La Sarraz to Lausanne: The importance of literacy

Our last day on the Via Francigena was a difficult one largely as a result of failing to follow good Swiss instructions. The signage for bike and pedestrian routes is amazing here. For the past two days we have been following bike routes primarily, so it seemed sporting of me to take the pedestrian route for our last day. Apparently the word pedestrian does not include bikes pulling trailers. As a result it was a rough go down to lac Lamond. Gord walked behind me so he could help lift the trailer over roots and rocks as we made our way slowly towards the lake. At the lake we both immediately went for a swim clothes and all!
Once we followed the lake around to Laussane we were sobered by the huge hill we had to climb and push the bike up to get to the center of town. I was confused by the bike sign that seemed to point into a building, but ignored it to concentrate my energy on pushing up the hill. There are moments on long days where according to Gord, I get kind of surly, and this was one of them. If he hadn’t finally agreed to a beer stop things might have gotten ugly. With the cooling elixir I was able to push up the final blocks to our hotel.
It turns out, once again, literacy is a golden tool. The sign I had ignored earlier was indicating that bikes could travel up the hill on the funicular .?!!**#!!

Our 960 km trip on Via Francigena has come to an end for this year but it has only convinced us that it’s time to take up Italian so we can return and head into the Alps that are waiting for us.