When I leave a hotel in the morning, having just eaten a good breakfast, I don’t feel like buying food for lunch, but it is usually necessary because village shops are very few and far between in rural France. At the bakery this morning the chap in front of me in the queue had full lycra cycling gear on proclaiming “London-Edinburgh-London 2021”, turned out he was from Ghent, had cycled here from home and was on his way back, having done most of the road version of the “Grande Traversee Jura”.
The mist is just rising above the flat flood plane where the track begins.This was big clock-making country once, the clock was the i-phone of it’s day, the latest tech gadget. The clock repairer plied his trade from village to village, apparently he was a cheeky chappie with some contraband brandy in his bottom drawer (not room for much of it though, I would think). We don’t have itinerant smart-phone repairers, I suppose we have app-developers instead, playing beer-pong.After a long climb I am up in the meadows again.And I come across this lady whacking a fence-post in with a sledge hammer, looking highly photogenic in the process, her daughter sat in the grass nearby playing with grass stalks. But I don’t get the camera out in time to snap her in action, so I ask if I can take her picture with hammer and post, the daughter was keen to be in there too. (I am concious that I should include more people in these blog pictures, it seems they don’t object).On a woodland track some of these boar-hunt shooting stations appear, looks like a good place for elevenses, the “Tarte aux Myrtilles” is a bit squashed, but delicious anyway. While I am sat up in my throne an elderly couple come walking along the path, they find my picnic seat amusing and I have a long chat about differences between France and Angleterre, including retirement ages (60 for him, 66 for me, down to “La socialiste Mitterand” not sure if the chap was in favour of or against), working hours, air pollution, and a few things for which my french was inadequate, but he got into a flow and was unstoppable. They were a nice couple, I should have taken a picture.This cow seems to object to me invading her field. It’s a long and bumpy ride back down to the valley, if I follow the route I will do this climb and descent twice more – but a little way up the next section exhaustion kicks-in. I examine the map and devise an easier route along roads to my destination. This goes smoothly, but I’m too tired to take photos.And I arrive at my little studio apartment where I will be for two nights, tomorrow ia a rest day.So to rest.
