France

Friends of ours moved to France earlier this year so we we've had a lovely week visiting them in their house in the Isère region of the Rhone-Alpes. We've holidayed in France a lot over the years but never the south east so it was a great chance to see a totally different area as well as catch up with them- Switzerland is less than 2 hours drive from their house (and our daughters were on a Ranger Guide trip to Rome whilst we were there, which according to my phone was only a 9 hour drive away. Even as a European, it amazes me that everything on the continent is so close).

We drove south from Calais and as an overnight stop off, randomly picked a campsite south east of Dijon in the small town of Dole on the edge of the Jura region.

Dole at night 

It turned out to be a lovey little site very close to the river. It was getting dark by the time we'd set up tents and eaten (I took the smoked pork stew in the pan we'd heat it in and it was perfect with some tomatoes we'd taken and a baguette we bought on the way). We walked in to the town and found a festival in full swing- a live band and food stalls round the edge of a park where people had bought meat to grill, long tables and benches to eat it at, two mobile bars and a stall which was lending (or hiring?) crockery and cutlery to eat it off. A couple of big barbecues stood in the middle so I'm not sure if you cooked your own or if someone cooked it for you but it all seemed a very civilised arrangement and the place was packed.

After the obligatory breakfast croissants from the boulangerie we had a couple of hours drive through the stunningly beautiful Jura.

 We travelled through the hills on fairly minor roads and kept finding villages which, apart from some electricity cables, didn't look as though they'd changed for hundreds of years. Huge piles of wood accompany every house- this is an area with hard winters.

We passed this working bread oven at the end of a village street of shops- it even has the swabbing cloth at the end of one of the poles. We saw a couple of other communal wood fired ovens- what a fabulous idea.

We stayed for 5 nights with our friends and the Isère region is no less gorgeous- this is the view just before dusk from their house-

We talked, ate and drank a lot, decided the local speciality of putting praline in croissants and brioches is a very good one, visited the Chartreuse cellars (and tried the Chartreuse. It's supposed to lead to a long life because it contains 130 (secret) herbs and spices. Not sure about that but it tastes good!), the children swam and we went on some stunning walks.

Cirque de Saint-Meme

Our favourite walk was in the Cirque de Saint-Meme, a natural ampitheatre in the Chartreuse Mountains in the Savoie, about an hour east of where we were staying. Our friends had work commitments so my husband, son and I took ourselves off for a walk. As you near the Swiss border the landscape becomes more Alpine- you could set a film of Heidi in some of the villages we passed through. The mountains are stunning- it's a national park- and the views from the road are idyllic. You wind up a mountain road, complete with tunnels and overhangs, and then find yourself in a clearing with a shallow river, wide grassy banks with families picnicking and paddling in the water. What Cirque de saint-Meme is famous for though, is it's waterfalls. There are three of them, with the first emerging from a spring somewhere level with the tree line below the summit.

The paths up and down are steep and a mass of roots and limestone rocks.

We had lunch sitting by the middle waterfall (Isère and Savoie both make delicious cheeses) and set off for the top. 

We found the cave at the top, complete with slightly nerve-racking path to it (well I thought it was nerve-racking. Son disagreed) and the most incredible view.

My favourite photo!

We made our way down through the trees, a mixture of pine and deciduous and past more huge lumps of limestone.

Tree roots growing through the rock

Beautiful colours

Back down to the cafe for a well deserved beer. Except I tripped over my feet once safely on the tarmac, pretty much where the first photo was taken, and so I spent the rest of the holiday with a banadaged knee that I couldn't bend for a week. At least it wasn't further up the path...

We did, as always, enjoy the food in France. They're always very good at promoting and selling local foods, even in the supermarkets. One supermarket is pretty much like another, just like the UK, except one in the Rhone-Alpes won't have the same range of Burgundy wines as one near Dijon and neither of them will have a fresh fish counter like one in Brittany. The cheeses are different. There'll always be a standard range but there will be a greater variety of the local cheese. There's (nearly) always a display of produce from the area. It's changing, sadly, but there is also still more of an emphasis on produce in season than in the UK and I think this is because of the priority given to local foods. You get French tomatoes instead of, say, Dutch or Moroccan. If Charentais melons from the South of France are ready, that's what is available, rather than every type of melon being on sale all year round.

And so I bought some Mirabelle plums. Tiny, dense and sweet, yellow with a pink blush they're very good in tarts as they don't leak but as I was still hobbling I went for a more hands-off (or sit-down-with-your-leg-up) choice and made them into jam. After all, it is Autumn.