Final Sunday in Montreux

My last locum Sunday here today, and it was such a joy to welcome my cousin Dianne and husband Ian, who had driven down from Champex Lac to join us for the Eucharist. We had intended to meet up yesterday to see the desalpage des vaches in the Val d'Herens, above Orsieres. They had timed a week's holiday to coincide with this special autumnal alpine festival. I'd have had to arrive at 08.45 at Orsieres station to be driven up to where the event was to start at 10.00. 

After three hours travel on Friday, I thought it better to lie low yesterday and keep some energy in reserve for today, so they decided to drive down and worship with us instead. Dianne and I have known each other for over sixty years, having been raised in the same mining village in the years of our youth. Both of them have remarkable careers in journalism behind them and we share a love of Switzerland and alpine life. These days I still have considerable energy, but fewer reserves to draw upon. All part of getting old.

As with other visitors while I've been here, they marvelled at the typical traditional Vaudois nature of Church House, with its all wood upper storey after the service. They couldn't be persuaded to stop for lunch as they had others to meet after an hour long return journey, but we did spend an hour together drinking coffee and talking before parting company. Then I had to get my affairs in order for another journey up to Villars to celebrate Holy Communion again for a dozen appreciative faithful in Aiglon Chapel.

With the roads being clearer, and no diversions this time, the drive up to Villars and back via Ollon, the shorter route, was easy and enjoyable, although descending a steep road with hairpin bends at twilight required careful attention, especially after the nightmare with fading brakes on the slower steeper descent via Bex, last time round. I sensed my slower speed was an annoyance to some other motorists, who overtook as safe opportunities presented. It was only in the home stretch I realised the supplementary read fog lights were on unnecessarily, and I was mortified. 

Driving an old Subaru Impreza, apart from my aforementioned scary experience, has been quite a pleasure. It handles with the reliable precision of a sports car, reassuring when precision driving is essential to avoid trouble. It's as good as my VW Golf back home, albeit with lighter steering. Even so, it would have been far nicer to have been able to timetable and carry out a train journey to Aigle connecting with the narrow gauge mountain railway to get to Villars and back. Evening trains, like buses, are few and far between.

When I chatted with our English organist at the service, he told me that he was an entomologist with an expert interest in alpine butterflies. He worked with a Swiss expert, surveying or you could say auditing a immense variety of habitats and their species across Switzerland. It was amazing, he at this time when rare species are disappearing throughout the world, that there are remote places in alpine meadows where site specific species survive, so long as habitats remain undisturbed by anything foreign to their local ecosystem. 

For this reason, he declined to offer his services as a tour guide to butterfly watchers, preferring to keep these locations secret, as camera toting enthusiasts were capable of losing awareness of their environment altogether, end up trampling the habitat the creatures rely on to survive. This reminded me of the news cameraman in Latin America, who filmed himself being murdered by a soldier at a public demonstration. Also of wedding guests toting video-cams attempting to interpose themselves between priest and couple during the solemn vows. It's so easy behind a lens to lose awareness of the impact of your presence on your surroundings. The acquisition of the image becomes everything and this is, in a way, akin to idolatry - note to self, beware!

   

From Lakeside to Mountainside

An hour before this morning's Eucharist, St John's choir met and rehearsed music for the Sung Eucharist service of the day. Clare went and sang with them. Altogether there were just over thirty of us for the service, regulars and returning visitors with summer homes in the vicinity. Many lingered for a drink and a chat afterwards, including a young Chinese couple training at the local hotel school. She was from Hong Kong and he was from Taiwan. I wonder what they made of my sermon, which contained biblical reflection on the theme of hospitality?

After lunch and a siesta, I drove into the mountains for a second Eucharist at the ski resort of Villars up at 1,300 metres, which involves a challenging 900 metre ascent from the Rhone Valley. There's a modernised road which runs from Aigle to Ollon and then to Villars, and that was the route I used on the return run. But, I needed to do a practice drive up on the much narrower and slower road up from Bex, a longer distance. Next Sunday there's an early afternoon Christening in Villars, but there are road closures in Ollon because that route is used for a motor hill climb competition, over the weekend. Today, I needed to time the journey to prepare for next week, not least because on return, there's an Evensong service at five at the 19th century English chapel of St Michael in Caux, above Territet, which is still used occasionally, but no longer owned by the local Anglican community.

The church building used for Anglican services in Vilars is called 'Aiglon Chapel'. It was built by the Commonwealth and Continental Church Society (now known as Intercon) in 1883 as a mission to English speaking visitors and residents of this popular mountain resort. Its architecture externally and internally is Swiss Vaudois Protestant in style, in contrast to St John's Territet which is a typical Oxford Movement Anglo Catholic edifice. But then Intercon is primarily a protestant evangelical missionary enterprise even today. The most flourishing of the three Anglican chaplaincies at the eat end of Lac Leman is Vevey, also founded by Com and Con in the 19th century. Villars services used to be taken by the Vevey chaplains, but this seems to have changed in latter years.

It's called 'Aiglon Chapel' because it was bought by Aiglon school in 1996. The school was founded after the war by a church member. It has grown enormously and is one of several in the region with an international constituency and reputation. The entire school population is now too big to be accommodated by the church building, so only upper or lower school services are held here twice a month. Denominational services are held on other Sundays of the month, on variable occasions. The Anglican group is not large, we were eight people, including visitors. Even so, it's good the pastoral connection remains through changing times.

I drove home by the quicker route. Well, it was quick enough until I reached the Rhine valley floor. The road from Aigle to Villeneuve was one long crawling traffic queue, holidaymakers making their ways home before school starts again this week. Traffic on the autoroute above was also moving at a snails pace due to a traffic accident in the tunnel de Glion. So, it took me an hour to get back to Montreux, just as it had take me an hour to get to Villars. It's good to learn about weekend traffic in this region early on and be prepared for it. Normally traffic flows easily, with the occasional choke point in a town, as there seems to be plenty of space on the road, but it all depends on timing, plus the occasional misfortune for some poor motorist. I could also have gone by train up to Villars, but there's no guarantee the timing of the Regionale from Territet to Aigle or Bex to connect with one or other of the mountain railways would be convenient enough for these occasional services. Quite a pleasant thing to explore nevertheless.