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Saturday 19th August 2017 Getting to Basel Andrew had arrived the night before and early on Saturday morning we set off. First it was a car journey to the railway station in Royston, driven there by my wonderful wife, Trisha, in time to catch the 6.00 train to London Kings Cross.
A quick cross over to St Pancras International where we registered the bikes and handed them over then took the 9.17 Eurostar to Paris, Gare du Nord.
In Paris we collected the bikes from Eurostar's Registered Luggage Office - took about 20 minutes - then cycled nearly 3 miles across the city to Gare de Lyon, pausing on the way for a spot of lunch at a Thai street cafe in the Boulevard de Magenta. Very nice that was and as an aside I'd add that cycling through Paris was very pleasant too, with good cycle-ways running along the main boulevards, separated from the traffic.
With plenty of time in hand we paused for a few photos in La Place de la République then headed on past the Place de la Bastille to finally reach Gare de Lyon. From there we took the TGV train to Basel - it was punctual, clean, smooth and quiet and we had reserved spaces for the bikes. Very good. That brought us to Basel at about 19.26 where we checked in to the rather spartan Ibis Budget hotel. Compact. And budget - Andrew being somewhat bewildered by the absence of power points in the room, leaving us unable to charge anything. We also spent a relaxing time going up and down in the lift and never getting it to stop at our floor until someone kindly told us we had to wave a room cardkey in front of the reader for it to accept our button-pressing. Later we wandered out and had a decent veggie thing (potato-cheese-tomato-egg) and a beer.
Sunday 20th August 2017 On to Andermatt In the morning it was back to Basel SBB station where we caught the train to Andermatt. We had already booked seats and places for the bikes and happily everything went wonderfully smoothly. We found the Swiss trains to be clean, comfortable, quiet, punctual and with good cycle provision - what more could you ask? There were two changes along the route: one at Erstfeld and one at Goschenen.
At Goschenen we had a wander round and got a sandwich & cup of tea there. It's a very small, pretty Swiss village, appreciably cooler than Basel due to the increased altitude. The final leg to Andermatt was a ten minute train ride through some fine mountain scenery, ascending at a very steep incline. There we checked in to our hotel, the Gasthaus Skiklub - a tad more upmarket than the average Ibis Budget offering but of course with a more upmarket price tag to boot.
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