2 days by e-bike in Zermatt, facing the Matterhorn

Meeting point in Martigny at 7 am, transfer by Exo'bus to Täsch, then the last few kilometres by train: Zermatt cannot be reached by car, and that is the first thing that gives this weekend its particular flavour. The early start is deliberate: it gives you a full day of riding on Saturday instead of half a day swallowed by the journey.

We start gently, on an easy but playful line, long enough to settle onto the bike and into the altitude. Then the day finds its rhythm: several loops, lifts linked together with electric assistance to reach starts as high as 3,000 metres.

What strikes you here is the variety. Within a few hours you move from the lunar landscapes of the high mountains, bare and mineral, to natural traversing trails that flow, with altitude lakes set down like mirrors. Lower, you cross hamlets of larch chalets blackened by centuries of sun, before dropping back towards the valley.

And all the while, there is the Matterhorn. It never hides for long. It appears around a shoulder, settles at the end of a lake, disappears behind a ridge, comes back. You end up riding with one eye on it.

Night in Zermatt, in a hotel. Depending on the number of participants and the hotel chosen, the property sometimes has a wellness area: slip a swimsuit into your bag, just in case. After 4,500 metres of descent, legs know what to do with one.

A second day on the Blauherd and Sunnegga side, the one that opens widest. Several laps, each on different ground, with a view that never closes: glaciers on one side, and that line of summits above 4,000 metres closing the horizon. Valais has more of them than any other region in the Alps, and from up here you see almost all of them.

It is also the day of the high point: a 3,400 m start. At that altitude there is no forest left, no meadow, nothing but rock, snow and silence. You stop for a moment before dropping in, because nobody feels like leaving just yet.

Then comes the last run, the one still being talked about in the bus on the way home. A single traverse, more than 2,000 metres of descent without climbing once. You set off in the mineral and finish in the forest, and between the two the landscape changes three or four times. It is the kind of descent you will find almost nowhere else in Europe.

And on Sunday, you do not take the train back: the descent runs all the way to Täsch, on the bike. You ride to the bus, which is a far more satisfying way to end a weekend than sitting down in a carriage.

Your luggage will not have followed you: it is taken from the hotel straight to Täsch during the morning, and that transfer is included in the price. You ride the whole day with nothing but the essentials on your back, and find your things again as you board the Exo'bus.

Back to Martigny, where we part around 8 pm. Legs cooked, heads full.