Day 50: Jougne to Orbe

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June 2, 2018

The footpath app is split again today because it wouldn’t recognize a couple paths, so I had to stop and re-chart it. We walked a little bit more than what it says–if you see in the first map, it didn’t start tracking until a bit after Jougne. It was about 21.5 km overall.

Today was a fun day–we crossed over into Switzerland and had beautiful views along the way.

After breakfast at the hotel we packed up and headed out, turning left out of the town square and down the mountain.

leaving Jougne
looking back at the Jura mountains
a little waterfall
The smell of this freshly cut wood was incredible.

The day was warm and sunny–beautiful for walking. We were tracing one of the oldest paths from France to Switzerland, so there we a lot of roman roads.

One of the Roman roads we walked today

We came to a clearing and saw the old marker for the divide between France and Switzerland. There was no official gate or boarder personnel–just the stone markers. It was charming.

Half in France and half in Switzerland
Left foot in France, right foot in Switzerland
close-up of the old border marker
looking back at the Jura again
Another marker on the border from 1852
more markers for the Roman road (the green 70 signs overlap the Via Francigena route)
A Swiss kitty guarding the path

We quickly started to climb what would be the beginning of the end of the Jura mountains

When we reached the ridge we were rewarded with the best surprise ever: a view of the Alps in the distance!!!

It’s hard to see in this initial picture, but the outline of the Alps is visible under the clouds.

We slowly crept closer throughout the day and I couldn’t stop taking pictures. The path through Switzerland was well-maintained: lots of paved and cleared paths.

The white path winding up the hill is our route.

We spent our day winding through the last of the Jura mountains

A cow on the outskirts of Clees
A friendly welcome to Clees
A last bit of forest before the final clearing

We descended the Jura foothills through cute Swiss villages and soon found ourselves in a valley between the Jura and the Alps.

We had about a 4km home-stretch into Orbe.

Entering Orbe
Shortcut through an alley to our hotel

When I was planning, I had a choice between a higher-end hotel in the northern part of the village away from the center and a more ‘rustic’ lodging in the actual center. I booked the one in the center because I figured after walking we wouldn’t want to be far away from things. It was the right choice, but our lodging came with an extra helping of quirkiness.

wall decor in our hotel

Each room had a theme. The room we were assigned had a smiley-face emoji theme:

Neither of us mind a bit of quirk and don’t have any tendencies toward snobbishness, so we enjoyed the personality of the place. Since it was Sunday, the hotel cafe was closed, as were most of the restaurants in town, but we found a pizzeria that opened in a couple hours, so we rested for a bit and made our way over. We each quickly downed three of these delicious beers and two pizzas (1 ham and mushroom and 1 anchovy and caper), which didn’t even last long enough for me to document 🙂

The next day to Lausanne was going to be long and challenging, so we went home for an early night.

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