Plangent strings play. A yellow Rolls-Royce Phantom ascends an Alpine road, a hotel perched on a precipice in the background. Down in the valley Bond follows a dot on the screen of his DB5’s tracking device, which inexplicably places his quarry somewhere on the outskirts of Geneva. We are nowhere near Geneva.
Some more Rolls, some more jaw-dropping scenery. A Ford Mustang appears. More driving shots. Goldfinger stops for a roadside snack. Tilly Masterson makes a ham-fisted attempt to shoot him with a sniper rifle. Neither he nor Oddjob notices. More driving shots. Bond runs Masterson off the road. What are men like?
The 1964 classic 007 outing Goldfinger is a terrible guide to the Furka Pass for the modern road cyclist. Highly questionable chauvinism aside, the film plays fast and loose with continuity, mixing up sections of the climb with abandon and teleporting its cast of vehicles willy-nilly up and down the pass. Their Strava files must have been a right mess.
Goldfinger is also woefully out of date. Old Auric’s Phantom and Tilly’s ’stang are subjected to that trendiest of surfaces – gravel – when the current road is in fact made of some of the most perfect tarmac you’ll ever ride on, the kind that exists for mere minutes in the UK before we ruin it with HGVs. And weather. And rank indifference.
Roads like these
Without slipping into crass stereotypes, the Swiss are phenomenally good at building roads over, around and through mountains. Theirs is an infrastructure of serenely competent concrete and tarmac.
The roads are scrupulously tidy and well thought-out – every avalanche anticipated; every mountain stream directed. Spend some time in Switzerland and you can end up taking the sheer orderliness of everything for granted, but the audacity of roads like the Furka shouldn’t be understated.
Soaring 2,436m above sea level, a figure that makes it Switzerland’s fourth-highest pass, the Furka links the cantons of Uri and Valais. The road scales some of the most impressive geology Europe has to offer and its elevation means it’s typically only open for around five months of the year, spending the rest of the time hiding under heavy snow.
When clear, the Furka is a tremendously popular route for all manner of two and four-wheeled vehicles, and for very good reason. Were this a French mountain it would doubtless have a storied racing history, but the Furka somehow keeps a relatively low profile.
It does loom periodically over Tour de Suisse stage profiles and it dallied with the Giro d’Italia back in 1965, when the Salvarani team’s Vittorio Adorni took Stage 19 over the pass wearing pink and went on to win the GC.
Get your Furk on
While images of the Furka tend to dwell on the iconic Belle Époque Hotel Belvédère on the western side of the climb – now permanently closed but endlessly Instagrammed for its splendid Wes Anderson-esque frontage – our Furka ride follows in Bond’s tyre tracks, a climb to the top from the eastern side of the pass, beginning in the village of Hospental.
We say beginning. It’s a long false flat along the valley with minimal elevation gain and the climb proper arguably gets underway after you emerge from Realp, an Alpine hamlet whose claims to fame include having two train stations and a large golf course.
You are quickly thrust into the steepest part of the climb, but Swiss restraint means you’re still only topping out around 11%, the kind of slope where moderately generous road gearing is adequate and it’s still feasible to maintain a steady cadence.
This first section squeezes in almost all of the eastern side of the pass’s hairpins in quick succession, and you’ll be going plenty slow enough to appreciate the ever-broadening views, each reversal delivering a new slice of Alpine splendour.
The combination of thin mountain air and constant gradient will certainly get your heart rate up but the return on investment is healthy, as bends come frequently and hoist you up the mountain deceptively quickly.
Double-O-heaven
Swiss restraint is evident once more when after a few twists you reach James Bond Strasse, the precise location where our hero stepped out of the Aston, looked down on Goldfinger’s party, and didn’t soil himself like a normal person would when he almost got shot in the arse.
Rather than milking it for all its grubby touristic worth, our Swiss friends have gone with a couple of simple signs, leaving the rest up to your imagination. Will you recreate the ‘Sean Connery shot’? (Camera, not gun.)
That’s between you and your dignity, but we can tell you right now it feels pretty silly in Lycra. Not driving-a-Vantage-with-007-themed-plates silly, but definitely cringe-adjacent.
Further hairpin highlights include: an Alpine cheese shop, a pair of 1:1 scale plastic cows and the delightful symmetry of the final switchback that wraps around another shuttered hotel, overlooking an extraordinary craggy tableau.
From here the character of the climb changes and you’re working your way along as much as up, the mountain on your right and the endlessly huge view across the valley on your left.
Geological pace
For much of the remainder of your ascent you can see virtually the entire route to the top, which depending on your frame of mind is either inspiring or soul-destroying, because the sheer scale of it inevitably makes your progress seem, appropriately enough, glacial.
The gradient eases for a while though, so settle into a rhythm and enjoy it – it’s going to take you some time. Breathe the clear mountain air, feel the cool spray as you pass the Sidelenbach waterfall and think about how much rösti you’re going to eat for lunch.
A last mini-test comes in the form of a pair of hairpins before the final run to the top. Now you’ve got this. There are signs of habitation up here – the Restaurant Furkablick is one – but the buildings always look slightly abandoned, perhaps because that’s exactly what they are for more than half the year.
Finally you round the last gentle bend and you’re at the top. It’s a cheerful, oddly peaceful place, never short of tourists but free from the tacky trappings of fully monetised masses. Sheep idle in a pen, tired cyclists mill around snapping photos of the signs. Bikes are good, eh?
Thanks to Swiss International Air Lines, Swiss Travel System and Switzerland Tourism
Photography: Patrik Lundin