Alpine Adventure Day 25 - A Swim And A Putt In Beautiful Zinal

When we stayed in the Val d'Anniviers during our second visit in September 2014, one of our absolute favourite things to do was our evening visits to the Zinal swimming pool. Granted these also served a practical purpose in allowing us to get a warm shower during 2 weeks living in gas preservation mode in Homer at the time. However, the joy we felt on each visit went dar beyond having a good wash.


Zinal swimming pool is like no other pool we have swum in. Around 18m long (at a guess), it is always spectacularly clean and the staff wonderfully friendly. Oh, it is also included in the Liberte pass for free. Yet the big distinguishing feature is the pool length wall of windows looking out on snow capped 4000m peaks. It is simply stunningly beautiful.

That is why when we woke up this morning not feeling quite like our original plan of a fast hike for a few hours, we decided instead to hop on the Grimentz to Zinal bus (available in summer - free with Liberte pass) and go for a swim instead.

100 lengths later and we were feeling pretty awesome. The pool certainly hadn't disappointed. We even got to chat to the same member of staff we'd gotten to know 2 year earlier. Just time then for a quick round of mini golf at the Zinal course before hopping back on the bus to Grimentz for some lunch, dinner and an afternoon dealing with a necessary few emails and enjoying a book together.

There is rain forecast for tomorrow but then again it was forecast for today as well and never appeared so we'll just have to see what tomorrow brings.

I don't normally take time to add captions, but this I me reenacting the moment a week or so ago when, while irrigating my bowels using my Peristeen kit in the dark at 2200m altitude, I turned round to find an enormous, well-horned male ibex 3 feet away from me. This is exactly the face I pulled (maybe)