The Alps and Franche-Comté

Most characteristic of Alpine cuisine is the liberal amount of cheese made from the local cow, ewe and goat milk. The fromageries of Franche-Comté and the Northern Alps are full of cheeses like Roblochon, Tome des Bauges, Emmental, Chèvre, Comté and Beaufort. These are found not just in the famous fondue, but also raclette and tartiflette (both cheese-based dishes served with ham and potatoes). Other cheeses worth seeking out include the smooth blue-veined Bleu de Gex, produced exclusively in the Pays de Gex region, and creamy Saint Marcellin, from the Grenoble area.

Many restaurants feature fish (notably salmon and trout) from the Alpine lakes and use locally grown herbs, like thyme, basil and rosemary. These herbs are particularly in evidence in the Southern Alps around Briançon, where they are often used to flavour the saucisson (cured sausage), which you’ll find in many a morning shopping market.

The region produces many light and fruity varieties of wine, of which the most popular is the dark red Mondeuse, with its faint taste of raspberries. By contrast, the expensive vin jaune from the Jura is a potent, golden wine, made from Sauvignon grapes with a fermentation process similar to that of sherry – it remains in the cask for 6–10 years before being bottled. Vin jaune is a favourite accompaniment for the local cheeses of Franche-Comté, and is used in speciality dishes such as poulet au vin jaune (chicken in a creamy sauce flavoured by the wine). It’s also worth sampling some regional liqueurs. The most famous of these is undoubtedly Chartreuse, the drink produced by Carthusian monks since the sixteenth century, which contains 130 different herbs and is known as the “elixir of life”, while Chambéry is famous for its high-quality vermouth, including the unique Chambéryzette, flavoured with strawberries.

There are seven national or regional parks in the area covered by this chapter: Vanoise, Chartreuse, Bauges, Écrins, Queyras, Vercors and Haut Jura. All of these contain gentle day-walks and more demanding treks – not least classic long-distance paths like the Tour du Mont Blanc – which require one or two weeks’ walking. Most of these routes are clearly marked and dotted with refuge huts; the routes are also described in high detail by the Topo-guides guidebooks. Nonetheless, even the most experienced walkers or skiers treat these mountains and their unpredictable weather conditions with due respect. Even low-level walks in the Alps during summer often require a good level of fitness and specialist equipment, such as crampons or ice axes. You should take account of the weather conditions (which can vary considerably between the valleys and peaks), of the potentially debilitating effects of high altitude, and of the serious danger of avalanches.

The Alps was the first great centre for European rock climbers in the nineteenth century and still offers countless routes that can be enjoyed by both novices and world-class climbers. A more recent development has been the creation of Via Ferrata courses, in which wires and ladders are bolted onto the rock so that even inexperienced climbers (wearing harnesses and ropes) can make ascents which would otherwise be impossible for them. There are via ferrata courses being developed across the whole region, but at present two of the largest centres for this popular sport are at Serre Chevalier and in the Parc National des Écrins.

The Bureau Info Montagne office in Grenoble and the Office de Haute Montagne in Chamonix can provide information on the best guides and the most up-to-date information on all the GR paths and the best via ferrata courses, while local tourist offices often produce detailed maps of walks in their own areas.

With their long and varied runs, extensive lift networks, and superb après-ski, the French Alps offer some of the best skiing not just in Europe, but the world. Skiing first became a recreational sport here in the early 1900s but the industry really began to boom in the Alps during the 1960s with the construction of dozens of high-altitude, purpose-built resorts that ensured good lasting snow cover. Some of these resorts have their detractors: the modern architects often created sprawling concrete settlements that had little in common with the traditional farming villages lower in the valleys, and in so doing they earned France a lasting reputation for “ski factories”. Nonetheless, few can knock the efficiency of these resorts. They have an abundance of hotels, equipment outlets and ski schools, while at many you can simply clip your skis on at the hotel door and be skiing on some of the most challenging pistes on earth within minutes.

