France and Switzerland, Sept 23, 2013

Intro

On our walk yesterday to Pont du Grilly, we came across this map attached to a walking trail signpost:

That sounded a bit interesting - a loop hike that crosses the border twice. And only 8 kms long. Quite achievable, even by me.

So that's what we did today. Here is the Google Earth view of our hike - note that it is quite similar to the map above, but not quite identical - we missed a couple of the spikes to a viewpoint or whatever. Our start/end point is the right-most corner. The skinny yellow line is the border between France and Switzerland.

According to my GPS, we walked 8.8 kms, even with missing those spikes. So I think that the sign-painter was a bit optimistic.

Photos

Where we started, we could see the town of Grilly up there - we knew that was going to be the high point of the hike.

The trail varied in quality. For part of it, we were walking on the side of paved roads. The non-vehicular paths varied from concrete, to dirt trail, to loose gravel. We met several equestrians, so the trails had a bit of added fertilizer that we had to watch for.

Here is Stephen on a dirt path between some bushes and a farmer's field. He is brandishing a bamboo stick (he finally figured out what that corn-like but not corn grass was that we saw many days ago).

And here is me on perhaps the same path! There are many trails along the edges of farmers' fields.

This was the roughest path.

The Versoix River from the Pont Sauverny.

The view from near Grilly.

In the town of Sauverny, there was a house with this musical decoration on the wall.

We're not totally sure what this sign means, but we THINK that it would be unwise to wear a Halloween boar costume in this area.

Trail signs in France are different from those in Switzerland (the yellow signs). And, even more amusing, the bridge that we went to yesterday called Pont du Grilly appears to be called Pont Bugnon in France. And the sign says that we are heading to Switzerland.

The Customs house on the French side of Pont du Grilly / Pont Bugnon.

A shot of the deck of the bridge. As I mentioned yesterday, it was build in the 19th century. And it really does look old.

Flora and Fauna

The token fauna. We passed a lot of fields containing horses. But every time I tried to take a photo of them, they would turn so that I was looking at their backsides. This one stayed in the correct position.

We passed a farmhouse selling pansies out front.

And now for my standard collection of flower photos.

While I was writing this travelogue, Stephen went to the local mall for a bit of shopping.

Tomorrow's plan is still unmade.