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| Baume les Messieurs |
12 noon check out at Gustave’s table, what a treat. After breakfast we wander up the path taken by Gustave Courbet to the limestone cliffs above the town. The cliffs are covered in wire ropes and ladders for climbers and on our ascent we are passed by a young couple heading up to test it out. The local fire dept. are also up there practising their cliff rescue procedures leading up to the holiday season – they look very well organised.
We spend some time wandering around town and about the river. Here, in the very centre of the town, fishermen in waders, fish for trout.
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| Ornans from the cliff tops |
We buy a better map of the Jura at a servo and head off for Baume les Messieurs. It’s a lovely drive through forest, vineyard, small dairy farms and toy villages of stone and wood.
We stop at Arbois, birth place of Louis Pasteur, but it’s, noisy, congested and smelly so we move on. On a back road we see a sign to “Roman Ruins” and follow further clues to a Puits Roman (Roman well). The roman ruins turn out to be, well, rather underwhelming (see photo).
Unperturbed we drive on to find “Chateau Chalon”. The chateau ruins consist of a dodgy, half collapsed wall and some fallen debris. We decide to move on and find ourselves in Chateau Chalon – it’s not a chateau at all but a village.
The village sits atop natural lime stone cliffs and commands breathtaking views over the valley below. We park at the top and wander down. There are plenty of wine sellers and an abbey (I think 1400s). We stop for coffee at a young lady’s honey and jam shop and she chats amiably about the town.
It’s a bit of trick getting down from chateau chalon as the roads follow the top of the cliffs and there are only a few places where they plummet through myriad hairpin bends to the valley below. We’ve booked a bnb in a presbytery, it’s a couple of km out of town and we hope that it’s not like Labaroche, 300m away horizontally and 1700m away vertically.
We gain confidence as the valley flattens out between massive limestone cliffs but all of a sudden Doreen forces us into a 180 deg bend and 45 deg incline and we break into a sweat at the memory of Labaroche. After an ascent that makes our ears pop we’re then guided back down again to a spot about 100m along the valley flat from where we commenced our ascent. We think Doreen has a sick sense of humour.
The bnb is a presbytery to the old abbey, a central focus in the town. It’s a lovely old stone dwelling and we have a room in the back of the house with our own little terrace. Our hosts grow wine and make their own beer.
The town is stunning. Prevented from growth by the circling cliffs the hamlet huddles around the 12th century abbey. A river runs through the towns centre and small stone bridges straddle its banks. In the fading evening light, a warm glow can be seen come from the cottages along the stream and the scent of roses; orange, red, yellow and white, now in full bloom, comes in waves as we pass their small gardens.
We find the one open restaurant “Les Grand Jardins” (the grand gardens) and enjoy beef cooked to perfection with some lovely local wines. A first for me, an entree of creme brulee and sausage – (think pancakes bacon and maple syrup) – nice.
PS the wines of this area are really distinctive, the smell like a minerally sauterne but are very dry.
Tomorrow we head south east to Annecy and then perhaps Mt Blanc.