By the time we got back to France, we'd reached the last few weeks of our journey - well, of the first half, anyway - and were feeling the need to slow things down a bit.  Being constantly on the move has been very exciting, but it can get a bit wearing too; fortunately, we now had some opportunities to stay put for a while, and we took them.

This also meant opportunities to get into kitchens and do some home cooking for the first time in a while, and we took them too.  That meant finding good quality ingredients - but this being France, that really wasn't very difficult.  Every small town and village we visited had a good food market at least once a week, and usually more than one butcher, baker and greengrocer.  Not only will the shopkeepers and stallholders sell you excellent produce at reasonable prices (compared to the UK, at least), they'll make sure you know how to cook it.  In fact, we even got the impression they wouldn't sell us their ducks or celeriac if they weren't satisfied that we'd treat them properly ...

Today we went to the valley of Abondance, here in the Haute-Savoie, where they make the delicious gruyere-style Abondance cheese.  We walked up to one of the high alpine pastures where farmers graze their cows in summer, to let them eat the lush green grass that gets covered in snow in winter.  Finding a farmhouse, we sat down to tuck into their cheese, just as the cows came home after their day's grass-eating work in the fields, the bells round their necks ringing.

This is what they sounded like.

Click here to listen.

And as a special treat, we even have a couple of video clips of them walking home ringing their bells:

Video 1 (quite big, about 12Mb)

Video 2 (smaller, about 5Mb)

Click here for more audio samples.

Today Barnaby spent the morning browsing the market in Samoëns.  The fruit and vegetables were lovely, as was the enormous array of cured sausages, but he spent most of his time admiring the cheese: Beaufort, Abondance, Tomme, and in particular the Reblochon which reminded him of the wonderful time he had all those months ago in Munster.

Anyway, all that cheese can give a bear a thirst, so he stopped for a refreshing drink.  Trying to look like a local, he casually asked for a citron pressé - he'd never tried one before but has picked up enough French to know this means "lemon in a hurry" - or something like that.

Imagine his dismay when they brought him a glass of pure, sour lemon juice.  Yuk!

But once we'd explained that you're supposed to add your own sugar and water, he gave it a try - and its zingy fresh taste cheered him up immediately.

Until he asked for the bill and they charged him €3.60, that is.  Cheeky.