Over the Alps on a Bicycle

By Elizabeth Robins Pennell189812 chapters32 images

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Contents

• My First Pass. The Col de la Faucille (opens in a new tab)

  Elizabeth Pennell rides out from Dijon through Dole and the Jura to the Col de la Faucille, her first pass, coasting down into Switzerland via Gex and paying eighteen francs duty to the Swiss authorities at Sacconax.
• My Second Pass. La Tete Noire (opens in a new tab)

  At Chamounix, with Mont Blanc obscured by cloud, the Pennells meet American cyclists on the tourist road before crossing the Tete Noire in mud and rain, taking shelter with a Swiss family who feed them eggs and raspberries, then reaching Martigny.
• My Third Pass. The St. Bernard (opens in a new tab)

  Worn out from the Tete Noire, Elizabeth stays behind at Martigny while Joseph alone climbs the St. Bernard in seven hours, finding an easy ascent but a mule track only on the Italian side, and a Hospice crowded with noisy alpenstocked tourists rather than the dogs of legend.
• My Fourth Pass. The Simplon (opens in a new tab)

  In blazing heat from Brieg the couple push their bicycles past Napoleon's numbered Refuges to the Simplon Hospice, where monks give them an unquestioning welcome and supper before the icy morning descent through the Ravine of Gondo into Italy, where Elizabeth crashes into a cart near Isella and buckles her wheel.
• My Fifth Pass. The Splugen (opens in a new tab)

  After a boat up Lake Como and a maddening puncture that strands Joseph overnight in Varenna for a new valve, the pair climb from Colico through Chiavenna to the Splugen's zigzagging stone parapet in cold mist, reaching the Italian-Swiss frontier at 6,946 feet.
• My Sixth Pass. The San Bernardino (opens in a new tab)

  Starting before sunrise, they climb the San Bernardino past Hinter Rhein to the Hospice and lake at the summit, then descend three tiers of zigzags through the Val Mesocco past the Castle of Mesocco into a gale blowing up the Val Ticino, stopping short at Bodio.
• My Seventh Pass. The St. Gotthard (opens in a new tab)

  From smoke-blackened Bodio the road races the St. Gotthard railway past Faido and Airolo; both cyclists walk the final zigzags to the 6,942-foot summit among snow and ice, then coast down through Hospenthal and Andermatt past the Devil's Bridge, encountering a German cyclist rigging a wooden paddle-brake.
• My Eighth Pass. The Furka (opens in a new tab)

  The highest pass of the tour: a long dusty grind from Realp to the 7,993-foot summit, where the Pennells meet a young American searching for his sister who had fallen by the roadside, before coasting past the Rhone Glacier to a hotel crowded with cyclists lacking pneumatic brakes.
• My Ninth Pass. The Grimsel (opens in a new tab)

  Starting from the Rhone Glacier Hotel, Elizabeth climbs the 7,103-foot Grimsel in about two hours, then coasts a continuous twenty-five-mile descent past the Hospice and dark lakes, through gorges beneath the Bernese Alps, down to Meiringen.
• My Tenth Pass. The Brunig (opens in a new tab)

  Attempting two passes in one day, the pair are caught in a torrential downpour on the low Brunig and take refuge with a kindly innkeeper's wife near Lake Brienz; the next morning's mist hides every promised view of Pilatus and the Jungfrau all the way into Lucerne, the last pass now behind them.
• Envoi (opens in a new tab)

  Elizabeth Pennell reflects on crossing nine passes, six within a week, claiming a record for a woman cyclist, and urges any woman with a strong machine, a good double brake and no fear of hard work to attempt the same exploit.
• The Route (opens in a new tab)

  A practical appendix on cycling in Switzerland: duty-free entry with C.T.C./T.C.F. membership, advice to climb each pass from its easier side, recommended Mulhaupt road maps, and a detailed kilometre-by-kilometre itinerary from Dijon through all ten passes to Lucerne.