By Sophie McKeand
Photos: Andy Garside & Sophie McKeand
Verbier is a renown ski resort for the rich and famous in the Swiss Alps but, visit there out of season and you can still experience intense downhill thrills, on a mountain bike. Visit there in your campervan and stealth park and you can do biking in Verbier for just the cost of your cablecar pass.
In November 2017, my partner and I sold 95% of our possessions, gave the keys back to our rented house and hit the road to live full-time in our self-converted Mercedes Sprinter with our two rescue hounds. Reading that sentence still feels surreal, made more so because I’m typing this sat by a body of water in the valley of Le Châble, Switzerland, in glorious autumnal sunshine after swimming in the brilliant opaque turquoise of said body of water. Paragliders are confetti floating through an azure sky and it’s easy to feel like we’re on holiday – but we’re not. This is everyday life now, and I keep this internet meme as mantra: instead of taking a holiday, create a life you don’t want a holiday from. Tip one – when adventuring or biking in Verbier, stay down the valley in Le Châble (unless you really are a millionaire).
Vanlife is not always easy. Living this lifestyle means that our self-employed earnings – as a graphic designer (Andy), and a poet/writer (me) – have to stretch, so we’ve become adept at figuring out what we do need to spend money on, and what we don’t, when travelling across Europe. Our van was converted with ‘stealth’ in mind, including blackout curtains, so that we can park most places without being noticed and rarely pay for campsites. The (mostly) plant-based, tee-total diet choice might not sound like a riot of fun, but when you weight up the fact that if we eat like this (and cook our own meals in the van) we can afford two days on the uplift (cablecar) to hit the downhill trails, then it begins to make sense. When we set out on this journey-without-an-end we soon realised that choices had to be made: if we wanted a bit more adventure then we had to give up a bit more comfort (and vice versa), and so we choose adventure, every time.
The cablecar up from Verbier to Ruinettes is vertiginous and glorious. Our mid-September day is around 19 degrees and we grin in anticipation (Andy) and mild panic (me), as the blue sky folds around us and the white-topped mountains sing. Mid-week, the additional cablecar up to La Chaux is closed which means routes starting from there are inaccessible but honestly, it’s so much fun riding the downhill from Ruinettes we didn’t notice (and you can do La Chaux on weekends if you’re so inclined). Which brings me to the trails. If you’ve ridden any trail centres in Wales or Scotland you’ll get a good idea for the grading system: green = easy/family; blue = beginner; red = advanced; black = pro.
It’s not quite the same biking in Verbier, mainly because the mountains are so steep that even the blue route is going to throw the odd curveball at newbies (in a fun way). If you haven’t ridden the Swiss Alps before I’d suggest thinking of the gradings as the following: blue = UK red; red = UK black; and the yellow striped tape is for professional downhill rigs. Don’t let that put you off though because these trails are a blast: the blue trail has long sweeping berms that fling you out into what feels like a sudden burst of bright sky; there’s some nice clean drop-offs that can be taken in your stride giving a lovely bit of air; and from there you can drop into some gnarly red routes that will test both nerve and brakes but that will spit you out, grinning for more.
I accidentally ended up on a yellow striped section and got off my bike. There’s no shame in walking tough bits. Andy rode a few of those trails though, and his verdict: tough. He stacked it a few times, but found it ultimately exhilarating. The blue section looks deceptively easy, but on our first run we passed someone being airlifted off the mountain after a nasty crash so body armour, knee pads and full-face helmets are essential.
A couple of things worth noting about the uplift: when biking in Verbier, if you buy a VIP tourist tax pass from the Tourist Information Centre (for CHF6 per day) the cablecar is half price. We paid just CHF76 for two people for two days, which by Verbier standards is a steal, even with adding the daily CHF6 tax each. And ladies – it upsets me to have to say this, because I am a feminist and independent and have stared down many a man in the past who has ‘chivalrously’ attempted to take my bike off me to hoist up onto the uplift trailers at bikeparks such as Antur Stiniog (north Wales) and CwmDown (south Wales), but, being only 5”5 tall, I cannot lift the bike high enough to reach the cablecar hooks here. This is utterly depressing but there’s no way around it except to ask for help.
Mountainbike uplifts aren’t going to be for everyone. When biking in Verbier, you need to be a competent rider, like being a bit scared, and you absolutely need a decent bike with full-suspension, which can be hired from one of the bike shops there if you don’t have your own. We travel with ours in the garage of our van and custom built our raised bed to accommodate this (as well as our surf boards), but what this kind of exercise does for us (besides keeping us fit and providing a sport that we both love to spend doing together #relationshipgoals) is that it erases stress, anxiety and depression in the way a strong wind moves sand dunes. A number of studies are being made into why this is, and honestly I’m not exactly sure of the science behind it, but what I do know is that after two days on the mountains we look and feel 100% better than when we started.
Perhaps it’s something about scaring the crap out of yourself, or pushing those limits; it could be the stunning mountains and immersion in forests, or perhaps it’s just that, once you’ve overcome the fear of leaving a home and taken the leap into a traveling lifestyle, that everyday low-level anxiety doesn’t feel quite so worrisome anymore.
Sophie McKeand is an award-winning poet from Wales. Her work explores a conflux of politics, community, nature, travel and poetry that flow together to inspire new ways of dreaming the world into being. Her collection Rebel Sun is available in hardback with Parthian Books.
Andy Garside is a graphic designer, photographer, musician and visual artist.
Like reading about travels through Europe? Try In Love with Cassis.