10 things I learnt on a Swiss hiking trip
On being cold, wet and not miserable
I have just come back from some mountains. The Alps, to be precise, in Switzerland, to be precise, in a tiny hamlet near Champéry. It was, at least some of the time, wet. It was, at least some of the time, pretty damn fresh. It was also so beautiful it took my breath away.
I went with a group of remarkable women. We stayed in an auberge de montagne straight out of The Sound of Music. We huddled with hot chocolate by the stove. We ate fondue and blueberry pie. We drank pinot noir and an Alpine wine called Heida. (No, not Heidi.) It was tasty. It was cosy. It was a feast for the eyes and stomach.
But oh my God, we earned it.
I love my treats. I savour my treats. When I say I savour my treats, I don’t mean I ration my treats or even that I earn them. You could, perhaps, argue that if you eat and drink what you like when you like then those things you regard as treats are not exactly treats. Let me tell you that they sure as hell are treats when you have them after five hours of slithering through mud in driving rain on a mountain.
We were led up that mountain by a former Olympic skier. Yup, I went hiking with a former Olympic skier. I had intended to go to the gym before, of course. I had leapt on a treadmill, tapped the button that increases the incline, walked for a few minutes and then broken off for a flat white. I meant to go back, but I didn’t. I love a flat white and on the way to my gym there are a lot of cafes that serve a very good flat white indeed.
The day before I left, I looked at the kit list. It was, I realised, quite long. I bought a rucksack. I bought some hiking socks after Googling “do you really need hiking socks?” and seeing comments from random people round the planet telling me that you do. I bought some waterproof trousers. Yes, waterproof trousers! My local Sports Direct didn’t have any of the cheap foldaway jackets, so I decided Anthony’s old cagoule would do.
(Reader, let me spare you the suspense. It didn’t.)
Luckily, I had some walking shoes. I had bought them, in a fit of enthusiasm, when staying with a friend in Devon twenty years ago. I had barely touched them for years, but they looked OK to me. I thought they hit the criteria on the list of being “worn in”.
What I didn’t know was that the soles of walking boots can suddenly spring off and flap around, like some medieval device specially designed to get you shuffling up a mountain on your knees. Which, briefly, looked like the only option until Ella, our truly unflappable guide, whipped out a tape that looked like a bandage and wrapped it round my sole. And perhaps, who knows, my soul?
I spent the next five hours looking like a wounded soldier. There were moments when I felt like one, too. I had vaguely thought that we might be zig-zagging up those mountains on paths that sloped so gently that you barely felt the rise.
I am not sure where this thought came from.
Let me tell you this. Mountains are quite steep. Even if you don’t cling to any rock faces or scale any peaks, they involve putting one foot in front of the other in a way that makes your body feel like a heavy suitcase you can’t afford to drop. You have to find footholds, on roots, on stones, on moss and in mountain streams. You sometimes have to grab a rock to stop you slithering down a gully. You have to grab the odd tree. You spend a lot of time looking forward to the moment when you can go downhill, and then you find that it’s very, very slippery and that going up may, in fact, be slightly easier than going down.
Your spirit lifts when you reach the mountain hut where you can pause for some bread and soup and piquant Swiss cheese. It sinks when the clouds drop again and you can’t see out of the window and the whole world seems to be made of rain. It is not true, you think, that there is no such thing as bad weather, but only inappropriate clothing. Your clothes are wet, your shoes are wet, everything in your rucksack is wet. You did your best, but everything is wet. Now there’s a title of a book that might sell.
Still, the weather was the right way round. Day 1 (arrival day) torrential rain, with enough of a break to huddle by a fire and throw some things, some literal and metaphorical things, on it. Day 2: long walk in steady rain. Not ideal, but I have learnt that I can walk for four hours in steady rain! If any of my friends are reading this, please pick yourselves up from the floor.
Day 3: the rain stops and starts and then stops again and allows us to walk, with some pauses, for five and a half hours. There’s mist, there are clouds and there’s something magical in that mist and those clouds. When the mist clears, we see forest and meadows and Alpine flowers. It is like, it really is like, a fairy tale.
And on Day 4: resurrection, or something like it. The sky is the colour of a cornflower. The sun is strong. The world, which has been washed, is fresh and sharp and beautiful. The cows, with their bells, seem more cheerful. The goats are skipping around as if they have been let off school. Even the river seems to be gurgling with fresh energy and zest. “It’s the full Swiss bingo” says one of the organisers, as we pass the cow Gamelan orchestra. Yes, the full Swiss bingo. Snow-capped mountains, meadows full of wild flowers, smiling faces and hearts that are full.
The weekend, this respite from our normal lives, was, in fact, not just about hiking. In mini-workshops, in a mountain hut, in a forest glade, and by a camp fire, we spoke about some of the things we wanted to shed in our lives, some of the things we yearned for, and some of the things we wanted to create. We touched the rough bark of trees and felt the energy from deep roots. We wove a web. We wove a literal web! We collected pine cones and stones and twigs and leaves and turned them into mini artworks to remind us of what we had felt and what we had learnt.
My little artwork will not win any prizes. It only existed for a few minutes, though I have the remnants in a little drawstring bag. I’ll keep it, and I’ll put the stripy pebble on my desk. I hope it will remind me of some of the things I have learnt. Here, in no particular order, they are:
1. That shower-proof is not the same as water-proof.
2. That clouds are not full of angels playing harps, but they are still quite magical in their own way.
3. That there is nothing like emerging from a dark part of a forest into a clearing and seeing a carpet of what I assume are lilies of the valley.
4. That moss is strangely mesmerising.
5. That female goats seem to find me very attractive and are also rather good at giving a massage.
6. That a rainbow on a Swiss mountain after heavy rain is really quite something.
7. That if you wait for good weather, you will never do anything.
8. That doing difficult things feels unpleasant at first, but after you have done them, you get a surge of serotonin that is rather like a glass of wine.
9. That when you get home, after quite a long journey, and put the chicken tikka masala you have bought from M & S at Liverpool Street in the microwave, because you are too tired to cook, you should eat it at the kitchen table. You should not, whatever happens, have a shower and put on your silk kimono and try to carry your tray of food to the sitting room in order to catch up with the election debates. If you do, you might find the sleeve of your kimono catching the banister, and the tray flipping and the chicken tikka masala landing, or some of it, on your incredibly expensive new hall carpet. You will then find that the conversation you have been looking forward to having with your husband, who’s away, takes a very different shape to the one you imagined.
10. And you will find yourself wishing you were back in your non-waterproof cagoule, climbing a mountain in the rain.
I really enjoyed this post, with its subtle humor and wonderful details.