{"id":826,"date":"2012-07-05T20:06:55","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T19:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=826"},"modified":"2025-11-23T06:10:36","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T06:10:36","slug":"switzerland-here-we-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2012\/07\/05\/switzerland-here-we-come\/","title":{"rendered":"Switzerland Here We Come?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We managed to leave Sevrier at 8:35am with big plans to cross the border in to Switzerland.\u00a0 I had my money on not making it, as there is still so much to see in France. We drove through the beautiful Gorges d\u2019 Arly from Ugine to Flumet; what a great name for a village, I\u2019d like to live somewhere with a name like Flumet. Suddenly we realised that the buildings had changed again; they were now a low-gabled wooden Swiss chalet style and we saw\u00a0lots of\u00a0cows with bells around their necks; how they put up with the noise, I have no idea!\u00a0 We continued on through the Haute Savoire and at Praz sur Arly we pulled up at a supermarket for all the essentials.\u00a0 On the way out of town I missed photographing yet another brilliant roundabout complete with a miniature wooden chalet and perfect garden.\u00a0 I just love the French roundabouts.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Mont Blanc Massif<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The views coming out of Megeve and through St Gervais les Bains brought more \u201cwows\u201d from me, especially when we got a tiny glimpse of Mont Blanc amongst the clouds.\u00a0 We drove past the Glacier de Bionnessay and the Glacier des Bossons and then drove down in to Chamonix for a picnic lunch in the rain. While sitting in Eileen, Nick phoned to inform us that it was sunny in Norfolk, hmmph, still it was nice to chat to him.<\/p>\n

The drive over the Col des Montets took us up to 1,461 metres and then we drove to the border of Switzerland.\u00a0 We waved our passports at a rather disinterested border guard who waved us through without even looking at them, obviously Eileen didn\u2019t look like a criminally threatening vehicle\u2026..<\/p>\n

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At Col de Forclaz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

So we\u2019re now in our second country, it\u2019s taken a while, but we\u2019re there and the first Swiss toilet was very nice, complete with paper, soap and a toilet seat !!!\u00a0 The route over the Col de la Forclaz was also stunning and from the steep sided Bans du Feys the drive was scary, but the views were beautiful.\u00a0 It took ages from sighting Martigny to actually getting down in to the town, I gave up counting the hairpin bends.\u00a0 In desperate need of more exclamations, I\u2019ve now come up with \u201cmy oh my\u201d, \u201ccor blimey\u201d and \u201cjeepers\u201d, all of which have been used extensively today.<\/p>\n

Martigny seemed a very modern town and they seem to be competing with the French on roundabouts.\u00a0 So many of the roundabouts had fantastic sculptures on them, most of them wouldn\u2019t have been out of place in the Australian ‘Sculptures By The Sea Exhibition’; they were wonderful.<\/p>\n

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First view of Martigny<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From Martigny to Sion the road was long and straight with endless fruit trees; apricots, pears, apples and yet more grape vines, some on stone terraces stretching right up the sides of the mountain bases.\u00a0 We better try some Swiss wine, as we\u2019ve never had any before and\u00a0haven’t really thought of Switzerland as a ‘wine country’. \u00a0In Sierre we got a bit lost trying to find Camping Bois de Finges, but we got there in the end and we set Eileen up in the middle of the woods at the top of a hill.\u00a0 We cooked up teriyaki chicken with rice and veggies, then wandered over to the shower block which had a lovely view of the mountains around us.\u00a0 Goodnight from Switzerland.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We managed to leave Sevrier at 8:35am with big plans to cross the border in to Switzerland.\u00a0 I had my money on not making it, as there is still so much to see in France. We drove through the beautiful Gorges d\u2019 Arly from Ugine to Flumet; what a great name for a village, I\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8171,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions\/8171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}