As if paragliding wasn’t enough adventure for one day, once we had recovered from the nausea of our aerobatics, we headed back into the town of Fiesch to rent mountain bikes for the rest of the day. Again, the shop owner was very helpful, found bikes that fit our height, and even gave us some route suggestions down the mountain.
We took the bikes up the gondola (which required a separate ticket for them) and started our journey from Fiescheralp, across the mountain, to the town of Bettmeralp, which boasts an alpine lake. If the day had been as hot as the previous, we would have stopped and enjoyed swimming at the lake, and theoretically paddleboarding, but with rain predicted and decent cloud cover, we didn’t really feel like it.
The ride down the mountain wasn’t easy. Even though most of it was downhill, the slopes were quite steep and a bit treacherous. Phil was much more confident than I and was able to take the slopes and switchbacks more quickly. However, I had the unfortunate experience of taking a bug to my face, jerking at the wrong time, and tumbling into the side of the mountain. Thankully, the grass was soft and I just ended up with a bruised ankle.
We took the rest of the ride more gently, especially when trudging ourselves back up part of the mountain with the sun beating down on us.
As we got back into town, the rain that had been promised all day finally broke, cooling the town a bit. So we sat on our balcony at the hotel, enjoyed some Dole wine (a Swiss version of Pinot Noir).
After all the day’s exercise, we treated ourselves to some delicious pasta at the hotel restaurant.
