Pontarlier to St Croix Part 2

26 September 2010
First light, next day. Here’s a thought from yesterday: if you want to get your head out of your current situation  for any reason, try standing in the freezing rain in a tiny village without a soul about that you have discovered has nowhere at all to stay and with the evening closing in. The zen focus on the here and now is absolute. Then wake up in a cutesy little room decorated with edelweiss cutouts, with the heat on all night (amazing – a first ever) and a little blow heater, and your socks, now clean and dry, dancing merrily on the elastic clothesline. Attitude level 100% (About that village, I seriously considered breaking into the closed-down hotel).
 
I master the correct Bonjour thing just as we are about to leave France: the blokes say it low and flat, but the ladies say it like a little bird, with an upward flick at the end, very fetching.
 
We went to bed wondering what to do today – the weather looked very daunting, mainly because the route was going to be a steep track through the forest. When we woke up we were even more concerned about the prospect of a difficult climb because the mountain had vanished in think fog and the sky was very dark. So we wander around checking on trains and buses, but it was Sunday and everything is closed (everything except the bakery, Sunday sure is a day of rest here) and we can’t find anything out. But as we trudge back to the hotel for breakfast the cloud lifts enough for us to decide to chance it.
 
A great day follows. Up through glorious mountain scenery on a very remote feeling track, part of the famous French GR walking and cycling routes. Very beautiful forest, many rocks, steep mountain views, banks of pine trees. The road we are on keeps climbing up and up and up. We keep waiting for it to level out a bit to take a breath but the summit never comes, so we have to stop and rest. We had some stinky cheese to have with bread and made the acqaintance of every dog within 10 km I think, dashing over to investigate.
 
We have noticed that there are very few fat people here. Australia obviously should say no more often – to fattening foods. But it’s so interesting, the French cook in lashings of butter and cream, drink wine every day, breakfast on croissants, eat lots of bread and have sugar in their coffee. And they stay slender and healthy. What’s their secret?
 
There was a trail run through the forest that day, lots of runners doing between 10 and 30 km. Over the crest of the hill we come on the Chateaux de Joux, amazing enormous castle perched on the top of a massive rocky outcrop. How did they do it ? Who was the intrepid tiler who put that roof on hundreds of metres above the ground?
 
On the lookout for the castle there is a trestle table set up with a couple of ladies giving food to the runners. We have a chat (so nice to have just enough French to do a very basic communication) and they offer us some of the food, so nice.
 
On closer to Switzerland and the landscape and the architecture changes. You could easily think that it is an over the top theme park for the Sound of Music except that it is, well, real. Houses with geraniums (red or pink the only two approved colours), pine forests, super-green fields with brown and white cows, the sound of cowbells.
 
We end the day in Sante Croix in the Jura. We have now found our new Dogville (after the one in Spain). We have trouble finding a place to stay and decide not to stay in the shabby stucco Hotel de France, where we walk in, ring the cowbell and then notice a note that says We don’t work on Sunday, take a key, find your room and make yourself at home, we’ll work it out in the morning.  Instead we end up in a funny little hotel, in a little room up several flights of stairs, with shared facilities. Now sitting in the dining room bar eyeing off the locals – we had heard that there was very little sun in the Jura valley in winter because of the high mountains enclosing the deep valley and so they drink all winter and are just a bit weird, so far that seems to be holding.
 
Looking back on the day, it has been very challenging, on our first full stage with some long climbs. Two passes, the highest was 1144 meters just before Sante Croix. It took a lot of determination just to keep going and we are pretty tired, we could hardly make it up the stairs at the end of the night. We kept thinking of it as a training day, and we will be a lot more able to manage stages like this one with relative ease when we are further into the Via and in fighting form.