Zurich - Insel-Ligerz Swim

Village of Ligerz

My next challenge after Sempach was the Insel-Ligerz swim. The plan was for me to work my way up to a 3km swim from Untermatt to Weggis on 17th August, since the furthest I’ve ever swum crawl is probably around 2km and I want to test my abilities.

The Insel-Ligerz swim is one swim of 1.1km followed by a 2.1km swim one hour later. You can choose to take part in either one of the swims or both swims; if you do both swims, it’s counted as a 3.2km swim. My reasoning was that if I could do both swims without feeling exhausted, I’d probably be able to manage the straight 3km swim. This was the first event I’ve attended where there was an official timing of participants.

I also noticed that it was part of the Swiss Open Water cup, inaugurated this year, which gives you points for each Swiss lake swim you complete that’s on their calendar, and then extra points if you place; there are also awards for different age categories. I signed up for it (it was free), but with the weather as it now is, it’s unlikely I’ll do any other swims. My previous swims weren’t on their list and so didn’t count.

I left Zurich just after midday on Friday to overnight in Biel beforehand, so that I didn’t have to rush the next day. Biel is one of those places in Switzerland that is truly bilingual, so everything is in German and French (eg, Biel/Bienne). It’s always a bit of anticipation as to whether the person that’s about to speak to you will do so in French or German. I initially wondered how they chose to put German first on all the signage since F for French comes before G for German, so you’d think it would be the other way round. However, on further deliberation, I realized that in both French (Allemand, Francais) and German (Deutsch, Franzoesisch), German actually comes first alphabetically. Question answered!

It was a beautiful day, so I walked along the Taubengracht, which I’d read about online. It’s a walk by a gorge and it’s really quite unexpected as you don’t expect it to be there in the middle of the city. It’s not a long walk, maybe 30 minutes to an hour depending on how many photos you want to take. As usual, there was a barbecue facility half-way through if you wanted to grill your dinner in the countryside. It was a beautiful walk and ended up at an equally pretty café / hotel, where I stopped and treated myself to a banana split.

It wasn’t so easy to find your way out at the other end; I finally made it to a bus stop which actually said it wasn’t being serviced, but the bus stopped, so I was fine. I’m not sure what I’d have done otherwise – maybe walk all the way back?

Biel itself wasn’t anything special, but I was very happy with my hotel which had all the UK TV channels (that’s pretty unusual!), a great buffet breakfast (which included baked beans – also unusual!), and tea and coffee making facilities. It was close to where the ships left to go to Ligerz (and close to the railway station), so it was ideal for my purposes.

I had to check out by 11am, so I decided to take the earlier boat to Ligerz (cost covered by the swimming participation fee). It was cloudy and raining in the morning and I started to fret that I would be the only person there; I wasn’t going to back out because of the rain.

However, it cleared up as the day progressed. As we approached Ligerz, I could see the buoys for the swim already in place across the lake. It was quite exciting! Getting off the boat, the swim was well-signposted, so I got there with no problem and got myself kitted out with my number and wrist tag.

I took the spare time to look round Ligerz which was extremely old and pretty but very small (it’s just a village); there were steps leading up the hill where you could see all the vines growing, but I didn’t want to wear myself out before the swim. In retrospect, I wish I’d done it, as I think the view from up there is stunning, having seen some photographs.

The thing I found most disconcerting was that they didn’t have any changing areas; they had toilets, a large tent to store belongings, food tents, but no changing rooms. I had to hide behind a tent to get into my costume, but I wasn’t alone and it wasn’t unisex behind that tent!

The first, 1.1km swim was from St Petersinsel to Ligerz, so you had to wear life vests as boats took you across in groups of about 12. I had been thinking to go over early, but I’m glad I didn’t as there was nothing there. We were dropped off at a place that was stony underfoot (yuk!). I went into the water beforehand to test the temperature and it turned out that there were more rocks under the water and then deep masses of algae or something. It was quite disgusting underfoot. I’m glad I went out as it would have taken me ten minutes just to get started otherwise.

It was obligatory to wear your own “auffallende Badekappe”, by which I think they really meant a bright, easily-visible swimming cap. However, “auffallend” means striking or noticeable or remarkable, so it was a bit open to interpretation. I saw some people wearing checkered caps, others wearing caps in the shape of an animal with scales sticking out of them. I had been worried if mine was bright enough, but since it had the slogan “what do swimmers think about?” with a picture of a roast chicken in a thought bubble, I decided that this did indeed qualify as “auffallend”.

Just as we were about to start, a family of ducks sauntered across the starting line, so we all had to wait. And then we were off; the timing wasn’t so strict since as we got to “Go!”, some swimmers were still on the shore and others, like me, had already waded out quite a bit. I felt nervous even though I do this distance of swimming almost every day.

On arrival, there was one person pressing a button when you arrived (which was presumably recording the time somewhere), another two people were writing down your number and your rank. To my surprise, an audience was cheering everyone in and shouting “Hop, Hop!” (that’s a Swiss cheer of encouragement) as each person reached the finishing line. It was a nice way to feel truly part of it.

Then, an hour later, they started the 2.1 km swim which was to the island and back (it’s an archipelago and not a true island, by the way). There were fewer people in this swim, and fewer again doing the full 3.2km. With each increase in distance, the level of swimming was also better, so my ranking got progressively worse. Among the women 3.2km swimmers, I came in last! There were some 2.1 km swimmers behind me, though, and one male 3.2km swimmer slower than me. Still, as a test run it was successful and although I was more tired than just on the single 2.1km at Sempach, I wasn’t absolutely exhausted.

It was a bit of a rush to get the boat back to Biel; I grabbed my prize for completing (upgrading from the Zurich plastic cup, to the Sempach towel, and now in Ligerz to a full-sized bottle of local wine!). In my rush, I left my swimming goggles behind, but when I emailed afterwards to ask if they had them, they sent them back to me by post. Sometimes Switzerland is truly wonderful!

Unfortunately, after that day, the days became colder and the lakes cooled down. In the end, it was ruled that, for the 3km Weggis swim that I’d been working my way up to, you had to wear a wetsuit for safety reasons (preventing hypothermia); the lake temperature was forecast to be 18.5 degrees or less. So, after all that, I never did the swim I truly wanted to do! But I had a lot of fun along the way all the same.