Taking The High Road

The Grand Tour is a journey through Switzerland’s greatest hits – soaking up Alpine passes, pristine lakes… and a night in a hay barn?

- Phoebe Smith

Bonjour!” I cried out in the best Gallic accent I could muster, yet still the woman looked at me blankly. I thought for a second or two. “J’ai une réservation pour une nuit…” I looked up, only to see her shaking her head slowly. “Ich verstehe nicht,” she replied. Ah, I realised with a heavy heart. She was speaking German. Not French. It may sound like a rather schoolgirl error to attempt to converse with a local in the wrong language, but then the thing was, I hadn’t actually crossed a single country border. In fact, a mere ten minutes earlier I had gathered directions to find this farmhouse using French. Welcome to Switzerland.

Don’t be fooled. Nothing about this nation is small. True, it might be around one-sixth the size of the UK but, as I was discovering, it had the look and feel of a much bigger country (and, as I would discover when I arrived home, equally large speeding fines to match). I was driving a new route called the Grand Tour, which comprises a loop of 1,600km as well as several offshoots and detours. Its aim is to encompass the best of the country – a kind of greatest hits, if you will.

As someone who has dipped in and out of Switzerland many times, courtesy of its handy hubs in both Zürich and Geneva, I thought I had a good grasp of the country. But with the promise of four linguistic regions, 11 UNESCO properties, two biosphere reserves, five alpine passes, 22 lakes and a collection of seriously cool places to spend the night (more on that later), I was willing to challenge myself to be surprised, and ready to hit the road…

Tiny castles and dairy tales