Despite being up a mountain and next to a glacier, the morning sun felt warm on my skin when sheltered from the wind beside the Kesch hut. Astonishingly I was packed and ready before the others, and took a few moments to soak up the surroundings, scanning my eyes along the horizon, and taking in the jagged summits. There was barely a cloud in the sky, and it felt like one of ‘those days’ that was going to be warm, clear and beautiful from start to finish. My gaze turned down the valley, and to the trail we’d be about to descend: 1000 meters of downhill, with barely a pedal stroke required. The challenge of last nights climb, the stew, the shower, it all felt like a distant memory now, and we were about to reap the rewards.

Many of the hikers staying at the hut had already set off down the same trail, including a German family who seemed to be dressed exclusively in tennis gear. Perhaps they knew something we didn’t, but I don’t expect there are many good tennis courts up mountains in Switzerland. I was a little concerned about how the tennis family and the other hikers would react to us flying up behind them on the bikes, but we were met with smiles and cheers by all of them. Fun is infectious.

The trail was fast and loose to begin with, not many corners, just careful line choice over the rocks. It reminded me of the drop down from Dunkery Beacon towards Minehead which I’d enjoyed so much during an XC marathon event earlier in the year.

As the trail wound its way down the mountain we peeled away from the rocks and gravel and into a rooty, loamy forest, where I felt much more at home. We stopped and repeated the ‘no punctures, no crashes’ mantra which had carried us safely through the trip so far, I promptly electricuted myself on a fence, and then we dropped in. Within about 30 seconds Andrew went arse over tit, clipping his pedal on a big rock that had nearly snipered Sam and I moments before. This was a real gateway moment and could have been much worse. Luckily he was no more than a bit shaken, and we were able to carry on down the mountain, through the woods and beside the river until reaching the road at the foot of the valley. Andrew’s off encouraged us to proceed with caution, which in hindsight was probably for the best.

We climbed on the road for a couple of miles before, stopping in the small villiage of Latsch, where we found a little cafe run by an older woman who spoke even less English than we did German. This was the sort of spot most holidaymakers would never find, and is part of what I love about touring by bike or on foot, the opportunitistic spots, far from the places you’d find by looking for ‘Hidden Gems’ frequented by huge numbers, or following the best Tripadvisor reveiws. A tiny cafe in a tiny town, on a beatiful day, with barely a soul around.

Naturally we ordered more of the delcious caramel nut tart and chatted away the time, soaking up the sun and having a real restful pause. Starting the day with a descent meant that we’d clocked up nearly a third of our days distance whilst barely turning the cranks. This was great for morale and really allowed us to relax. Ayoob told an amusing story involving getting caught short and wiping a bum with a rock, at which point we realised the German family sat next to us probabaly could speak english, and would have overheard the whole messy story. Es tut mir Leid.

We would only have one climb to tackle on this day, up to 2800m and back down again to our end point in Davos. Similarly to previous days the climb was ridable to begin with, although up what must be the steepest bit of fire road I’ve ever seen. We stopped on the way up for a dip in an ice cold river and ate our very small and expensive sandwiches from the hut the night before. At least they had delicious little pickles in.

Carrying on up the valley we continued to pedal for another couple of kilometers though herds of cows jingling away in that way swiss cows do. I found myself wondering whether the cows minded the noise, and wheher it got tiresome to the locals.

Despite my best efforts I’m still fairly scared of cows, and usually go a long way out of my way to avoid them particularly when I’m on my own. Andrew being a countryside boy seemed quite content to nudge them out the way, although even he looked a bit uneasy around the large bull, nose ring on show and looking bolshy. I positioned myself further from it that the others.

The cow fear has been something I’ve struggled to conquer, but it wasn’t helped by a conversation at work the week before, when a customer told me a tale of being trampled by one and left unable to walk for some time. These sorts of incidents are uncommon, but I can’t shake the feeling that even though they are generally docile, they are quite big.

Eventually we reached the point of submitting to the inevitable hike. From the starting point of a hike-a-bike to the summit never looks that far, in my experience it’s always worse or longer than you think it might be. Don’t get me wrong I love hiking, and I love biking, but spending two hours lugging the bike up a mountain in stiff soled XC shoes is not quite my idea of a good time. It’s type two stuff, done for the outcome rather than for itself. I can only blame myself for the shoe choice.

The hike really dragged on, very slowly reaching a plateu where I caught sight of our summit and remounted for a final push to the top, before turning to shout encouragement at the others. We’d made it.

Standing there was surreal, so high up, just us and our bikes with patches of snow around and the mountains stretching out for miles in all directions. The trail up here was faint, barely travelled and with not a person in sight. I imagine very few people have been here with a bike.

