The road up to Leukerbad feels like it is going nowhere, and then it arrives at a wall. From Leuk in the Rhône valley, it climbs north through the Dala gorge, past the village of Inden, in a series of hairpins and tunnels cut into the rock, and finally opens into a high basin at about 1,400 metres, ringed by sheer limestone cliffs that rise more than a thousand metres above the village. The wall of rock is the Gemmi, and the only way over it, unless you take the cable car, is a footpath carved into the face.
Leukerbad is a spa town, and its hot springs have been used since Roman times. Around three million litres of thermal water flow out of the ground every day, at temperatures up to about fifty degrees, and the village has several large public baths, both indoor and outdoor, where you can soak with a view of the cliffs. In the nineteenth century, it became a fashionable resort, visited by writers such as Goethe, Mark Twain and Guy de Maupassant, who crossed the Gemmi on foot or on horseback, and the old village still has some of the wooden houses and grand hotels of that era.
The riding is short but sweet. The road from Leuk is narrow and steep, with tight hairpins and spectacular drops into the gorge, and the asphalt is in good order. Weekends and the ski season bring a steady procession of cars, and buses run up and down regularly. At the top, the road ends in Leukerbad, so you will need to come back the same way. The views from the road over the Rhône valley and toward the peaks of the Valais Alps are superb, especially in the late afternoon, and the Pfyn forest below Leuk is one of the largest pine forests in the Alps.
Leukerbad has fuel, shops, hotels and restaurants, and the baths are a great place to recover after a long day on the bike. Leuk, the medieval town in the valley, has a castle renovated by the Swiss architect Mario Botta. For a larger town, Sierre, about ten kilometres down the valley, covers anything Leukerbad cannot. The region produces some of Switzerland's best wines, especially whites from the Petite Arvine and Fendant grapes, and reds from Cornalin and Pinot Noir.