Autumn in Verbier – a chance for the Commune to practice building roads. Again.
Now, being British I’m pretty used to the disruption caused by road works in the UK. I used to live in London and digging holes in otherwise perfectly functional roads was a source of great regional pride amongst the councils and boroughs.
So you can imagine my delight when the Swiss decided to show their own road mending skills at the start of the summer – the Route de Creux (from Place Central up to Savoleyres) got the treatment and all sorts of large, noisy, slightly badly smelling machinery spent a week or two yomping up and down the road repairing the damage the winter had done.
The freezing temperatures are, after all, a pretty big problem for mountain roads (look up freeze/thaw in your old GCSE geography books). But that was in May.
Then they did it again mid summer. And now they’re back.
This is all the more vexing as they spent a fortune on mending the roads so Lance Armstrong and the rest of the Tour de France could nip up to Verbier (and I have to admit, no small factor in adding to my frustration is that I live on the Route de Creux).
But perhaps they’re practicing, perhaps they’ve fixed all the other roads in Verbier and have to start at the beginning again, or perhaps they’ve just decided to make the road to Savoleyres absolutely perfect.
But whatever the reason they’re at it again, and as I type there a fifteen blokes standing around with shovels, smoking endless cigarettes and (to the untrained eye) adding very little to the whole process.
Still, if you visit us this winter you’ll have super run up to Les Essertes. It’ll be like a snooker table by the time these boys have finished.
