Driven · 2020
Sixteen days, 4,783 kilometres, eight stops — and rain at half of them. The first longer loop in a vehicle of our own, and the one that taught the principle: a few passes done properly beats all of them done once.
The measurements
Every figure here comes from the trip’s own GPS record — distance, stops, times and the weather logged at each stop. Nothing estimated, and nothing rounded except for display.
Over the Jura into central Switzerland, then across the Grisons — Guttannen below the Grimsel, Filisur, Davos, Silvaplana — and back through Austria to the shore of the Chiemsee, where the trip ends with several days in one place. The logbook counts two countries; Austria was only ever passed through. A handful of passes, and a loop that looks small on the map.
299 kilometres a day, the highest average of the five trips — and still the second-shortest distance. In the Alps you do not measure in kilometres but in vertical metres and hairpins: a pass costs you a morning, whatever the odometer says. It ends with five days in one place on the Chiemsee, and that is not exhaustion, it is the correction.
Rain at four of seven logged stops, 16 to 26 °C. That is July in the Alps: the day is decided by mid-morning, and if you wait until the afternoon you cross the pass in cloud. The length of the day shifts by barely ten minutes over two weeks — here the rhythm is set by the weather window, not by the light.
The other trips