letter's difference but quite a different river, for the Rhône flows out into the Mediterranean after causing enormous traffic jams in the city of Lyon, where it occupies much of the available space.
We dreaded seeing our motorcycling friends, having left them getting ready in the hotel, but they turned off at the start to ride the Grimselpass instead. We could see them across the valley, rushing up the mountainside like black ants.
On our climb, we were blessed with blue skies to make the most of stunning views. There are days you're on the roof of the world and little by little that was the sensation we enjoyed.
The road turned back on itself over and over, a sheer wall of stone on one side and a sheer drop into the tortuous valley on the other. Our lungs protested as we passed 2 000 metres, our legs capable but our lungs protesting that oxygen was thin.
And then, at 2 400m, the road flattened and we reached the top, took a picture of the summit sign, and embarked straight into a descent as winding as the ascent. But whereas on the way up it had been we who had delayed others, now it was others who delayed us. Car drivers thought they could get round the hairpins fast enough to avoid letting us pass; bus-drivers knew they couldn't but filled all the space anyway. Our ride became a ritual of freewheeling, braking with screeching rims, watching that those coming up the other way were sticking to their side of the road and that the bus drivers weren't about to take both sides.
We paused in Andermatt, a town which has always existed for tourists and showed it. People travelling south in Switzerland before 1831 could get over the St Gothard pass but it was a rough ride and they were glad of a night in Andermatt to rest their bones. Then someone dug a railway tunnel through the rock and that was the end of trade.
The railway was so important to Switzerland that the army came in when there were labour troubles and shot four of the strikers. The army took a shine to the place because it opened one of its national headquarters there, which scared off people for good. Or so it seemed.
Tourists went to nearby St-Moritz instead. There, their presence pushed prices out of the reach of many and they remembered the good old days when they could get a cheap hotel in Andermatt. Which revived the town.
The Oberalp, which starts outside the town, is neither pretty nor an appealing ride. It was busy, narrow and windy. The sight of families gathering mown grass to make hay, the parents working with broad, coarse-tined rakes and their children joining in when they pleased, made for pictures but did little to make the climb more fun.
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It was only when we found the lighthouse at the top and realised that in a single day we had passed the source of two of western Europe's most important rivers that out day brightened up.
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