Day 3, 3 countries. We started off in France, crossed into Switzerland and out the other side into Italy.
Our first POI today was a town called Vevey on the banks of beautiful Lake Geneva. It is very posh there, one could say, vevey nice! 😉 This is my first time in Switzerland and it hasn't disappointed. The purpose of the stop in Vevey, was to visit Charlie Chaplin's statue and a giant fork!
On the ride down, which incidentally was in glorious weather, I noticed that Grizzly seems to be getting quite a following, least I'm guessing they were his fans all queued up behind him on the twisty bits! A growing following 🤣
A little way round the shoreline we stopped for another statue. There was no smoke on the water at that town this time but we had no trouble finding Freddie Mercury.
Still in Switzerland our next stop was Gorges Du Trient. It's a deep river gorge with a wooden boardwalk tacked the rock face above the water. It is about 200m long. Was interesting but maybe not worth €7.
Our journey into Italy took us over the Col de Grand Saint Bernard. On a fabulous day like today, there was no way we'd be paying for the tunnel. The route over is fabulously twisty and there's a lake at the top, not to mention the St Bernard dog museum! A great ride into the snowline at over 2700 meters.
A few yards further on and we entered Italy and made our twisty way down the mountain. I must be getting old. I was taking it steady I know but guys were rocketing passed. Too fast for my liking. One little error and it's a long way down.
After our first Italian fuel stop, about 15c cheaper than France, we decided to skip the next stop, a roman road segment and move on to the last of the day, the Devil's Bridge at Pont San Martin. The bridge is a roman bridge dating from 1st century BC and is actually called Pont San Martin, so I'm not actually sure why they also call it Ponte del Diavalo. You can't miss it if you are on the road through and it's definitely worth a photo.
From there we only had 20 or so kilometres to do to Piverone and our stop for the night. After freshening up, it was 30 degrees, we took a stroll about 100 metres to lake Viverone. It's nice but being this close to water means mosquitos and they love to lunch on me. I killed number before finally closing the window, much to Grizzly's displeasure but the room has a fan so that should keep us cool overnight.
Tomorrow is set to be hot again, anything up to 29 degrees. It's great to be riding in the dry but even with the summer mesh jacket, it can still get pretty sticky in those temperatures. Mustn't complain though, rain would be much less fun. We'll end our day in Ferrara. There are no POI stops tomorrow, just 212 miles of riding.
"Ride your own ride " I was always told. I am 70 years old in two weeks time, I did not want to be a statastic on the Swiss Alps.
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