A walk in the woods
Thursday was the day I had really been looking forward to all week. All the weather forecasts I had seen predicted it would be the best day of our short stay in Geneva, and my plan was to use it to visit Mount Salève, the mountain immediately above Geneva.
April is pretty much the worst time you could choose to go to Switzerland, by virtue of everything exciting being closed. With the exception of very high altitude resorts such as Zermatt, the skiing season is essentially over and the hiking season can not begin in earnest until June when the majority of the slush will have melted. April is just about the most dangerous time you could go up a mountain; the melting snow is ripe for avalanches and there is still enough of it left in terms of volume to cause some nasty damage. Avalanches are quite cool to watch from a distance but I have no desire to be in the close vicinity of one, and so it was that the region’s more exciting day trips (an excursion to Mont Blanc, for example) had to be ruled out 
It seemed criminal, however, to come to Switzerland and *not* go up a mountain, and some extensive googling on my part revealed that there was in fact a low level cable car just outside Geneva which at just over 1000m was well below the April snowline, and thus able to operate all year round. My boyfriend is not very prone to hiking and I was anxious not to kill him, besides which I myself am terribly out of shape having taken no exercise for months, but the website assured me that it was an area full of easy hikes for families, so I felt confident enough to suggest that we take the cable car up and walk down 
When I actually saw the mountain on Thursday morning, I began to regret this somewhat. It towered above the little French village in the valley with almost vertical rocky sides and the man at the cable car station warned us that we would need good shoes for the descent. Good shoes were something that neither of us had on account of the fact that I knew I couldn’t sneak my walking boots out of the house without my mother noticing, and so I was glad that the fare down was only going to cost six euros if our mission should fail.
Actually we weren’t terribly prepared at all. For some reason I had omitted to print off a map, so the only instructions we had for finding the cable car in the first place were to catch bus number eight to somewhere called Veryier and “walk across the border”. By good fortune we noticed bus number eight departing from outside the main train station in Geneva, and our tourist travel tickets entitled us to get on it for free We got off at the terminus, which was in Switzerland, and could see the cables ascending the mountain behind us (in France) but it was a not inconsiderable distance and we had no idea how to cover it. We tried walking in a straight line but kept encountering obstacles in the form of dead ends, train lines, and at one point a rather frightening fence which my boyfriend decided to try to squeeze through. It was rather a narrow gap and halfway there was a nasty moment where it appeared he was permanently impaled on a metal spike, but he made it across in the end. The problem then was that I had no choice but to follow him because I knew there was no way he was going to come back again, so I made a (by my standards) very brave attempt to climb the fence also, and succeeded in getting far enough across for my boyfriend to catch me at the other end
The cable car journey up the mountain, once we finally reached the station, was fairly short but quite cool by virtue of the cable car being almost empty and there were some amazing views towards Lake Geneva and beyond. As we got progressively higher we were able to see snowcapped peaks rising up in the distance, which had been hidden by cloud on previous days. There was an extensive barbecue area at the top where we were able to find a nice picnic bench to eat lunch, and after my boyfriend had demonstrated that long distance grape throwing is yet another area of life where his ability surpasses mine, we were ready to start on our descent.
Without consulting either a map or a signpost, we headed off purposefully down a path which we hazarded must be the correct one because it was leading downhill. After ten minutes or so it degenerated into a slightly steep woodland trail which wasn’t entirely clear to follow. I came to a slope which my vertigo wasn’t going to let me walk down in shoes with such a poor grip as my canvas trainers, and so we decided to walk back up again, pausing halfway to die quietly on the grass for a bit.
Back at the top we caught sight of a sign pointing in the direction of the village for which we had been aiming. Following it, it turned out to be a tarmac road leading back into the valley which probably doesn’t sound very pleasant, but nevertheless was The shade of the trees protected us from the harshness of the mid afternoon sun, and tarmac was nice and soft to walk on in comparison to the gravel which so often characterises woodland roads in Switzerland.
We arrived at the tiny village in what seemed like no time at all, and proceeded to pause for some refreshments. I was impressed that my boyfriend managed to procure me a glass of lemonade from the one small pub the hamlet appeared to possess, particularly because last summer in France it proved impossible to be served with any lemonade at all. It was a wonderfully sleepy little place which I’m actually struggling to describe because it reminds me of a Ray Bradbury story (The Station Where No One Ever Got Off) about a man who sits outside the train station of his obscure American village waiting for a complete stranger to get off so he can murder him without consequences. This is a most unfortunate mental connection of mine, since there was nothing at all threatening about the village in question. All I probably mean is that it gave the impression of being very remote and cut off, a cheerful place where nothing ever happens
After that we left the road and continued our walk along a little forest path. It would have been quite steep and difficult had someone not helpfully erected handrails most of the way down, and even with the benefit of these there were still some moments where it was possible to lose your footing in the mud and slip. All too soon we were back in the village we had started from, slightly sunburned and ready for another drink, but otherwise not too tired at all We had considered walking all the way back to Geneva, but decided against when we suddenly spied a number 8 pulling into the bus stop in front of us 
And that, in essence, was our holiday. For me at least it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I think my boyfriend enjoyed it more than he/I at one point thought he might It was nice to have a holiday which was so relaxing, especially after the difficult few weeks I had had at work, and Geneva really is an attractive city in an enviable location. The main thing which made the week though was getting to spend some time with my boyfriend. I have to be careful of how soppy I am because he seems to read a lot of my blog posts, but for me the most enjoyable moments were the little everyday things; waking up in the middle of the night and finding someone else in the bed to cuddle up to, eating breakfast together, failing miserably to physically assault him 
It makes me look forward very much to the time we will finally move in together, hopefully later this year. That’s a very fraught and painful decision for me - one which goes against everything I have ever wanted out of life and through which I stand to lose a not inconsiderable number of relatives - but spending time together this week served to reinforce to me that despite all the emotional complications, moving in with him *is* really what I want. If I compare how I felt this week, notwithstanding the fact that we were both cooped up in a pretty small space, I felt so much freer and less stressed than I have this weekend trying to live at home. When I’m with my boyfriend I’m released from the otherwise constant pressure to pretend to be something I’m not, and that’s pretty important to me. The holiday also served to remind me quite how attractive I find him of course, and I think I still have some work to do on the theme of not making it quite so obvious that I’m hoping for a shag. There’s something quite alluringly masculine about him though which is hard to resist, and despite the fact that he burps horrendously and has an annoying habit of kicking my bottom whilst continuing to walk in a perfectly normal manner, I love him very much 
I do have a handful of photos of Geneva, but will have to upload them at a later date due to problems transferring them between phones
Tags: cable car, Geneva, holiday, mount saleve