22/8/18 – 23/8/18 – Sion, Switzerland
So this was it, our first visit to Switzerland. Neither if us really knew what to expect other than mountains and some amazing roads through them – plus its supposed to be an expensive place to live.
Having spoke with our friends Adele and Charlotte who we were on our way to meet at Lake Maggiore (who had travelled a similar route a couple of days prior) told us they paid 58 Euros one-way to drive through Mont Blanc! We decided that we would try and find a toll free route. We did and it only added an additional hour to the journey. Sion was roughly at the mid-point between the two – hence our choice of overnight stop.
As we reached the French/Swiss border it was time to get our vignette to allow you to drive on Swiss motorways however, when we got to the border Crossing at Le Chatêlard the border checkpoint was unmanned so we spent the next half an hour going between various cafe’s and restaurants (Most of which sold Marijuana) trying to buy the correct pass. No one at these places sold them or they just said get them from the border (Given the Moho is over 3.5 Tonnes, you have to buy a series of day tickets for your duration of stay – Or a 10 day pass that we later found out about) Eventually one shop owner gave us a form to fill in and told us to use it on the border when we left….with little option we proceeded feeling somewhat nervous.
It wasn’t long before leaving Le Chatêlard that we started our mountain assent into the Alps and the first part of what we knew of Switzerland was realised. Perhaps the most spectacular view was along the Forclaz Pass where we stopped to admire the view over the Valle du Rhone – See Google 360 degree Street view image here as our photos don’t do it justice.
On our descent we began to notice a very bad smell coming from the front of the Moho. At first we thought it was one of the tyres catching on the wheel arches but then I noticed the brakes were really starting to fade – this was certainly not the place to have a problem with brakes! Luckily for us, it was only about a couple of miles to Martingy at the bottom of the valley where we stopped at a petrol station.
As soon as we got out, there was smoke coming from the front brakes and you could feel the heat coming from them – it was obvious what the problem was – trying to slow nearly 4 tonnes for an hour or so coming down a mountain. It was my fault as I hadn’t used the gears enough to slow us and I had treated driving the Moho like driving a car. Oh, it was 37 degrees outside too, so the air didn’t do much to cool them down either!
After an hour of waiting for them to cool, we were on our way to Sion – about a 30 minute drive from where we had stopped and it was initially a very flat road – I had never driven so cautiously and barely touched the brakes for as long as I could.
Our overnight stop was just outside the town at an altitude of 1100M, so I knew we had some more hills to go up. (We use the maps app on the phone, its a standard navigation tool and doesn’t account for things like vehicle weight or dimensions like some of the other motorhome or truck specific sat-navs out there – I had thought about it before we left but didn’t fancy spending between £500-£1000) Anyway, we turned off onto a road with a sign stating 2.3M wide max (we are 2.4m) – our thoughts were they must allow some tollerance…..Ooops!
About a half a mile into the ascent, the road became single width. We had already gone up a couple of switchbacks/hairpin bends, so it was now too late to turn back and quite frankly too dangerous to reverse back down. This is where the really scary drive started.
Keeping the revs as low as possible and staying in first gear on the hairpins (Second gear didnt have the torque to pull us up!) we gingerly made our way though turn after turn, beeping the horn on our approach to blind bends – hoping nothing was coming down in the other direction. I remember saying to Lorraine DON’T TALK TO ME as I was concentrating too hard. There was one occasion where a VW camper was coming and it had to almost balance on the edge to give us enough room to get through – I was glad we were on the inside lane!
Eventually though we made it to our stopover – a rather large carpark mid way up the mountain with toilet and showering facilitates (GPS 46.256847, 7.343349) The carpark is a starting point for some good walks (judging from the photos outside the on-site tourist office.) The views however were enough for us plus we needed a drink and some time to recover from the somewhat frightening drive!
We got to walk Marley around the field behind the car park and hide from him among the freshly bailed grass. Lorraine got over excited and ended up loosing her phone there – thank goodness for the find my phone app as we would never have got it back.
On the walk back to the Moho, we saw the most spectacular colourful sky against the mountains for sunset, before being treated to a lightning show that went on for at least an hour.
The following morning Lorraine went for a run – I’m not sure how far she got from the Moho given the steep surrounding roads. I’m sure I saw her run past the van at least three times!
