Friday 10 August 2018
| Distance (km) | 22 kms | |||
| Distance (time) | 5.5 hrs | |||
| Climb / Descent | 230m / 980m | |||
| Hard / Soft surface | 50% / 50% | |||
| Landscape |
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| Weather |
 24° 4 Bft
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It's the last day to Lake Geneva, we can hardly believe it. We feel energized and we decide to park the car in La Cure again so that we don't have to plan with bus schedules and so. From Nyon we can simply return by taking the train/bus to La Cure and get some groceries from the supermarket in Les Rousses as well. And so we pass the Swiss border by foot once more. The first bit along the main road to St.Cergue (with exception of a short back street) until we have to cross the mainroad in order to enter the woods again. It's quite a lousy point to cross the road...so be carefull. The gravel road into the woods is almost flat and easy walking until we reach the farmhouse La Pile Dessus. It seems we have to cross the fence here and pass through the pasture but it is not entirely clear. There are 2 more hikers here but they seem to be mostly interested in an vintage tractor so not so helpful in trying to find our way. There is a jogger coming through the pasture towards us though, so let's see what he is going to do. Well, straight through the pasture and over the fence (in spite of the layer of cow dun there). So...we'll do the same. The pasture is very irregular without a clear path but a bit further on we do see something like a track so I guess that is where we have to go to. The tractor-huggers follow us at 100m distance, almost as if they were waiting for us to make a first move. We arrive at the track which passes through a larger group of cows a bit further on. And they're very awake and curious so we decide to loop around them by first waking towards the edge of the woods. That goes pretty smoothly but once we passed the cows we notice that our hikers behind us ... are no longer behind us. Our fantasy starts running wild with scenarios of hikers being eaten by zombie cows hiding between the cows we just passed. Or maybe they just went back....but that's less fun. The path gets close to the main road from La Cure to St.Cergue and then loops back into the woods. We drop before climbing again in a long curve to the left towards some houses. In front of us there is what looks like grandmother and daughter. The 5-6 year old girl is carrying around a branch her size that she uses to chase cows whilst shouting "Allez-allez". It's funny to see that the cows that are at least 10 times her size get chased and run away. So that's the way to do it.... From here it is a shorty piece over a narrow track until the first houses of Les Pralies; the villa area of St.Cergue in fact. We're passing over tarmac again here and it is going down very steeply! Very briefly we have a track again before we reached the camping site where our tent is pitched. Since we also have chairs and a fridge, it's the perfect moment for a lunch break. A lunch break on real chairs....that's unusual. We pass the railway station and enter the downtown. It's still a bit of a descent to get to the lake but suddenly we're on the boulevard. We made it! We look for a bench, take some photos, have a sip. We decide to buy an ice cream and sit along the lake shore a bit longer.....until it's time to return to the camping site. |
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