SKATING THROUGH SWITZERLAND
By Maureen A. Hennessy

I’m a sucker for offbeat and adventurous travel experiences and was delighted to find this one. The success of any tour depends on many factors, the most important being the participants. Spending so much time with people you’ve never met could be scary.

With an active tour you start with at least one thing in common -- in this case it was skating. Our good-natured and adventurous group with an age range of around twenty to sixty-five proved quite compatible.  

I chose the Zephyr Skate Tours Swiss trip for the scenery and because I had never visited Switzerland. It proved a wise choice, although I must confess to some trepidation about the terrain. There was good reason for fear. In 1997 I broke my back when I skated too fast down a long hill and encountered a large pothole at the bottom. The bike path had been damaged in a flood and while I’m a pretty good skater, my braking skills were non-existent. I believed this tour would force me to conquer my new fear of falling.

Swiss geography is dominated by the Alps, by glaciers and the rivers Rhine and Rhone. The Rhone served as our guide and was in view most of the time. The Valais area where we skated is also where the largest valley glacier in Europe is found.

Our tour started in Visp, Switzerland, a lovely little town bathed in late summer sun. On the first day I paid rapt attention to braking techniques taught by our expert guides in the optional daily skate clinic. The weather was perfect and most of our group went for a skate to Lalden, a tiny, typical Swiss village with houses right up to the street edge and flowers everywhere.

An old man shuffled down the street toward us wearing an old Swiss-style mountain cap and carrying a cane.  He spoke to Sabine, one of our guides, in Swiss German and invited us in for a glass of wine.  He proudly showed off his home-made vats of wine: red, white, and a stronger schnapps. After Johan set out benches in the yard we spent an hour toasting and drinking his free-flowing wine.

Dinner that evening was a traditional Swiss German pork dish at the Hotel Simplon, after which some turned in for the night while the others sampled Swiss night life. This was to be the pattern for our evenings, fabulous food and wine followed by investigation of the local night life.

The days rolled one into another and the language switched from Swiss German to Swiss French. The Swiss version of these languages differs in some small but important ways from that of France and Germany. We skated through apple orchards and vineyards and the weather held warm and sunny in the valley. One of our stops was at the Hotel du Forum in Martigny. Dinner in the hotel that night was memorable, not only because of a delectable menu but because the hotel is also a food service school.

Each day we were offered the choice of short, medium, or long routes. One day I chose the shorter and found myself whiling away the wait for the van in a tiny village. I skated to an outdoor cafe where I tried an excellent Swiss beer. In time I was joined by some locals and made an effort at conversation in my truly awful French. When I asked them to identify the green liquor in one woman’s glass, they offered me a sip and I tried it. Whew! Turns out it was about 90% alcohol and one sip was enough.

Late in the afternoon, the van picked me up and took me to join the others in Martigny. You can see a castle high over Martigny from nearly everywhere around the town, but finding the way up to it was daunting. I followed a sign that read “to castle” that led to a kind of apartment complex. The word I should have looked for is “chateau.”

When I finally stumbled on the right path it was about a twenty minute upward climb to reach the chateau. There was an authentic looking pub built into what might have been an entry hall – complete with serving wench. The other rooms in the chateau were utilized as a museum but the best part was the sweeping view from the ramparts.

The next day we skated a path that wound through cornfields from Martigny to Aigle. That night we stayed at the Hotel Du Nord and feasted at the La Croix Blanche on a fabulous variety of pastas with several kinds of sauce.

On what turned out to be the last skate we finished in Bouveret where we caught the boat across Lake Geneva to Montreaux. From there we boarded a train for the scenic journey to Gstaad, where we would be free to do whatever we wished for the afternoon. The picturesque chalet village of Gstaad is in southwestern Switzerland. German is the official language, but English and French are also spoken. Although the village is not large, there are more than 50 restaurants, 29 bars and discos, a casino and an extraordinary variety of shops.

Gstaad has a reputation as a destination for jet-set skiers, but there is much more to do here. The area is perfect for hiking, rafting, biking, paragliding, golf and tennis, not to mention skating. The Gstaad Sports Centre offers swimming, sauna and massage and several of the hotels have salt water pools open to the public.

We dined on veal and gnocchi with Toblerone chocolate mousse for dessert in our hotel, the Post Hotel Roessli, accompanied with excellent red and white wines.

Our last full day in Gstaad was devoted to Alpine hiking. It wasn’t an easy climb. After the first climb of about two and a half hours, we stopped at a chalet where we were surprised with a feast of barbecued ribs, sausages, pasta, several different salads, a red and a white wine and, of course, desert. We had been told we’d be stopping for a “picnic.”

After lunch, we continued our climb upwards. Some of it was tough, but when we reached the top we got the payoff. The view was awe-inspiring. Descending once more to the valley miles below, our group gathered for our last dinner together at the Roesti Factory in Launen. The president of Zephyr Inline Skate Tours, Allan Wright, personally guided our group along with Sabine Löwenthal, an East German native who has resided in Switzerland for years and Kris Thomas from Minneapolis. All are certified instructors and outstanding guides.