Have you ever ended up in a place where you never planned or expected to visit? Perhaps somewhere you didn't even realise existed until you stumbled across it by chance?
As we're all housebound at the moment I thought I would write about something different. There's no walk in this article, although it is about an area with some great walking opportunities. My Instagram A to Z reached "V" today, so here is a short tale about my semi-accidental trip to the Swiss Jura and to the Vallée de Joux.
In August 2017 I booked five nights in Switzerland to go exploring; Saturday night in a guest house in Bern, three nights in the beautiful little village of Ringgenberg on Lake Brienz, and a final night at 2225m above sea level at Berghaus Männlichen.
On the final afternoon, wanting to squeeze as much value as possible from my Bernese Oberland regional pass, I dashed up the Niesen funicular, spent mere minutes at the top, and then dashed down again.
Niesen: even in some decidedly iffy weather it was a great view.
I needn't have rushed - I got to Geneva only to find that my flight home had been cancelled. It was Thursday night, and I wasn't able to rebook until the equivalent flight on Saturday evening. The inconvenience was minor; with no need to be back in work until the Monday, two days in the Crowne Plaza Geneva Airport (with runway view) courtesy of EasyJet was an enjoyable extension to my holiday rather than an inconvenience!
So what to do with the two days? Some regular readers might know that I spend more time (and money) than I'd care to admit following my local ice hockey team, the Manchester Storm, home and (sometimes) away. Earlier in the trip, I'd travelled to Biel/Bienne for my first taste of overseas hockey - a preseason game (with free entry) against HC Visp. I wondered if the local top division team, Genève-Servette, had a home game during my unexpected extra stay.
They did... sort of. A pre-season tournament called Hockeyades was taking place all week in a quiet valley to the north. As well as Genève-Servette and other Swiss clubs, teams from France, Slovakia, and Russia were playing. I thought I'd give it a go… once I’d worked out where it was, and how to get there.
As the crow flies, it is only 30 miles or so from Geneva to the Vallée de Joux, but there's a socking great mountain range (this may not be the technical term) in the way. It's a two-hour train trip to get there, starting by skirting Lac Leman to either Lausanne or Renens before heading towards Vallorbe on a regional service. The final stretch is a local service into the valley.
Before deciding to spend the day there on a whim, I must confess I'd never heard of the Vallée de Joux, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I found out subsequently that it is a great place to buy a really expensive watch. It is a charming place, still mountainous but much more rolling and green than the Bernese Alps I had spent most of the previous week enjoying. Eventually the valley rises and runs out of Switzerland before climbing to the French ski resort of Les Rousses.
Alas, if you're expecting a host of photographs, you'll be disappointed for once. I took one snap from the train window of the lakeside village of Le Pont at the start of the valley. There's some great photos and video on the Vallée de Joux website. It looked a charming place to go walking and perhaps one day I will return with a bit more time and a bit more of a plan!
The village of Le Pont at the eastern end of the Lac de Joux, from the train window.
The ice rink at the Centre Sportif Vallée de Joux is a sweet little building with a wooden roof and a small cafe. It looks a long way from somewhere that hosts top-level sport, but stepping inside, here I was watching Swiss top-tier side Langnau face off against the Slovakian champions Nitra. Later on, Genève-Servette would line up against Rouen Dragons of France. CSKA Moscow and Lausanne had also played during the week of action.
Warm-ups for Langnau (in white) versus Nitra (in blue)
The head coach of Genève-Servette at the time was Craig Woodcroft, who played two seasons for the Manchester Storm in the heady arena days back in the late 90s. It's a small rink and he's not hard to spot as him team arrives, and I take the opportunity to say hello and grab a photo. He was a little surprised to see a Storm fan in a tiny rink in the Swiss Jura but he was friendly and only too happy to chat for a couple of minutes about his time in Manchester. Thanks Craig!
I’ll be honest, not the most flattering picture of me ever taken on a number of levels.
It's pre-season but the games are competitive, and the standard is a noticeable step higher than I'm used to watching in the UK. Nitra edge a tight game against Langnau in front of a crowd of about 150. Genève-Servette have brought a few more followers for their game against Rouen, but the small rink is still far from full. I have to duck out early to get the last train connection with the score tied at 1-1; as I leave I hear the cheer that marks a late Swiss winner.
The trip had been almost entirely unexpected; I would certainly never had set foot anywhere near the Vallée de Joux but for my cancelled flight. With everyday life taking an entirely different unexpected turn recently, I hope we will soon have the opportunity again to explore and learn about some of those places that might otherwise have avoided our radar entirely.
Hockeyades takes place every year with a rotating cast of top-level European hockey - although whether it takes place in 2020 remains to be seen. Fingers crossed.