A visit to CERN, Geneva, Montreux and Bern

26^th July, Nantua to Geneva.

Another lovely morning with breakfast taken on the edge of the lake. We then headed off on a pretty route to Geneva stopping at Lidl for a few supplies. We are still having to stop regularly due to the warm fridge situation. As we entered Geneva we passed Cern which had been on our list of MUST Do’s. But had forgotten about it until we arrived. Mike turned Buster into the Research Centre’s main entrance and a kind security guard directed us back onto the main road towards the “Visitors Centre”. CERN is the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Our understanding of particle physics has always been elementary so we had a good two and a half hour update. Firstly we spent the first hour and a half in an exhibition room which gave the basics of the atom plus the history of the centre and background information on the 4 main experiments that are using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which is the 27 km particle accelerator  tunnel that is built 100m below ground in Switzerland and France.

From there we crossed the road to the “Universe of Particles” which in a more “jazzy” way again tried to take you back to the millisecond after “Big Bang” to try to find out the answers of how we came into being.

2 ½ hours later we were more enlightened about “up” and “down” quarks, Higgs and String theories. Matter and antimatter and the all important “Dark Matter”. It was a very interesting visit.

We now needed to relax our brains so we drove to Geneva and found a parking space on the side of the lake where we could have lunch and go for a swim. It was now 36 degrees. About 6 pm we met up with Matthew Jones. Rosemarie and Howard’s son. He was on holiday here having played in the Montreux Jazz Festival with his University big band. Matthews plays the trombone. First we went for a drink after strolling around the old town and then we had a meal. It was a very pleasant evening. Somehow it got quite late as we both caught up with emails (more problems with Mike’s tenants) and it was nearly midnight by the time we left Geneva. We eventually stopped the night on a motorway services which was useful as we had electricity for the fridge but it was too busy a road to get a good night’s sleep.

Saturday 27^th July Montreux.

This morning we continued around the lake with grape vines and stunning Chateaux all around until we reached Montreux. We found somewhere to park on the Vevery side of Montreux where was a nice beach to the lake. We took the bikes off the van and cycled along the very pretty lake shore to Montreux and on past the Chateau Chillon to Vieneurve. It was a lovely ride. Once back we plunged into the lake again around 36 degrees and we needed to cool down before Jacqui could contemplate making lunch. We made a picnic and took it to a grassy spot where Jacqui stayed in the shade and Mike went to sleep in the sun. We relaxed until 4 pm. We were entertained later by an athletic bloke giving gym and acrobatic lessons to two of his friends. We packed up our things as we planned to visit Bern this evening. However it took less time to arrive to arrive than we envisaged and it was now around 39 degrees when we arrived. It was too hot for Jacqui to enjoy walking around the country’s capital.

We lay in the van as we were both tired from our lack of sleep but it was too hot. So we packed up the last of our ice water and set off. We found that Bern had a lovely centre and enjoyed our slow amble around. We visited the Zytglogge  clock tower, the Bundershauser (Houses of Parliament),  the Gothic Munster and the many old streets and city fountains.  One of the best bits was standing on the bridge high over the river Aure watching people float down in the fast current. We still needed to find a QUIET place for the night. We identified a town north of Bern that was on a river. It was called Solothurn and it turned out to be a quiet and delightful spot.