Chillon Castle & Lavaux Vineyards from Montreux

Chillon stands on an oval rock a few metres offshore, where the lake narrows and the road to the Great St Bernard pass had to squeeze between water and mountain. Whoever held the castle held the road, which is why there has been something on the rock since the Bronze Age and a castle since the eleventh century. Its most famous prisoner was Francois Bonivard, a Genevan monk chained to a pillar in the vaults from 1532 to 1536 for supporting the Reformation. Byron visited in 1816, wrote The Prisoner of Chillon, and carved his name into a column - the graffiti is still shown to visitors, now behind glass. The poem turned the castle into one of the first tourist destinations in Europe, and it has been the most visited historic building in the country ever since. Behind Montreux the Lavaux vineyards climb the slope in terraces held by drystone walls, 830 hectares of them running eleven kilometres along the lake. Monks planted them in the eleventh century. Growers here talk about three suns: the one in the sky, the one reflected off the lake, and the one stored in the walls overnight. A different Switzerland from the Alpine products - lower, warmer, French-speaking, and about wine rather than snow.