Franche – Comté and the Alps

So much of the Alps looks like a romantic painting, complete with rustic chalets, soaring peaks and ice-blue, tumbling streams that I often feel I am stepping back to the 1800s. But the population of the foothills which make up the Franche-Comté, running down through Savoy to the Dauphiné, is very much planted in the present. Hydroelectric power feeds industry, while in the ski resorts higher up tourism takes over, with visitors in the season outnumbering the locals by ten to one. In the valleys fruit growing is mechanized, and even the centuries-old dairy industry, organized long ago into ‘fruitières’ (cooperatives that make use of the ‘fruit’ of the mountains), has now marshalled itself into sparkling modernity.