Tour de Suisse 2019 Report – Part 2

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Last week, I realised I did not write a post stage report on the second week of my Tour de Suisse 2019.

Well, here it is…

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We moved our base camp from Silvaplana to Sedrun on Saturday – I had an intermediate stage planned, but decided to drop that and have a rest day instead.

Also during the second week, things didn’t go exactly as planned, plus the weather was really bad, most of the time.

I managed to cycle every pass I wanted, except the Nufenen, which was closed due to land slides.

I already knew beforehand that my road book was something I was most likely not going to stick to anyway, but I didn’t anticipate that a medical discomfort would be mostly responsible for that…

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Tour de Suisse 2019 Stages – Part 2

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In a previous post, I have described the area around Andermatt, our second base camp for my Tour de Suisse 2019.

This post provides more details on the possible stages and alternatives I have in mind and which I will probably not ride.

Although not for lack of trying, but just because most of my trip ideas are insane, given that I would like to ride every day and I’m not a world tour pro rider…

(Plus, I will have a week’s worth of ass-whooping climbs in my legs by the time we settle in Sedrun)

Another factor is, that there are many climbs, most of them with at least two alternative routes to cycle them, and I have only so many days during either part of my Tour de Suisse.

So, each stage below is described including alternatives – if you’d rather not read all of that, just wait for my post stage reports later on 🙂

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Tour de Suisse 2019 Sketches – Part 2

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(Below is was what I originally had in mind – the reports tell a somewhat different story, althoug in the end, I managed the “must do’s” I had in mind, just not the way I “planned” it 😎 There’s a lot of intersting intel in this post, though.)

Now that our short trip to sunny Egypt has ended and May is coming to a close, the start of my Tour de Suisse 2019 is only two months away.

Although I’m back to a regular – much less intense destructive than in 2018 – training routine, I’m still a long way from anything near my ‘normal’ form.

On average, my power numbers are 30 Watts lower than they used to be before my injuries forced me to take a 3-month break.

With some help from online sources, I successfully rebooted, following two training plans.

During that reboot, I reconnected with Xert and I’m now using their ‘adaptive training advisor’ to get me further back on track. I’ll try and write a post on Xert in the near future.

Anyway, the apartments for the Tour de Suisse have been booked, Chesa Bellaval in Silvaplana and Casa Nacla in Sedrun/Surrein.

Both apartments are chosen based on their strategic location, while still staying within a more or less ‘sane’ budget for the tour.

From either place, a score of cols is available for me to break my legs on…

In this post, I’m covering part 2, the week in Sedrun.

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Cols of the Swiss Stage

Tour de Suisse logo smallIn June last year, at the end of my Giro d’Italia 2015, I rode an entirely ‘Swiss Stage’ including the Gotthard (Tremola road), the Furka and the Grimsel.

You can read a report on that stage here – it offered some of the most stunning views I have encountered so far and I am determined to get back there for more, during a longer stay.

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Grimsel Pass


The Grimsel pass (2,164 m, summit sign 2,165 m) connects the cantons of Valais to the south and Bern to the north; it crosses the continental divide between the Mediterranean Sea and the North Sea.

It’s part of the most famous routes – or round trips – of the Alps and is combined with the Furka pass, which it ‘meets’ in Gletsch in most of those.

There’s a loop with the Susten pass (north), or with the Nufenen and Gotthard passes (south).

Depending on where you start, Andermatt, Airolo or Wassen, and which direction you go, clock- or anticlockwise, you can combine them in several ways, in different order of appearance for each.

More info on the various loops is to be found on for instance the pages of the Alpenbrevet.

I did the Silver version, or north loop, of that in 2019, albeit that I started in Wassen and finished in Andermatt, forfeiting the descend back from there to Wassen.

(These routes do change to start in either Andermatt or Wassen, so the Silver Tour may well be with the south loop some other year…)

I cycled the Grimsel from Oberwald as part of the ‘Swiss Stage’ at the end of my Giro d’Italia 2015 – report here.

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