Thursday was a whole day to spend in the Jura region, driving towards our next overnight stop, the village of Nans sous Sainte Anne. This area is one of outstanding natural beauty, not very well known, very little traffic, almost no international tourists. Parts of it, like the Source du Lison, have a certain je ne sais quoi, an enchanted quality like nowhere else. It is our favourite part of France.
There is a great view looking down at the village from above, but we didn’t find that viewpoint today.
We went to the cirque at the end of the canyon to visit Les Grottes de Baume. We had not known of these caves before Ghislain suggested we go there. We started the 2km walk, then reconsidered, and fetched the car to save an hour. It was much further than 2km.
We next drove to the hilltop village of Chateau Chalon.
We sat around for an hour with this view while Anne talked to our daughter in Australia (VOIP is a wonderful thing). I got sunburnt writing this (no phone signal in the shade). Several French pique niquers nearby.
When we arrived at the Source carpark, several people were gathered around a near new red Renault Sport hatch. A front tyre was flat. Low profile tyres, but they didn’t look like run run flat tyres. It would certainly have damaged the wheel to drive the car. The Renault-supplied electric air compressor, plugged into the cigarette lighter socket, was dead. I assumed that it would blow the fuse in the car as a similar one did in my car three months ago, but this was Renault’s official solution for a flat tyre: no spare wheel, no can of stuff to seal and inflate the tyre, no wheel brace, no jack. I Google translated my guess, but they didn’t seem to know what a fuse was. It was after 5 pm, they were trying to get a tyre repairer to come down from Pontarlier, 40km away, where they lived.
Anne and I went to see the Source and nearby Creux Billard. When we returned an hour later the people were still there. One of them, an Italian lady with a few words of English, had her car, a Dacier there, so they didn’t need our offer to drive them anywhere. Trying to think laterally, I thought we could use our car’s jack and wheel brace to remove the Renault’s wheel and she could take the wheel to Pontarlier in her car, bring it back repaired the next day. But that would mean we couldn’t leave. What about her car? She removed all the picnic gear from her car (picnics are big in France). I found the jack and the wheel brace, and demonstrated that the wheel brace fitted the wheel nuts on the Renault. We had a workable solution. In our two cars we could move all the people and the Renault’s wheel to Pontarlier for the night, and a couple of people could return and refit the repaired tyre tomorrow.
But the Renault’s owner would have none of that. He was still on the phone to Pontarlier. While I was returning the brace to its home in the Dacier, I heard the compressor burst into life. I hadn’t been thinking laterally enough. They had started the car engine. Perhaps they read the owner’s manual. The tyre inflation was very slow, but definitely happening. We hadn’t found the object causing the leak. I suggested, with finger pointing and Google translate, that they inflate the tyre to 3 bars on the pump’s gauge and check the tyre every few minutes on the drive to Pontarlier. Bon chance.
It was only a minute’s drive to the village of Nans sous Sainte Anne. We found the chateau, but could find no bell to ring, or phone number to call. No clue in the booking.com confirmation. I found the website of l’Ombre du Chateau, and the phone number, and called. There was just enough phone signal. It worked.
No restaurant open in the village. The BnB proprietor called the village fromagier, who could at least make us a “snack”.
