The last few days been spent in the Jura, which is a high region bordering France, Germany and Switzerland, but it is mainly in France. Franche-Comte, the main area we have been walking through since Besancon is one of those places that has a fairly unsettled history, being part of Burgundy and Spain as well as France and was only recently re-joined with Burgundy as part of a new larger region. It feels quite its own place and is a place of deep gorges and high ridges, forests and alpine style villages and farmsteads. We are now in a place where cows have bells, where the wine and beer are individual in style and the cheeses dominate. The home of not just  Comte cheese, but of many different but familiar types of cheese that are extremely popular with cheese lovers in Britain.

Today, our last night in Franche-Comte and also in France had me roaming the streets of our night stop trying to find somewhere open that sold any type of food. We are in a small apartment in a skiing village just off our route (Metabief) and the restaurants are all closed apart from (possibly) the one related to the only open hotel here and, typically, there was no one in reception or anywhere in the hotel until 5.30 pm who would be able to tell us if the restaurant was open tonight, but the shops all closed pretty much at the same time (5.30). So, do I try to find a shop that would be able to sell us some food or wait until the place closes in order to find out if the restaurant is actually open tonight?

I didn’t wait. I went to the bakers and bought bread and went to the only other shop with food, which was…. A cheese shop.

Thankfully, it sold other things as well, so we will eat cheese (Alison) and pate (me) with bread. Both high quality ingredients to go with the superb local bread.

Ironically, the guy in front of me in the cheese shop was a familiar customer to the woman behind the counter. He got a quarter of a round of the major, old Comte which is a bloody large cheese, and a smaller, younger round of cheese, only about  a foot and a half in diameter and a smaller soft cheese about nine inches in diameter. He struggled out with his heavy load without paying (it was his choice for the evening, on account) and was the chef from the hotel…

On my way in to the shop I took a photo you will see. In France we have seen rural communities being served by machines that deliver fresh bread to locals (either in the place du Mairie or next to the Boulangerie that is not always open. We have also seen pizza machines that cook and serve pizzas in places with no restaurants. But here, when the cheese shop is closed, you can still (thank the Lord) buy your favourite local cheeses from a similar vending machine.

The thing is. Tomorrow we leave France. It is such a strange feeling!

For about a week or so we will be in Switzerland and then we will enter Italy.

France has been a joy, but it has been very hard work this time. August is always hard in France but we seem to have walked through some of the hardest regions for this month with almost nothing open. Nothing! Hard to find accommodation, harder to find shops that are open or places that serve food and drink open…. And in this village, with four restaurants near us none were open (the fifth one might have been but, well, you know the story).

Final grump, and this is the big one… It was all made harder by the absolutely rubbish service provided by Google Maps. Go to your village/town/city, click on restaurants (for example), check which ones are open, walk there, and nothing is open, some are just closed for the season, some have just folded and some are long gone…. Nothing like up to date info…. Yes, there will be some open and there will be places that are not even on the map, but it’s the unreliability that is the problem.

So, as we wind our way through forests, over steep ridges and along very deep gorges with amazing cliffs and wild, crystal clear rivers pounding over rocks and through tangled forests, we feel like we are getting further away from the sorts of lands we have been crossing for several weeks and into new territory.

Fewer cultivated fields, more highland meadows with cattle, some horses or sheep, glimpses of vineyards across valleys and villages with houses with roofs that get deeper and longer that enjoy more generous eaves that swoop down over stairs to the first floor and then huge barns with homes tucked on the lower floor with a huge, arched ramp of soil and stone, like half a bridge, leading to a first floor barn door on the side of the building – new, different structures. More alpine looking houses and now more chalets as we get into skiing country. Big swathes of green pasture lands are now being revealed between forests of pines rather than deciduous woodlands, and there are fields with strange structures that end up being ski lifts stranded in fields with a line of pylon like structures taking the wires up and over the hill beyond. Long lines of cleared land through forests mark out ski slopes and every road has tall poles with white and red markings to show you where the roads are after deep drifts of snow arrive.

Yes, we are getting into the Alps and tomorrow we will be in Switzerland (have I already said that?).

The final thing to say. The one thing I wish someone had been able to tell the population of Britain before Brexit, is that borders here are both clear definitions of where one country stops and another starts.

The thing is, you can walk from one country to the next in Europe and the boundaries are lines in the ground with nothing to stop you from going from one place to the next. But you step out of one town, go over the border and step into another town and they are different countries, not just different towns. The people speak a different language from the previous town, the people have different world views, have different histories and loyalties and cultures.

France is France and Germany is Germany, Spain is Spain and Italy is Italy. They have different political structures, their politics is different and they don’t even think the same. But it can take a simple walk of a few hundred metres to go from one country to the next and clearly and vitally know you are in a different place altogether. … they are different in all respects.

So, the people of Britain refused to accept the same currency, because of sovereignty, they refused to take part in Europe in so many ways and they didn’t accept ID cards and be quite as open in their borders as the rest of Europe, we had a sea between us and policed the rail lines that make up our only real land borders but somehow, being part of Europe robbed us of our sovereignty…. Such nonsense, such lies.

How could what I have described be true if EU membership robbed people of their identity or sovereignty?

I am a Scot and I know that Scottish people don’t think they will become English because the border between the two countries is open. And, even with our political system and the ways in which power is distributed, it does not stop the Scots from being who they are.

The glories of open borders do not lead to people losing who they are or how they run their lives, but people can be manipulated into believing such things. Lies are easy when you hide the truth. It makes me so sad and frustrated!

So, tomorrow we will need to check our maps in order to know when we actually cross the border, but we will know we are in a new country as soon as we enter the first village.

Wonderful !

Today’s footnote:

With no chance to post this yesterday, we have walked into Switzerland and are established in a little hotel in a town called Orbe (we have followed the river l’Orbe for most of the day through a gorge, mainly).

I have added to the photos, too. So the photographic journey takes you briefly through Besancon to Ornans, then on to Moutier Haute Pierre where you will see our socks drying on the balcony, on to Pontarlier which did a good line in statues, including an interesting dog made of wellies, then off to Metabief where itI is true to say, blessed are the cheesemakers, and now we are in Orbe.

The thunderstorms of the last couple of days made some of the paths very treacherous, especially going down the very steep ones and along the narrow ledges high up on the gorge’s cliff. The Orbe river was in full spate, roaring along the valley and its tributaries were also thundering along, too. As we began to walk along the start of the hydroelectric pipe by the Orbe, we encountered a herd of Alpine Ibex and we got our first glimpse of the Alps (through the maximum magnification on the camera lens)…

We are in Switzerland, and it is actually a different place from France despite crossing the border which was indicated by a white cross and a very old stone. I think the garage we passed was once the border post…. Vive la Difference!!!

And we have just returned from our dinner at a local restaurant, which was very good. The service and food were excellent, it felt quite traditional, but the food was as good as anywhere (with matchstick chips, which were also fun) then just as we finished our meal (around quarter past nine) people started to arrive, most of the diners had gone and we thought the place was winding down, but people arrived as small groups and as individuals, everyone seemed to know each other, and the restaurant filled up. beers and wine began to flow, the outside seats were also filling up and food was also beginning to be served…. we asked about this, and it was their regular community Thursday evening event. it felt like we were in a buzzing pub, all of a sudden! And, along the road we can hear the local brass band practicing…. the street is alive… this is not France….