Lake Geneva look-out at Le Cubly

Dwight Peck's personal website

Winter 2014-2015

Despite the Resurgence of the Pugs

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

Lake Geneva look-out at Le Cubly

It's the 21st of December and no sign of snow yet. But it's a good day for a scenic walk in the afternoon.

We're at Sonloup (at 1149m) on a ridge just above the village of Les Avants up the hill from Montreux on Lac Léman or Lake Geneva.

The hotel of Sonloup (closed now), at the top of a funicular railway from Les Avants

The hotel is the starting point for our brisk walk out to a good overlook for the views.

Les Avants is about 100 metres below down this funicular railway, which was opened in about 1910 -- for many years the village, on the Montreux-Oberland Bernois (MOB) railroad through the mountains to Gstaad, was a getaway winter resort, particularly for English tourists (back when Montreux was referred to as the 'English Riviera' [cf. TS Eliot, 'By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept']). A ski resort it was, too, back when the ladies skied in billowing skirts brandishing a single long pole for balance. (I lived in Les Avants with Marlowe's mom back in the very early 1980s.)

Above Les Avants on the far side of the ravine of the Baye de Montreux, that's the Dent de Jaman on the left and the Rochers de Naye across the centre right (we virtually lived up there in those days).

An elegant little path out the more or less level promontory from Sonloup towards the lookout at Le Cubly

With a 15-metre knob near the end of it

Awaiting stragglers

Our destination

The look-out, with a small family of lookers-out

Straight down to the southwest, Montreux on Lake Geneva

And a bit farther afield, La Tour-de-Peilz on the left, and Vevey, with Lausanne sort of indistinguishable beyond that

Picnic facilities

The Leysin Tours over the mountains to the south

Lake Geneva in its late-afternoon glory

'Home then; home' (Virgil's Eclogue 10)

Jaman and Naye again; the sheep on the pasture of Les Gresaleys haven't moved.

The Jura mountains in the distance

The funicular railway at rest

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