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Europe
2005
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The following is an extract from an internet review of the Hotel du Nord in Annecy, it sums the hotel up very well, so I've nicked it - saves me having to make something up!
"The Hotel du Nord is situated over a bar on the Rue Sommeiller, Annecy, which is about a 5 minute walk to the old town and the lake. The hotel is tidy & comfortable. Breakfast isn't included in the price and costs an extra 7 euro pp. The dining room is exceptionally small and there isn't a lot of choice of food, late comers to breakfast will find almost nothing left so it may be advisable to find somewhere else to eat. The room was air conditioned which was an unexpected surprise in a hotel of this grade. The staff were pleasant and eager to help but the hotel does have the smallest lift of any I've ever stayed in just room for 2 people in there with no room for luggage which the desk clerk sends up after you."
Bike parking is a problem in Annecy centre, most hotels here are like the Du Nord with no parking facilities of their own on site, so we had to use a public covered car park a few hundred yards away. We leave the bikes there but never really feel they're that safe in the bike park area near to the main entrance just off the street. Our fears are well founded as one of the bikes is tampered with in our absence, nothing serious just annoying. That's not the hotel's fault though so we can't hold it against them. For all that though, the location of the Du Nord is excellent for walking into the old town, which takes about 5 minutes
"The
The entrance to Hotel du Nord
Annecy
Annecy itself is a revelation,
for all it's touristy attributes I'd
heard very little of it before now, but despite the commercial tweeness, it really is a
lovely
little place. The centrepiece of the area is the amazing lake with its brilliant blue
hue, which is not just the reflection of the sky as we first
thought, it really is naturally blue as we found out later. However, this wasn't always the case. In fact as recently as 1960 the
pollution levels of the lake were so bad that it actually threatened the health
of the town's people. This was mostly due to the high volume dumping of septic waste
into the water from the surrounding towns & villages.
In 1962 a major clean up
operation was started. As well as the technical difficulties, financial obstacles to the project were brought about by a few companies and hotels around the lake
who refused to pay their share of the cost to develop a new sewerage system. To force the issue, divers were sent underwater to plug all the raw sewerage outlets from these
uncooperative businesses, who'd been happily dumping all their crap into the lake for
years. Once
disconnected from any means of disposing of their waste, they had no choice but to stump up and the necessary work began. I'm not convinced that
Annecy at that time would have been a good place to be diver though - not a pleasant task I would imagine. The
operation was so successful that
Annecy is now reputed to have the cleanest lake in Europe which is now home to a huge amount of wildlife.
Annecy utilises
its lake
perfectly, and it's the mainstay of most of the activities here. The river which
feeds the lake is also put to good use within the town. The River Thiou is used
to create a series of canals, the effect this has on the aesthetics
of the place is magnificent. In some parts you feel like you've stepped onto a film set, it's an almost surreal experience. A more practical use of the river & canal is that due to
its
high flow rate of
water, it was used to create hydraulic power which was used by
the developing crafts industry here.
The following shots follow the
canal back from the lake & into the town.
It looks clean enough now!
The canal just before it
reaches the lake
The “Palais de l’Ile” (Palace on the Island)
Built in 1132 and still no rising damp!
This shot from our hire boat shows just how clean the water
is now.
Surprisingly it's also very warm! Annecy Castle is in the
background
From Annecy our
run continues north, by-passing Geneva and on into Switzerland to our next port of
call which is to be Couvet in the Jura Mountains. Once over the border
the road takes us up past Lake Jeaux to the village of Le Pont at the end of the
lake where we stop for a coffee and a bite to eat.
Entering Switzerland at this
point is a bit of a shock. In place of the Swiss chalets and beautiful
mountains we expected, we're greeted by rusting old corrugated tin roofed houses, flat
terrain and not a soul to be seen anywhere. Some of the houses are in a bad state of
repair with rubbish piled up high outside. This is what I'd have imagined
crossing into the southern ex- Russian states would be like but not Switzerland,
the land of Julie Andrews, lonely goat turds and Edelweiss. I've seen the film and
was expecting better.
We stopped here at this pavement
cafe in Le Pont Switzerland, thankfully the scenery had got a bit better by
now
Leaving Le Pont, we
point the bikes towards the Jura area and our hotel for the next couple of nights, the
Hotel de
l'Aigle at Couvet. The "mountains" here could be more aptly described as gentle rolling
hills but
who am I to argue, if they want to call them mountains that's their
business.
Approaching Couvet is like entering a ghost town, all that's missing is the tumbleweed and the vultures. What do people do
here? We haven't seen any signs of life since entering Switzerland
except for the people at the Le Pont cafe and two coppers with a speed gun - probably the most boring job in the world given
the lack of people using the
road! But we're in for an even bigger shock, If we'd thought the rest of Switzerland so far had been relatively unpopulated, then
Couvet is the archetypical, "One horse town"...............minus
the horse.
After checking into our rooms which are very nice and incredibly spacious, we
take ourselves off for a walk. There's not a soul anywhere, the shops are all shut and there's nowhere else to eat or drink apart from our Hotel,
which mercifully is excellent.
