Take a breath in Switzerland
SO, it turns out I’d never really used my lungs to their full capacity before.
That is, until they got stripped out by Swiss, mountain-filtered air, so clean and crisp I want to drink it down and then store the rest in tanks to take home.
Still, discovering what it feels like to be able to breathe properly seems like a good a start to a weekend-long health, food and wellbeing jaunt in Switzerland.
My plan is to rattle along the Lake by rail from Geneva, at the tapered southerly point of the lake, curving up and over the still, biro-blue expanse to the city of Lausanne, and onward to Villars.
With the view scribbled out by refracted swathes of light and frothy wisps of mist, I find myself drawn instead to the scraps of land beside the tracks – everything is so blindingly green.
None is as neatly wrought as Domaine Croix Duplex in Grandvaux, one stop on from Lausanne.
A family-run vineyard on a lush slope it’s famed locally for its Chasselas grapes, grown year-round and harvested in autumn to make mainly white wine. And the Swiss take their Chasselas oh-so seriously.
“If it doesn’t say it on the bottle, it’s definitely a Chasselas wine,” says Maude, who runs Domaine Croix Duplex with her brother, Simon, and explains that 75% of Chasselas wine produced in Switzerland, isn’t exported and gets drunk here.
Over ruffled slices of cured meat, and hard yellow squares of Swiss Gruyere cheese, she recalls how her grandfather, Samuel, started with just three hectares of land.
The view is both spectacular and restorative, but after all that cheese, so is ducking between the indoor and cooler outdoor pools of the spa at the magnificentt Hotel Royal Savoy.
Built in 1909 overlooking Lausanne’s harbour, Port of Ouchy, the Savoy extravagantly blurs the line between Disney’s Cinderella Castle and cult director Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel.
For a Friday night, I’m struck by how peaceful it is along the harbour’s promenade, where elderly men play chess, raffish teenagers skateboard and the nonchalant hoots of Lake Geneva’s historic paddle steamers punctuate the lot.
Inland, in the belly of the city, the formerly industrial Le Flon district has been transformed into a hub of collaborative hipster energy and eco vision. Meanwhile, the tangle of narrow streets here are pitched at an angle that makes your calves ache as you edge up towards the caramelcoloured stone of the 13th century Cathedral of Notre Dame.
Allegedly, there are incredible views out over the Rhone Valley, but huge whorls of fog scupper us, and a chilly mist muffles everything except the eerie ringing of bells.
We fortify ourselves on rotisserie chicken and sticky tarte tatin at the nearby alpine Hotel du Lac in Bretaye, before an hour-long hike back down to Villars proper.