[Crans-Montana, Switzerland. Monday, 4 June 2018.]
The bus came up the mountain in low gear, grinding, the engine working hard.
Out the right-hand window the world just dropped away. A valley going blue with distance. A very long way down.
I'd flown in Sunday night with Marcus asleep on my shoulder and a flask of bad coffee, and we'd bused up in the dark to a hotel I'd only seen in photos.
Woke Monday to this.
I'll tell you what the place looks like, because the place is half the plan.
Crans-Montana is a ski resort with the snow taken off it. Fifteen hundred metres up, where the air has a third less in it than your lungs are used to. Which is exactly why I picked it, and exactly why the federation's fitness lad whistled through his teeth when I said it.
Chalets with big sloping roofs, dark wood gone silver. Geraniums in the window boxes, because the Swiss cannot help themselves.
Donk.
