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Wednesday, May 22nd – Geneva to Baume-les-Messieurs, 3789 km
I shower at Stephan and Francois’s home and leave while they are still in bed. I arrive back at the youth hostel in time for breakfast, before Mike has emerged. Jason is still in bed in my room so I left my packing until after breakfast.
We are packed and loaded. I need to stop at a map store to get maps of the Jura region between here and Dijon. I find maps for a smaller area than I want, but Mike is impatient to get moving, so we set off without further delay to the north, passing the Geneva airport just before the French border. Switzerland is very narrow here at the western tip of Lac Leman, not more than 10 km wide.
Our road heads in a straight line, north by north-west, through the towns of Omex, Segny, Cressy and Gex before beginning a steep climb to the Col de la Faucille, which is just a notch in a high ridge that forms a solid wall between Geneva and the rest of France. The pass is only about 100m lower than the rest of the ridge on either side of it. I can see it from Gex. It’s impressively high. 
I lose Mike just outside of Gex as I stop to remove my T-shirt. I won’t have to listen to him saying, “This will be really fun to go down.” I have good energy today, and I am primed for the climb psychologically. I cover the 12 km to the pass, an elevation gain of 730m (about 2450 ft), in slightly over an hour, which amazes me. Behind me I see Geneva, the spray of jet d’eau and Mt. Blanc in the far distance, a small incisor along a row of white teeth. I pass through the col and they are gone. 
Le Col de la Faucille is the highest and hardest climb of the day, but not the last. The Jura Mountains run in ridges from north-east to south-west. I am headed north-west, which requires me to cross one ridge after the other. I drop into the valley beyond the Col de la Faucille and climb to another one, though it is not as high and the valley between not so low.
As I say, my energy is fine today and I manage to catch up with Mike. Actually, I see him in the distance pull off the main road to have his lunch. I would have missed him if I had not seen him pull off, as I cannot see him from the road. He has no idea I am so close, so he is quite surprised to see me pull into the same rest spot. We cycle together after lunch, though not very ‘together’. He finds everything about my cycling unsatisfactory and annoying. He hates it when I hum or sing, if I ride
without a shirt or a helmet, if I need sustenance when he doesn’t, and he says I’m “farting around” if I am buying groceries, posting a letter or stopping to take a picture. Today I really piss him off when I get off my bike and walk 200 m into a forest to get a photo of a beautiful waterfall. I am starting to find him consistently annoying too. Beyond the third pass, the land begins to flatten out. ‘Flatten out' is not the correct term, because the Jura is anything but flat. The highest ridges are behind us as we continue north-west, but there still smaller ridges like a series of shrinking hurdles. This part of France is a delightfully empty rural landscape. Between the rocky hills and forests we find an occasional village and smatterings of agriculture. Mike has no justification for his impatience over my occasion photo stops. We are making excellent time. The wind is in our favour and the cycling feels more like speed sailing.
Late in the afternoon, after riding north for a while, we reach the town of Doucier. We are at the 98 km mark of the day. We had set this town as the nearest of several possible targets for today, but we can go another hour easily enough. Besides, Doucier is drab and reminds me of a graveyard.
From here we head west on D39, crossing the headwaters of the Ain River and then climbing 140 m to the Col de la Percee. The landscapes are undramatically scenic, mostly farmland. 10 km west of Doucier we turn north on an even smaller, one without any traffic. In 10 minutes we 
entered the village of Crancot, and then into a dense forest. Not long after, the road started the drop precipitously, switch-backing down the side of a sudden canyon. I see a sign announcing the village of Baume-les-Messieurs, “un des plus beaux villages de France”. And beau it is! Vertical walls of limestone rise 200 m on either side of a narrow, flat valley. Cradled in the centre of the valley is an elongated medieval/Renaissance village of 200 people or so and an ancient abbey. It is stunningly beautiful.
There isn't much to the town and it's dead quiet. There's a sign for a campground down the valley but we don't have camping equipment. Perhaps there's no other place to stay here. We see a restaurant and stop in, in part just to see if the place is real, to be sure it is not just an abandoned movie set. The restaurateur is friendly and warm. No, there is no pension or hotel in the village but a British couple who moved here last year have plans to open a bed and breakfast. He points out their home to us. The Brits are a cheery, out-going couple who have been visiting to Baume-
les-Messieurs for 20 years. Last year, they achieved their life of making it their year-round home. Their bed and breakfast is a year away from opening but they have a guest room which they rent to us for only 50F each. The only place to eat is the restaurant we stopped at, but the food is excellent and exciting. Mike and I share a cheese fondue made with local Comte cheese, the French Jura version of Swiss Gruyere cheese. It has been such a perfect day, in spite of it being over 110 km, and Baume is definitely one of the most beautiful and restive places I have ever stayed. I'm on Cloud 9 for the rest of the evening.
PHOTO 1: the road to Gex and le Col de la Faucille
PHOTO 2: trestles beyond le Col de la Faucille
PHOTO 3: the Haute Jura
PHOTO 4: fields and forests of the western Jura
PHOTO 5: Cascade de Herisson
PHOTO 6: steeple in Cancot, near Baume-les-Messieurs
PHOTO 7: from the top of the cliffs above Baume
PHOTO 8: first siting of Baume-les-Messieurs
PHOTO 9: Baume-les-Messieurs and valley
PHOTO 10: near dusk in Baume
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