There is more to walking than meets the Eye

Having farewelled my Drinking Buddy, Jacques (DB), in the picture-postcard town of Ornas, and having posted nothing (except for the gush over River Loue) for over two weeks, I confess that this is more a retrospective than a current story. We are now well into the Swiss part of VF, looking back on the final and most beautiful section in France, which passes through the two north-eastern departments (Haute-Saone and Doubs) of Franche-Comte, better known as Bourgogne (Burgundy).

DB (not to be confused with the non-drinking WB) regards tasting local wines and cheeses a national duty. He believes that right across France ‘young people are acquiring global bad taste from bad American television’ giving up fine local wines and setting off a vicious cycle: closure of village bars and shops, further reducing the attraction of rural living, leading to further falls in rural populations, reduction in demand for bars and so more closures, all in a downward spiral.

It seems the French government shares DB’s concerns and has announced special funding to attract tabacs and bars back to rural areas. In these circumstances, it would have been utterly rude as a pilgrim in this land not to help raise consumption of local produce.

If you are used to Australian distances, France is not a vast country. About 800 kms of hiking has taken us right across its north eastern border – from the ocean in Calais and Wissant, to the Jura Mountains in Bourgogne.

For a while the dead-flat windy plains with more giant windmills than trees seem unending.

It’s quite a relief for the leg and the soul to get to the rolling pastures and vineyards of Champagne and finally to the mountains of the Jurassic age in Bourgogne. Closer to the Swiss border the Alps will get higher, craggier. For now the mountain is modest, its peaks comfortably rounded.

The architecture of Bourgogne too, has a distinctive feel, with the shiny tiled church spires and the timber framed houses.

In Champagne as in Bourgogne, bars and cafes (when open, that is) seem always to include local wines and cheeses though much to WB’s consternation the ‘salon de the’ often serve no tea at all. In Bourgogne, washed by great river systems created by the Saone and the Doubs pouring in from the Jura mountains, you can dine on local trout. ‘Caught 7 kms down river,’ one proud proprietor tells us.

Because we live in a time when visual reproduction is literally child’s play, we tend to capture our experience in pictures. But a long walk engages all your senses.

Almost always you hear the river before you see it. On forest tracks, you hear the birds constantly, though they are visible only rarely and fleetingly. It is your ears that first pick up the buzz of the bee surrendering to a poppy, the first whisper of the breeze on a still morning, and the engine noise to alert you to the tractor approaching on a lonely farm track.

And then there are the things that the adverts about walking holidays and hiking blogs (including this one😊) rarely mention: smell of cow-dung which your nostrils have grown used to before you see a single cow on the paddock! Worse (or perhaps better this way) the unavoidable stench of a dead animal from which you hope to avert your eyes if at all possible.

But we are walking in spring and mostly the forests are fragrant with flowers. In Bourgogne, on the first day of summer we walked through our first old growth pine forest. It smells – well, shall we say piney? Part lime, part oil, a bit grassy and just very, very clean.

And what of touch, you ask? The splatter of mud on your calves is sticky, wet boots wrinkle your feet, stingy grasses irritate the skin as do the ticks, mosquito-bites, the tiny bugs that fly over head and assault your face…

But then, on a day when the heat has sucked up all your senses and drained your spirits, a sudden up-rush of breeze from the valley splashes your skin with the coolness of the stream you crossed hours ago. Ah… you had almost forgotten there is that lovely river way down in the valley below! In your tiredness you don’t recall its name, but you can still hear its murmur if you stop moving and listen.

Two hours of walking in the sun ahead of you: the cool breeze comes for just a minute and is swamped quickly by the surrounding heat. It feels like a fleeting memory – of the cool dawn earlier today, the spray of the water-fall days ago, and behind concrete memory of real things, the shadowy textures of whatever spells comfort for you.

These long walks, part urban, part historic, part wild, are nothing like a perfect tourist experience – some it is not even pleasant! But they provide a sensory intensity not captured in pretty pictures. And even words are on shaky ground here!