Although downhill is the most common form of the sport at all the resorts, cross-country or nordic skiing has become increasingly popular on gentler slopes (particularly around Morzine and in the Parc Naturel Régional du Queyras), while there are also several famous routes for ski touring (a form of cross-country skiing with uphill sections and across much longer distances), not least the Haute Route between Chamonix and Zermatt (Switzerland) and the Grande Traversée des Alps, which leads south from Thonon-les-Bains on Lake Geneva through several national parks. There are also plenty of opportunities for snowboarding with many resorts having developed snow parks expressly for snowboarders.

The ski season runs from December to late April, with high season over Christmas and New Year, February half-term and (to a lesser extent) Easter.

The citadelle in Briançon is just one example (albeit a spectacular one) of the many fortifications built on France’s eastern borders by Sébastien Le Preste de Vauban (1633–1707), a Marshal and engineer in the army of Louis XIV. In all, Vauban built 33 fortresses and strengthened countless others in order to defend the new lands won by Louis, the so-called “Sun King”, during the wars of the seventeenth century. Vauban was highly innovative in the design of his fortresses, which were often built in the shape of a star so that the various defensive bastions could defend each other with covering fire. The other spectacular fortifications planned and constructed by him in the Alps and Franche-Comté are the citadelles at Besançon and Mont-Dauphin. Twelve of Vauban’s fortresses, dotted around France, are now included on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Unquestionably, the Savoie region offers some of the world’s greatest skiing. To begin with, there’s Les Trois Vallées (wles3vallees.com), one of the world’s largest linked skiing areas, with endless off-piste possibilities. Its four component resorts are glitzy Courchevel (wcourchevel.com), which also has by far the finest restaurants of any French ski resort; ugly and family-oriented Les Menuires (wlesmenuires.com); Val Thorens (wvalthorens.com), favoured by younger crowds and the snowboarding set; and Méribel (wmeribel.net), traditionally dominated by British tourists, and which therefore perhaps explains its status as the party capital of the Three Valleys. Despite the British imports, though, the small wooden chalets which climb the eastern side of the valley do manage to give the resort a traditional Savoyard feel. Less well known is the Paradiski ski area, on the slopes above Bourg-St-Maurice, which comprises the resorts of Les Arcs (wlesarcs.com) and La Plagne (w la-plagne.com), linked together by a giant double-decker téléphérique that swings over the Ponthurin valley. The former is accessible from the town via a funicular railway, and offers excellent snow and terrain for all levels, while La Plagne is made up of ten resorts high above the Isère valley, with plenty of opportunities for both beginners and more advanced skiers. Beyond here, the world-famous resort of Val d’Isère (wvaldisere.com), site of the 1992 Olympic downhill, offers some of the most varied and demanding skiing in the country, including year-round skiing on its glacier.

Winding its way over mountain passes and secluded valleys all the way from Thonon-les-Bains to Menton on the Mediterranean coast is the most renowned tourist route of the French Alps, the 684km Route des Grandes Alpes. The route crosses six Alpine passes over 2000m, three of which – the Col de la Cayolle, the Col de l’Izoard and the Col de Vars – were only paved in 1934. The complete route opened in 1937 and has been a popular touring route for drivers, walkers and cyclists ever since. It can be covered in a couple of days by car, but only by rushing through the stunning mountain landscapes and intriguing settlements (including Morzine, Valloire, Briançon and Barcelonnette) that line the route.

The high plateaux of the Jura mountains (wjura-tourism.com) guarantee good snow cover in winter, but they also lack the steep gradients of the Alpine peaks further to the south; it is this high but level terrain which has made the Jura into France’s most popular destination for cross-country skiing, or ski de fond. The goal of any superfit fondeur is the 175km Grande Traversée du Jura (GTJ), which crosses the high plateau from Villers-le-Lac to Giron, a town in the south of the Parc Naturel Régional Haut Jura.

The same gentle topography and established infrastructure that enable cross-country skiing have made this region an ideal high-summer venue for mountain biking, with hundreds of waymarked cross-country skiing pistes used out of season as trails for adventurous mountain bikers. The 360km GTJ–VTT, which starts near Montbéliard (just to the south of Belfort), has become the greatest long-distance biking challenge in the area. Many people cycle on the road; there aren’t many cars, so if you can handle the hills, then go for it.