June 22nd: Grand St Bernard Hospice to Brig

 Overnight, I checked the hotels with AC available in Brig, and discovered that they were far and few in between, even after expanding my search to the entire Sion valley. When people talk about climate denialists, they’re usually talking about the American right. But I would contend that Europeans who refuse to install AC in hotels and AirBnBs should also be categorized as climate denialists. The only reasonable hotel was the Good Night Inn in Brig, which had dubious reviews but a liberal (as in same day) cancellation policy, so I booked it and then told everyone else about it.

Breakfast looked dire when we showed up, as the buffet tables looked decimated, but we shouldn’t have worried. This being Switzerland, the staff almost immediately refilled the tables. We ate to our content and then proceeded to load everything into the car and check out.

Leaving the hotel, we took a few pictures in the gorgeous section before the road to the hospice intersected with the tunnel exit. Once on the main highway, however, it turned into a gallery with no views and very high speed, where the tandem essentially stayed at terminal velocity for minutes at a time. At one point we encountered construction and had to stop, but the traffic that was behind us were giant trucks and other slow moving vehicles and I wasn’t going to cede pole position. We were more than capable of staying ahead of the traffic until Sembrancher, where the road levelled off and we pulled off to give ourselves a breather.

From there it was an easy pedaling descent to Martigny where the bike path signs took us through downtown. It was already warm enough that we’d started to look for ice cream shops but at this early hour nothing was open. Past Martigny, the bike path followed along the Rhone river, with sufficient shade once in a while that the warm up wasn’t immediately overwhelming. Jobst often rode the Sion Valley in the late afternoon with a strong tailwind, but this early there wasn’t any wind whatsoever to help us. Mark caught us, and Arturo caught up to us as we approached the Sion airport.

Arturo had been to Sion before, and knew a good burger place, but when we rode there it was closed! We thought for a minute about eating at another restaurant, but realized that there was a COOP supermarket right there, so opted to buy a picnic and eat outside where there was a shaded area. There was a light breeze which fooled me into thinking that the Jobst tailwind was going to show up, so I pushed for us to ride on instead of just taking the train to Brig. “We should get at least a metric century out of this!” I declared.

Past Sion, the bike path stayed along the Rhone until Saint-Leonard, beyond which construction and main road riding started becoming intrusive. Along with the construction, the trees along the main road disappeared and we ended up riding on a big highway with giant trucks for a bit, along with the attendant dust. By the time we got to Varen, I saw that we had exceeded 100km and I asked Arturo where the nearest train station was. He looked as relieved as I was.

We rode towards the Varen train station, and saw a supermarket that was open just 100m away from the train station. I went in and bought a box of cola popsicles and we proceeded to demolish them with only one left. That one I just dropped into my water bottle to flavor and chill water and then we proceeded to the train station to buy train tickets.

The train was uncharacteristically late, and on top of that, once we got onto the train the story wasn’t over. The train actually suffered a breakdown just before getting to Visp, and actually had to go backwards to a place where a service train with a working locomotive could pass it and then take over. By the time all was said and done we were about half an hour late.

In the mean time, Xiaoqin and Bowen had finished their hike and started driving towards the hotel. When we got off the train station at Brig it was broiling hot, but since the ride to the hotel was barely 1km, it was not a big deal and while we had to wait to check in, we got to wait in an air conditioning lobby. It turned out that Arturo knew about the Good Night Inn—it was a series of motels much like Super8 or Motel6, but more upscale than the American equivalents. Indeed, when we checked in we could see that the lobby had lots of model railroads, something you’d never see in Super8 or Motel6. Mark immediately got off his bike and started replacing the brake pads on his disc brake bike. I looked at his pads and to my eyes, he had much more than 2mm of material. “If you were to ask me, you’re just throwing away money,” I said. “Well, it’s more than halfway through the tour, and around the same time last year was when I needed to replace it. I’m not worried about the few cents I’m throwing away."

We got our rooms and figured out where their bike locker was. We moved in and in a little bit Xiaoqin arrived and we figured out how to park the car as well. After showering, I started looking for places to stay in Andermatt. My original preference had been the Hotel Tiefenbach just after the Furka pass so we wouldn’t have to put up with the headwind, but they were mysteriously all booked up the next day despite it being the middle of the week! Arturo only had 2 days of touring left. I found a number of AirBnBs in Andermatt, even though they weren’t as cheap as I would like, but Mark didn’t like any of them. He searched and came up with some options in Hospental, One of the options looked good so I went ahead and booked 5 nights in Hospental, using up all our days prior to the pre-booked Meiringen and Rosenlaui visits.

Arturo and I then went and got the EV charged up. We were actually surprised the Switzerland had much worse EV charging infrastructure than either France or Italy. We would discover later that despite our having rented the EV in Geneva, Switzerland, the car didn’t know about many charging stations that were available—we ended up having to ask locals about them!

Dinner was at a Thai restaurant Xiaoqin found that ended up being very good. We ate well. By the time we got back to the hotel in the evening after some expensive gelato,  the hotel was full—it was a bus tourist kinda place, and a tour bus full of hikers had arrived. Fortunately, they didn’t disrupt our sleep much.