Great gin deserves a better pal than supermarket tonics. It has a lower sugar content—about half—than Fever Tree or Schweppes, the giants in this game, but it also uses local Swiss Alps herbs. The has orange and citrus notes. Limited Car Postal service, so a car is much easier. The Sentier des Mines , or Mines Trail, offers spectacular mountain views but also some rich history of mining for lead, marble, asbestos and fluoride.
Note that while the mine itself is marked as no entry, you can indeed walk 50 m inside, for an excellent view of the rocks over the ages. The local tourism office provides information in English and an online SwissMobil map.
The listed hike is moderate level, 1h45, but I did this as a four-hour small group hike by starting at Les Plans and climbing up through meadows on small trails, exploring side paths at the top.
I record most of my hikes on apps, partly to remember details in order to share them, but also to be able to include the photos I take along the way, as part of the recording. SuisseMobil, as the French version is called, makes it easy to record your hike and to add photos that you take as you go along.
It has all the national and regional official hiking trails, so you can simply select one of those and adjust it to suit you. Swiss Topo is the wonderfully rich official Swiss mapping system, but what you gain in a wealth of useful and fascinating information you lose in complexity and slowness. Two strong points: you can access all of the maps offline with its award-winning app , so no worries about Internet connections, and it is available in English.
