There was thunder and lightning for several hours last night. Spectacular lightning flashes. And it rained heavily for a few short bursts. So in the morning it was fresh, cool and still drizzling a bit. But after breakfast the cloud cleared and the sun came out.

We set off along the scary main road to the frontier for about one km then branched off to climb to a ski resort village and then higher to clear our high point for our trip so far. Hazy, so no spectacular views but charming rural scenes. This has involved two hard climbs.

I’ve told Anna that it was “basically down hill all the way to Lausanne”.

And we did a big downhill to a village with a patisserie so we needed to stop for a break there. And then along to the last French village passing the watershed between the North Sea and the Mediterranean.

Through Jougne and then the road ran out and became a gravel track that led to the Swiss border. Just a footpath through a gap in a fence. No officials or booths or anything other than signs and a border post. We had lunch on the border post.

Then lots of downhill through pretty Swiss villages.

Now I should add that the Via Francigena cycle route “hitches a lift” by following parts of other cycle routes in succession. The bit we were following was the “scenic tour of the Jura” with an emphasis on detours to castles, priories, Roman roads, water wheels and pretty places. And, it did involve steep downhills into some places that required steep climbs out of them 🙄🥵. Still “Basically downhill” I maintain but going downhill was tough upwards on occasion.

And then we could see Lausanne and Lake Geneva.

And we stopped for a beer by the lake and then pootled along the lakefront to the Lausanne youth hostel (a snip at €120!).

There are many parks by the lake and they were packed with people having picnics and barbecues and swimming.

We freshened up, did our washing and took our bikes (gosh, they weigh nothing without all our clobber) and found a lakeside restaurant passing along the way, the Olympic Committee HQ in a wierd bendy building. And we did some more lakeside pootling in the gathering dusk before turning in.