We'll try that later

The only section we have left to complete the Swiss cycling "Route 1" involves riding over the Furkapass, a very steep climb. We're not quite up to that yet, so we're putting it off "until we're fitter". In the meantime, we have been spending spare weekends cycling around the canton of Geneva and discovering a side to the place that we weren't aware existed.

Yesterday we were accompanied by our friends Bob and Zydre. The picture shows us having a coffee break in Vernier, which is a gorgeous village but unfortunate to be under one of the flight paths from the Geneva airport.

The canton (state) of Geneva has a large wine growing district called Satigny that was our destination. We resisted the temptation of the numerous wineries and stuck to cycling amongst the vines. We had lunch on the banks of the River Allondon near Russin, then headed around through Peney to Vernier, then back into the city.

The path we followed for most of this 43km ride is "Route 102", which starts from the back of Cornavin Railway station in the Geneva city centre. An excellent day's ride, without a mountain pass in sight.

Why not to buy a cheap bike rack

Straight after our glorious achievement of cycling 140kms in one weekend, disaster struck. As we were driving home with our bikes strapped on the back of the car, they flew off and crash landed in the middle of the road. Thankfully no-one was driving behind us and we managed to drag them off the road before causing problems for fellow motorists. The bikes were in pretty bad shape, with Peter's coming off far worse than mine.

After getting over the shock, the challenge was to find a bike repair shop with someone who could speak some English, or at least guess from our miming abilities that we wanted them to check our bikes and quote on repairs.

After one failed attempt, where we managed to get our perfectly good tyres and tubes replaced but no fixing of the buckled wheels, we found a shop that could help us. They declared Peter's bike a write-off and mine repairable, which made Peter very happy as he had the perfect excuse to invest in a new bike (pictured).

We're now back on the road and Peter is very pleased with his new Swiss bike. The crappy bike rack has been ditched (although it was not entirely to blame) and for now we'll be depending on trains to get our bikes from A to B.

Sion to Brig (75 kms)

With sore legs from the day before, we set off around 9am to ride from Sion to Brig. The cloudy weather cleared in the late morning, making for a beautiful day. This section of Route 1 continues along the Rhone valley through orchards, vineyards and industrial areas. As the valley narrows, the path rejoins the road in spots and takes you through quaint (and very quiet) villages.

A particular highlight is the beautiful lake at Sierre. We found it taking a detour to avoid a hilly on-road section, along with a gorgeous looking restaurant, swimming pool and picnic area. We got to see it twice as we had to double back and go up the hill after all (which wasn't as hard as it looked).

In the latter half of the ride, you enter the German speaking part of the country, with signage changing from familiar French to unfamiliar German. Despite speaking absolutely no Swiss-German, we managed to order a fantastic lunch from a restauranteur who spoke no English (pointing and smiling seems to work).

The ride ended around 5.30pm at Brig railway station where we got icecreams and prepared to take the 5.59 train back to Sion for another night in our little tent. This section of the ride was 75km, a personal best for Jess who before arriving in Switzerland had never ridden for longer than 60kms in one go. We completed this at a fairly slow pace, taking about 4hrs and 50 minutes of riding. More photos on Flickr.

Aigle to Sion (65 kms)

July 30: Well it's been a long time between drinks, but with our July visitors now dispatched, we have a spare weekend to continue our ride. Monday 1 August is a holiday in Switzerland (Swiss National Day), so with a long weekend ahead of us we decided to do two consecutive days of riding, camping at the middle point: Sion.

We packed up on Saturday morning, arriving at our campsite around 2pm due to heavy traffic around Montreux. It was after 3pm when we finally set off on the day's ride. Rather than choosing to ride down the valley, we decided to catch the train to Aigle to ride back up, taking advantage of the strong tailwind in that direction.

The ride from Aigle to Sion continues alongside the River Rhone, far from busy roads for most of the time. We got caught in heavy rain in St Maurice, but used this as an excuse to stop for coffee and icecream in one of the cafes there. It was after 8pm when we finally reached our campsite, feeling happy, hungry and tired. A hot shower, ham and cheese sandwiches from the campground 'supermarket' and a glass of wine, were welcome rewards after a busy day.

This leg of the ride was 65km and took us about 3hrs and 40 minutes, not counting a few breaks along the way. More photos on Flickr.

Lausanne to Aigle (60 kms)

We got on our bikes to complete the second leg of Route 1. Deciding to incorporate our day's ride with a night of camping, we drove to Aigle to set up camp in the local caravan park. Rather than take off from Lausanne (the point where we last finished) we chose to ride downhill from Aigle to Lausanne and then caught the train back to our campsite.

It was a fantastic bike path, taking us through apple orchards, alongside the River Rhone, through forests, along the lake, up through vineyards and finally into the very hilly city of Lausanne. It was a hot and humid day, with a tropical downpour of rain as well. Hardly the weather we expected to encounter in Switzerland!

This section was about 60kms and we completed it in about 3.5 hours. More photos available on Flickr.

Geneva to Lausanne (60 kms)

Entering ourselves in the June 12 CycloLeman bike race was the inspiration we needed to start our ride along Swiss National Cycling Route 1. The race offered riders three options of varying distances. We took the shortest one: 60kms from Geneva to Lausanne.

The roads were kept safe by officials and it was a challenge to get there fairly quickly. There was a nice tailwind and we made it to the finish line ahead of the recommended time for slow riders, in about 2 hours and 20 minutes. After the race we had lunch at the 'pasta party' put on by race organisers then caught the train back home. More info on http://pjgardner.blogspot.com/2005/06/geneva-to-lausanne-cyclotour-leman.html

In non-race conditions, this section of Swiss National Route 1 takes you away from the main roads by following back streets through quaint Swiss villages. It involves a bit of climbing to get up and away from the lake road.

Nine National Cycling Routes

The Swiss have 9 national cycling routes with a total length of over 3,000 kilometres.

We're going to start our cycling adventure by tackling Route 1 from Geneva to Andermatt (the pink line from the bottom LH corner of this map). It's a total of 309 kms and rated at a 'low' level of difficulty.

Our plan is to do the trip in small sections whenever we have a free weekend, taking the train or car to start off at the point where we finished last time. At first we plan to ride about 50kms each Saturday and Sunday, camping overnight.