Day 4: Zermatt (Switzerland) –> Ascona (Switzerland)

This morning we have a planned late start as we take a walk around the town of Zermatt. Exiting our hotel through its cave entrance is always a dramatic experience.

And walk down through the town – trying to avoid all the watch retailers – to the train station.

To take it down the mountain to our waiting car at Täsch car park.

It Is another beautiful day here in Switzerland, perfect for the roof down in our Targa.

As we only took on board a limited amount of fuel yesterday, we stop in at a Shell station to fill up with the 100 octane available here. Things are pretty bad when we find ourselves thinking €2.49 per litre is good value, but it is the best pricing we’ve seen for high-octane petrol so far on this trip.

We also take advantage of the free water here to refill our windscreen washer fluid mixed with the Porsche concentrate that we carry with us. It is surprising how hard it is becoming to find water at service stations.

With the car now ready for today’s trips, we head off towards Italy via a few tunnels.

With the roof open inside the tunnels is loud – much too loud to have a conversation – but we have become used to it.

We head up over the Simplon Pass, one of Switzerland’s most beautiful and historic mountain crossings. It may not be the most exciting pass from a pure driving perspective — there are no endless sequences of tight hairpins or particularly technical sections to get the pulse racing — and the route can often be busy with heavy trucks making their way across the Alps.

But the Simplon has a different appeal. As we climb higher, the views begin to open up, and to our right the landscape stretches away into a spectacular Alpine panorama. The combination of enormous mountain faces, deep valleys and the changing light makes the climb feel far more scenic than the road itself might suggest.

Where we capture the views from the top with our Hasselblad camera.

And also our Leica – it is interesting the different styles of images each camera produces. In general, we find the Leica Q2 camera is the better camera for travel – smaller, lighter and it produces great images by default with little need for processing.

It is a steep drive down the other side, with warning signs of the risk of brake fade – especially for trucks – as it is 19 km long until we reach the bottom.

There are emergency escape traps along the way if you do experience brake failure – something that our well equipped Porsche 911 has little risk of on this section.

We cross into Italy – where the road surfaces become less even compared to Switzerland.

We’re heading for a ferry that will take us across Lake Maggiore to a lunch spot on the other shore. Complex routes like this are easily handled by the Porsche PCM that is fully aware that we’ll need to take a ferry crossing and it directs us to the appropriate ferry terminal.

We’re first onto the boat, which gives us a great view for the twenty minute crossing.

Approximately twenty minutes later, we approach the ferry terminal on the other side.

Thankfully, we find parking at our planned spot. The parking meters here require you to type in your registration number – so you can’t share an unused portion of your time with someone else. However, it seems to assume Italian plates and won’t accept the last digit of our Irish registration number. Close enough though!

We grab a table at a nearby pizzeria. It looks quiet but most of the tables are reserved for a large group they are expecting.

And watch the ferries ply their trade across the lake in the afternoon sun.

After lunch we head along the lake shore towards our hotel – our first two day stop on this trip.

This is a particularly enjoyable end to the drive, with the afternoon sun keeping us warm and the 911’s flat-six burbling away behind us as we follow the twists and turns of the road, tracing the contours of the lake.

Arriving at our accommodation – Hotel Eden Roc in Ascona – as dusk starts to fall. We’re staying in the Italian speaking region of Switzerland for the next two days.

Stats

Today we did 202 km over 4:42 hours, with an average speed of 43 km/h, consuming 10.6 litres/100 km.