Decisions, decisions....
We woke up in the morning to thick cloud so we could not see the fantastic view from the fromagerie car park. After subjecting Charlotte to a Vincent shower we drove down to the lake to have breakfast at Saint Aubin Port. We all enjoyed eggy bread and then decided to take the dogs on a walk along the lake side. Charlotte managed to navigate a nice circular route that came back to the town so we could walk round the small port and have a look at all the boats and the sea birds - including crested prochard ducks, moorhens and crested grebes.
We then decided to drive to Geneva and have a stop for lunch before dropping Charlotte at the airport. This proved quite difficult due to closed carparks and roadworks but eventually we found somewhere to park by Lake Geneva. After lunch we drove to the airport and managed to drop Charlotte at the 'rapide drop off'. Mike hit the height barrier on the way in - it stated 3 m and we’re not quite 3 m tall - but luckily no damage was done. We then drove into France to go to the supermarket, much cheaper than Switzerland, and onto Divonne Les Baines, where you can park right by the lake.
We now had to plan where we were going next. We thought maybe we would go to Annecy, in France, somewhere Michael had always wanted to go, but we still had some Swiss francs left, so we decided that we would go and find some more mountain air. So in the morning after a quick run around the lake for me and a dog walk for Mike we drove around Lake Geneva, again, to Saviese. We arrived at the large carpark that was totally in cloud. Occasionally we could see the cows in the neighbouring field but mostly we could hardly see 10 feet in front of us.
After lunch we decided to walk the main walk in the area, along the Bisse du Torrent -Neuf. This irrigation channel was originally built in 1430, an incredible ambitious project in its time. The hike takes you along a 6 km kilometre path which leads through forest and then continues upwards. I am sure on clear days there are magnificent views. The clouds only allowed us a peep of the views a couple of times - but they also enabled us to walk on the suspension bridges without really knowing how far we were from the ground! The dogs were not impressed with the metal tracks of the bridges, so they had to be carried over each one! After four suspension bridges and two hours we finally got to the top (Brac) and found that the café was closed - what a surprise! So we turned round and headed back down, again carrying the dogs over the bridges, to collapse into Vincent for a well deserved cup of tea!
Over tea we discussed where we would go next as we realised that we only had another day in Switzerland with our prepaid road tax. As this is expensive to renew we decided we would have to leave Switzerland by the end of Wednesday so we started planning a route back up to Lake Geneva and along the southern French side. Mike then had an improptu call from Mirielle, who suggested that we go to Italy as we were almost there. So that is where we are going tomorow, via the Simplon pass. Wish us luck!