Sticks and stones: an afternoon on Uetliberg, and a world first

There are, naturally, thousands of ‘wanderweg’ trails in this country, all carefully waymarked and classified. These include seven national trails, criss-crossing the nation, four dozen regional routes and 140+ local ones. But that’s only part of it. All of these are broken down into smaller paths or creatively joined up with lesser local trails to form an intricate network of new routes. The entire nation — countryside, and city — is dotted with the distinctive yellow wanderweg signs, pointing you to a selection of destinations, each with an estimated walking time, rather than a distance.

Where to start? Crossing off a few local routes first, before venturing into the more serious stuff, seems like a good idea. And so, on Saturday, I earmarked Uetliberg, Zurich’s modest local mountain. It’s just under 1000 metres high, so not too formidable.

Despite that, I can confidently state that I set a new world record on the day.

My early start failed to materialise. Before leaving the flat I had to contend with dishwasher issues. Excessive gunk and uncleaned plates led to an unscheduled bit of appliance maintenance, as well as the discovery that I’d finally exhausted the stock of dishwasher tablets we’d brought with us from the UK. Unremarkable in itself, but the news came within an hour of two equally devastating revelations. I’d earlier realised that I’d just exhausted my UK mouthwash supply. Not only that, but I was clean out of the special rubbish bags you have to buy for about £1 a go to finance the waste collection service. Buying a big roll of them was one of the first assignments we had to tackle on the day we arrived here. So in the space of one wretched hour, these three pillars of my domestic life were heartlessly removed, like a blind man having his stick booted away by a chortling thug.

It was a relief to pull on my brand new walking shoes (Lowa Renegades, if you must know), acquired just 18 hours earlier. Satisfyingly big and clumpy and robust, I sat back and smiled as they conveyed me down through the town, towards the train station, on a carpet of warm air. With some time to waste, I called into the local supermarket and spent 10 dreamy minutes in the cleaning products aisle.

Arriving at Zurich Hauptbahnhof , I made my way down to the tram stop on Bahnhofstrasse. With 6 minutes to kill, I made the fatal error of casual window shopping. In Zurich, you are never more than 50 metres from an outdoor shop of some kind. PAnd so, peering into Ochsner Sports, my eye was drawn towards the Nordic Walking poles on display…

My first lesson in Nordic Walking was how to convey ones stöcke on a tram. After sending first myself, then an old man mysteriously carrying a drum, crashing to the ground, I admit that I failed the test.

Apart from the slapstick, which at least kept a number of schoolkids happy, this was a significant tram ride. Despite being here nearly eight months, I’ve not yet tracked down where we stayed when we were here in 2006 for the marathon. I could find out easily enough by searching back through my emails, but I’ve consciously not done that. Someday, I will stumble across it, I thought. And on Saturday, shortly after stumbling across my new Nordic walking poles, I stumbled across the neighbourhood we’d previously stayed in – down towards the end of the number 13 tram route. Passing under a bridge, I suddenly had a prod of déjà vu. Round a corner, and there was the sportshalle, where I registered! I missed the hotel, so that remains a small mystery, but one I can solve next time I’m down this way.

Another burst of recognition came when we reached my destination – the end of the line. Here was the place I ended up on marathon day, after the race, when I got on the right tram, but going in the wrong direction. Having just plodded 26 miles through icy, incessant rain, I didn’t care. I would take it to the end of the route and wait for it to return. And this was the rather desolate place I waited, exhausted but happy, for 10 minutes or so, 5 years ago. There was surely something symbolic about finding myself:

• at the end of the line
• on a turning circle
• at the foot of a mountain
• after completing a marathon
• having got on the right tram, but going in the wrong direction.

But what did it all mean? Fucked if I know. Sounds a bit like my last job.

But back to today. What was I to do with this pair of Nordic walking poles? I decided to do what sort of seemed to come naturally, only to discover that nothing seemed very natural about them at all. Had I dared to look any passers-by in the eye, I might have caught them giggling at me. So instead, I pulled my cap down over my eyes, pointed my iPod at the backlog of Richard Bacon podcasts, and struggled on up the hill.

As mentioned, it’s not a big hill, but it is steep. This is no gentle, twisting, gradual ascent. You stand at the base and have to crane your neck to look upwards at the peak. Then you start climbing. Here and there are short bursts of steps set into the hillside, but in the main it’s just steep cindered track, most of it beneath a canopy of trees. Despite the physical effort, it’s a pleasant place to be on a Saturday afternoon in Zurich, and you quickly seem to be much further away from the department stores and clanging trams than you ever really are.

It took most of an hour to get to the top, where the reward was a splendid view over the city, and along the lake towards the Alps, even if it was too misty to get a good view of the distant mountains.

Then it was a slug of iced tea, and a steady plod along the ridge for another six or seven or miles, in the general direction of home, stopping here and there for a mouthful of malt loaf and a few photos. It felt disconcertingly autumnal up there. After that initial steep ascent, there wasn’t much more climbing to do. Most of the terrain was gently undulating forest track. At least it was a good opportunity to fine-tune my Nordic walking technique, though unfortunately I didn’t have one to fine-tune, so was unable to exploit this opportunity to the full. Or even a bit.

Eventually I reached Felsenegg where I had to decide whether to commit myself to the further 3.5 hours it would take me to get home on foot, or to wind my way down the ridge. I opted for the latter; it was already 5 p.m., and I couldn’t be certain of not getting caught out in the dark. And so I made my way down a staggeringly steep stretch of hillside to Adliswil – the same town I had ended up in last Sunday, when I approached it from the opposite direction, along the floor of the Sihl Valley.

A good day’s walk. Not especially taxing, but I needed to see off this bump that winks at me several times a day – from home, from work, and on my commute. It’s done.

As I stopped for a beer outside Horgen railway station, I was also able to reflect on that new world record, alluded to earlier. It may not have been the fastest ascent of Uetliberg in history, but I can confidently state that I am the first man ever to climb that mountain – and very possibly any mountain in the world – with a jumbo box of dishwasher tablets in his rucksack.