However the spectacular views from the panoramic viewing carriage made up for the inconvenience.

We had purchased a half fare card valid for one month card in Zurich at the start of the holiday. It cost 99 francs and had already paid for itself. We had also bought the required bicycle registration . Many touring cyclists don’t bother but it includes third party insurance and the chances that the car you scratch will be a Porsche or Maserati are higher in Switzerland than anywhere else in the world.

We boarded in German speaking Zurich and disembarked in Italian speaking Locarno. We didn’t even try to learn the languages in Switzerland. There are three main languages, German, French and Italian, plus Romansch, but even the German, French and Italian are Swiss variants.

The apartment was in Avegno, a small village about 12km inland from Locarno. It was a renovated stone farm building and spacious.

The owner lived in the unit when there were no tenants and she told us to help ourselves to any food etc. Always welcome because it saves the hassle of buying, or doing without, cooking oil, condiments and so on and then throwing away most of it for lack of space on the bike.

The next day we took the bus to Locarno. We walked up to the Sanctuary of Madonna del Sasso, not bothering with the funicular, took a ferry to the beautiful Isole Di Brissago where we had a late and rather poor lunch at the cafe. From there we took the ferry to Ascona, strolled along the lake front and around the ancient alleyways. We spent ages trying to find the bus back to Locarno and then got off at the wrong stop. We just caught the small shop at Avegno before it closed and cooked a pleasant dinner.