Today was fine again and the temperature was in the high teens as we left Nyon. Our awesome Audi wasn’t quite so great when we realised that the boot size was smaller than our last car. With food in tow, we weren’t able to fit the stroller in – so our Swiss friends said they would bring it with them the following night.

The drive from Nyon to Rougemont took a bit longer than we expected, with lots of hairpin bends and tight roads, however the scenery was beautiful, with green pastures everywhere, Swiss chalets scattered around, and mountains looming in the distance, including a couple of snow-capped ones.

We arrived early afternoon and found the pretty chalet that our Swiss friends had kindly allowed us to use for the night before they joined us. The house was huge, split across five levels, facing south as all the houses do across the valley to catch the sun, and built in the Swiss alpine chalet style. The lower level is a studio apartment, the floor above has laundry and ski drying room (complete with seventeen sets of skis, a couple of mountain bikes and a snowboard), the main living quarters are in the middle with bedrooms above, and then there’s an attic with overflow bedding which we might use tomorrow night.

After settling in we wandered down the steep slopes, bought a few essentials and checked out the town. Rougemont, named after the red rocks nearby, is only very small (population 910) and the village consists of a church, train station, small supermarket, school, and a couple of shops.

There’s also a base station for the cable car running up the mountain to the main ski slopes of the region. The town marks the end of the French speaking region of Switzerland. If you travel further east you enter the German region (and you can actually ski from the French side to the German side from the slopes above the town).

After picking up some Swiss chocolate, baguettes, wine, cheese, ham and ice-creams for everyone (what else does one need?), we soon picked our path back up the steep slopes. The return trip was a lot more taxing than the downhill leg, however we were soon all relaxing, enjoying the late afternoon sun and views.