We descended the mountain cautiously, the trail was very loose and steep, and it would have been easy to get wrong. The consequences of doing yourself some damage in an area this remote didn’t bear much consideration, but it was so much fun, our little team working our way down the mountain together, taking pauses to let the brakes cool down and soak up the endless veiws.

From the foot of the descent we opted to follow the road into Davos. Sam had stopped for a poo, at which point and the rest of us discussed a mutiny. It’s hard changing the route, you dont want to cut anybodies fun short. Sam was routemaster general for this trip, and had spent the months beforehand ironing out the details, seaching out the best singletrack, and generally obsessing over it, but I think we were in agreement that for the first time in what was after all supposed to be a holiday, we’d like to deviate from the plan and arrive at our hotel early.

The hotel in Davos was fancy. I think people younger and cooler than me might have called it boujie, with comfortable beds, a great shower, and a bike store equipped with work stand. We found our room, and promptly collapsed on the sofa. After a little while vegetating and getting lost into the wifi network, we got cleaned up and headed out for dinner. The waiter in our restaurant of choice seemed to take a shine to Sam and gave him the nickname ‘James Blonde’ for reasons we didn’t entirely understand. We grabbed a few beers after dinner and sat in the hotel garden, chatting nonsense and making the most of an earlier finish than we’d had on any of our other days.

It’s hard to strike the balance on a trip like this, you want it to be hard, to be epic, to push you and challenge you, but still to make time for pauses to let the days soak in, and on this day I could tell we all really appreciated the earlier finish. We’d pushed ourselves enough.

I slept like a log, clean and showered in the cosy hotel bed, until 7am when I was met with the full force of an agressive Andrew, bearing his teeth like some sort of enraged marmot. We have a slightly embarassing history of wrestling in a sort of hopeless childish attempt at achieving macho dominance over one another, but this was the first time he’d picked his battle so early in the day, and it took me off guard. We are built like cyclists, not wrestlers, and are about as far from macho as you could get, but I do always beat Andrew, even when he assaults me in nothing but my pants at 7 o’clock in the morning.

Wrestling done, I jumped into the shower, only to emerge to the sound of some sort of smooth latin jazz fusion playing, and the sight of Sam, in nothing but his bib shorts, slowly securing his heart rate strap to his chest whilst making prolonged eye contact. I absolutely pissed myself laughing, and can’t shake the image even now.

We’d now finished our big riding loop, and today was to be a sort of bonus day. We’d leave our bags at the hostel, and skip the pedalling in favour of a chairlift up the mountain. This took us us straight to the trails where we rode a section of the Alps Epic route, which meandered down the mountain with a series of tech climbs and short descents. It was a lot like some of my local woods, but far longer, with seemingly endless techy rooty challenges. I enjoyed these, and the knowledge that if you fucked one up you had another hundred opportunities to get others right. The day before we’d picked up some Swiss Trail Bells in order to be courteous and be heard by hikers coming up the trail, and I enjoyed us jingling away, like a little herd.

The descent took longer than we’d planned, and just as we did the day before we opted to cut this day short and take a ride on the Swiss Mountain Railway. It wouldnt really be a trip to Switzerland without boarding one of these incredible trains, winding its way up and around the mountains, over bridges and through tunnels. The infrastructure here is truely wonderous. I found myself thinking there wouldn’t be a better place on earth to be a train conductor, and that I could stand on that train peering out the windows for days on end without tiring of that veiw. It was a perfect end for me, and then I fell asleep.

We had the potential to ride again the next day, but I was on the fence. My legs were shattered, and I felt the effects of heat exhaustion creeping in. In the end I opted to sit out the final pedal of the week, and instead reclined beside the lake in Davos, writing a some notes in my little journal and doing a few bits of bike maintenence. It felt tough not to do the last section with the others, but I didn’t want to risk ending on a low point, and was concious of the many hours driving we were about to embark upon, all the way back to Bristol, and without Andrew who we’d be leaving in Bern. Sitting beside that lake I felt content, and thought through all of the previous days adventures, replaying them in my mind.

Before long the others arrived back, they were smiling, I was smiling, we were done. We loaded the bikes onto the roof of the car, rolled out of the carpark, and set our sights for home. The plan that had filled us with excitement for the last six months had come to fruition. The WhatsApp chat, the Strava files, the kit choices and bike prep. Sometimes I think that’s the most important thing about going on adventures like these, it’s having something to focus on. If a trip was cancelled the week before I’d still be glad of the source of focus for the preceeding months, and in this case, the months following too.

It’s some time now since this trip ended, and the process of writing about it has taken me much longer than expected, but this is no bad thing. I’ve been sitting down at the laptop less, but every time I do I re-immerse myself in this trip. grab my scrawlled notes in my little diary, and try and type them up into some sense. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

With winter swiftly rolling in and the nights becoming dark I am setting my sights on some new goals and challenges for the winter and early next year, which I’ll be sure to share in a future post.

Until next time. ✌️