We pretty soon discover that we've arrived here in a holiday week, so the whole village has upped
sticks and buggered off to wherever it is Swiss people go in Summer. We don't
mind them going away on holiday but someone could have at least left a light on! Good
job the hotel is a good 'un then.
We spend the afternoon with a drink or two and
then go into the restaurant to eat later. The food here is good. The way they put the starter and the main course all on the same plate is interesting, maybe there's a shortage of plates in Switzerland. In France it's gas, Switzerland crockery,
wonder what we'll find a shortage of in Germany..... Probably sunbeds. The beer's ok though so we're
happy.
The Hotel de l'Aigle, Couvet Switzerland, packed it wasn't!
"Man, it's total gridlock!" ...... Couvet Village
The following morning we
awake to a grey day, and it's lashing down with rain. Riding out on the bikes would mean getting soaked which we don't fancy, so we
toddle off to the station to catch a train up to the town of Neuchatel on the shores of Lake Neuchatel.
The Swiss rail service is superb, our train arrives bang on time and is clean
and cheap, why can't we in the UK run a decent rail service? Other countries
manage it without a problem, maybe they don't so many hamsters on the line - or
whatever excuse Railtrack are using this week!
The train clatters it's way through some stunning scenery and as we
head towards Neuchatel, the Jura mountains get quite a fair bit bigger at this end, so THAT'S why they're called mountains! If the weather
was a bit less crappy I dare say we'd appreciate it a lot more.
As we near the town, the graffiti becomes very apparent. It's everywhere, scribbled
over almost every
available blank wall we pass, and on most of the railway's rolling
stock. It's not particularly artistic either so it gives the place an air
of neglect. It also doesn't improve when we get off the train and
walk into the centre, every flat surface of every building seems to be
scrawled and daubed with the swirls and patterns of the aerosol
"artist" here as well.
Maybe it's because the weather's so
inclement but we find Neuchatel to be totally bland, and apart from the
graffiti, devoid of
any real character. I think if I was kid living here I'd also take to
splashing paint on the walls. The place has been re-developed to a
modern plan which has left it so sanitised and uninspiring in parts that
I can for once sympathise with the people who have graffiti'd it.
Someone needed to give it some colour........It's possibly the most
boring and unlovable town on the planet!
Walking along by the lake & then into the town none of us are particularly impressed, so we return to the station to get our train back to Couvet, and the bar of the hotel to sink some beers. It's a dank dark miserable old day, and we're wet.
A grey and uninspiring Lake Neuchatel
After our evening meal we're out once again for a walk around Couvet and we end up near the train station where there's a Swiss guy walking his dog. I bend down and gave him a pat - the dog not the Swiss guy - and a conversation is stuck up between us, but he speaks very little English and my French
/ German / Italian is crap. He actually speaks French and mentions that he
comes to England periodically for "pièces". It takes
me a while to realise he means "parts". By now the others have come
over to join us and between us we establish that he comes over to the UK for
car parts, and that he has a garage locally where he restores old MG, Jaguar & Triumph cars, apparently he's a British classic car nut!
He asks if we'd like to go see his garage, so not wanting to be rude we
say yes
and follow him. Expecting some little lean-to shed with a rusting old pile of
crap in it we trudge up the hill after him and his dog. When we get there we we're totally
gobsmacked, this place is huge. He opens the door and we follow him
in, what a sight greets us!. Being an incurable petrolhead I love old cars, I have a real passion for them having owned and restored one or two in years gone by. And here we are
now, in this random guys garage in the sleepiest backwater village in Switzerland, staring in disbelief at a valuable old Jag XK120 and a 150,
plus several original late 1960s MGBs and up on a hydraulic four poster
lift is a Triumph TR3. Around the floor
are engines that I recognise from old British cars and God knows what else. This whole
workshop is just awesome.
Eventually he invites us into his house where he sits us down and opens a bottle
of Scotch for us lads and a bottle of Port for the girls. We stay all night
chatting away about cars, families and anything else that cropped up in between,
he turns out to be a fascinating and very interesting guy. We drink his
whole bottle of Scotch and the girls finish off the port bottle - I
think pissed was an understatement. When we leave the house to stagger back
to the hotel we're very happy and it is very
late.........and we can't get the key in the door!
Gill in his workshop alongside his
E Type Jaguar which he uses as his everyday car!
A new day dawns and with it a new chapter in our tour. As we pack up to leave Couvet surprisingly enough none of
us has a hangover and we're soon on our way, riding up to Colmar in the
Alsace region of France near the German border. It's still raining a bit
but not as bad as it was yesterday. The ride up is unremarkable
and by lunchtime we've arrived at Colmar and the sun has put in an appearance - it's getting quite hot again
Wesley and I have now kept our promise from a year
earlier, when we said we'd return here with our wives.
On our last visit to Colmar we only got to see a small part of this lovely little town so this time we were going to rectify that. We're staying in the same place,
The
Hotel St Martin that we stayed at
the previous year with the others. It's a nice hotel but this time
they've
put us in the old side, where the rooms aren't as comfortable as the modernised
rooms at the rear of the hotel, all the same it's a great hotel but very pricey.
There are cheaper hotels which look just as nice in Colmar but just not in the
nice location of the old town as this one is.
Colmar