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| The beautiful lake Luzern |
Well we did it! With huge help from Bruce, the good old Mondeo estate and our little home on wheels, we made it to the top over two days. We left Lake Luzerne on saturday morning and trundled across the valley floor with the Swiss Alps rather eerily getting closer and closer.
Bruce bet us two bottles of champagne that we wouldn't make Andermatt by sunday night so the challenge was on !! Once in the lower Alps we climbed and climbed and although like nothing we had done before it was manageble. Bruce met us at Goshenen just below Andermatt on Saturday and we had a beer. We were now pretty confident we could meet the challenge. We drove back down to the camp and then restarted at Goshenen the following morning. The steep hills started almost immediately and we both had the colly wobbles as we watched bruce and Arby (the caravan!) disappearing up the mountain and through one of the first rather horrible avalanche shelters. We tended to walk through these because the noise of thundering motor bikes of which there were hundreds was just too scary.
Soon the motor bikes were joined by Ferraris galore out for a Sunday trip to the top. We made Andermatt in about 2 1/2 hours with bruce waiting for us as we emerged from a long tunnel. Devils bridge before the tunnel was extraordinary and we were both glad to be cycling at this point and not one of the rock climbers that were scaling the sheer and super high rock face.
Now it was only 7 miles to the top ......unfortunately I thought Bruce said 7 kms so was bitterly disappointed when I thought we were nearly there only to find we still had another 4 miles. I must confess there were many occasions when we were quicker walking than cycling! but it was an extraordinany experience and we struggled on and on and on and up and up and up.! We were now above the first drifts of snow, really quite deep in parts. We passed a huge concrete structure that turned out to be an air vent for the road tunnel under us. 3 kilometres from the top the road divided and we left the fast road and joined the old road made from cobbles. It was hard work and we would love to have seen some Marmots (We could here them calling) and then around a corner was the welcome sight of Bruce's smiling face and the car and caravan decked out with Gemma's Union Jack! We were at the top....2106 metres.
Wow!!! and it was so worth the effort. The views, the lake at the top, the snow, the blue sky were just mind blowing and made us all feel very humble.
So then we went down !! and down and down. The first 14 km on the old cobbled road you can see in the picture which rattled our teeth, our brains and our bones! We were over taken by 10 guys from the 16th Regiment of the Royal Artillery who sweetly stopped to talk to us. They were already on their 2nd pass of the day and were riding from London to Venice in ten days, a distance of 1000 miles ! We met them later in our camp and they were gracious enough to say how proud they were of us ! the British Army no less. One of their group had hit 50 miles an hour going down hill !
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| a beer at Goshenen |
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| The first hill out of Goshenen with the first avalanche tunnel |
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| Sal getting the best possible picture of the valley we had just come from |
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| Twists and bends as we went up |
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| At the top at last |
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| Other tourists took pictures of us at this sign!! Goodness knows what they are going to do with them |
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| The longed for daily beer. bruce had cooled them in the snow. |
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| Then the cobbled road down to Airolo. |
