For Pfingsten weekend we headed to the French-speaking part of Switzerland to do a spot of hiking. We set off on Saturday morning, stopping off to sit by the lake in Biel to have our Pausenbrötli before continuing to our holiday apartment high in the hills above the Lac de Neuchâtel. It was a large apartment with more storage space than you could ever want but an incredibly tight parking space for the car.
After settling in we drove through the hills, glad that we weren’t on our bikes. We stopped to buy picnic supplies at a slightly dodgy-looking supermarket, which actually turned out to be great, and arrived at the car park in Motiers ready for lunch. After picnicking and chatting to some French speakers (mostly in English) we were ready to start exploring the Gorges de la Poëta-Raisse.
We started at the bottom and walked for about three hours in total, strolling next to a beautiful stream, passing numerous small waterfalls and crossing bridges made of tree trunks, up the narrow gorge. Wooden paths had been built to help navigate the trickier parts. At times it was slightly scary, listening to the sound of the water rushing past but there were always rails to hold on to when needed. It makes me wonder how people used to traverse areas like this before the wooden walkways and bridges were constructed.
The weather was a bit mixed – we had glimpses of sunlight, but mostly it was fairly overcast with occasional showers. Actually it was probably perfect conditions to see the area. Heavy rainfall in the previous days meant that the river was flowing pretty quickly through the gorge and I quite enjoyed wandering through the forest in the rain as everything seems so verdant.
Day 2
Another day, another gorge. This time we took the train from Bôle to Champs du Moulin and then hiked back through the very lovely Areuse Gorge. If we had taken the train one stop further and started at Noirague, we would have seen an old stone bridge but we were tired and decided a 8km hike was better than a 12km one. As it was, the shorter version still offered plenty to see. The river cutting through the gorge seemed higher than normal and was very fast flowing, not exactly deafening but certainly quite loud at times. We crossed a few bridges and passed through a short tunnel blasted into the rock, all the time admiring the nature around us. Today’s gorge wasn’t as steep as yesterday’s but there were still plenty of steps to give us a decent work out.
All in all, both walks were gorgeous, taking in spectacular scenery in almost perfect conditions, away from the crowds. The day’s other highlights included feeding seeds to a tiny mouse in the forest, rescuing a wasp who couldn’t work out how to escape the railway waiting room and coming downhill on a scooter. Actually I’m not sure the scooter adventure was a highlight – it was a bit too scary for my liking.
Language Tips
Today’s tip is about the editing process. It’s absolutely fine to write a first draft quickly but then you can have fun trying to improve it. Editing isn’t just about checking spelling and adding some punctuation, it’s also about refining the words that you have chosen, getting rid of any unwanted repetition and making the text more enjoyable.
Here are some of the changes I made:
Original | Changed to |
We were ready for the hike | We were ready to start exploring |
Plus there weren’t too many other people. | away from the crowds |
the 8km hike | the shorter version |
There were a few light showers and by the time we had finished the hike quite a heavy one.
| with occasional showers (added to the previous sentence) |
... the trickier parts through the gorge | the trickier parts. I got rid of the words ‘through the gorge’ as I had used them in the previous sentence |
but only a really tight parking space for the car. | an incredibly tight parking space |
No commas | Added commas for a non-defining relative clause |
Slightly illogical order | Making the order of information more logical |
walked / hiked | strolled, passed, wandered |
rain | rainfall (I could have used 'precipitation' but preferred 'rainfall' as it is easier to understand) |
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