Day 343 – EU – Switzerland [Sierre to Brig]

13/03/21

38.5km

  From Sierre (Switzerland) to Brig (Switzerland)

Europe

A very distracted run, yet beautiful, by the Rhone river again, up the Valais towards the Italian border

One of the most distracted I’ve been on a run for a very long time. I simply could not focus on the running. I would take a break, check the news on my phone, try and understand the consequences of Italy’s decision to effect a new lockdown on Monday 15th March. Contact my hosts (I always have at least 1 week of booking in advance) and check whether they will be operating or not. The possibility of a 3rd lockdown break has been hovering over my head ever since I started running again on 15th December 2020. It seems 3 months exactly after the re-start, I may encounter a dead-end again. But let’s see.

So far the situation is as follows: tomorrow (Sunday 14th) I am entering Italy. Just for a day. Monday 15th and Tuesday 16th I will be crossing the lakes region (Lake Maggiore and Lugano) on the Swiss side. Then Wednesday 17th is when I enter Italy again and that will be when the national lockdown is effective. I will have two stages (Como and Milan) to reach a place where I can take a flight out of the country if needs be. That basically gives me until Thursday 18th to figure out the situation, knowing that Italy is split into “Yellow, Orange and Red” zones, and different rules and levels of restrictions apply.

With all this on my mind, I was happy to be on an easy road, on an easy day, with once again the beautiful Alps in the background. What an adventure. What an incredibly relevant time in my life and in general to be attempting a trip around the world. Some may say it’s stupid or vain. But life goes on no matter what and though I may not be able to express it with precision yet, I know that persistence in the adventure is the right way to go.

Check my daily run GPS data on or

Here is the map of today’s run: