The aim of the walk was to get a group of ten to fifteen men out on a two hour walk which was going through an area which would be of interest and was going to be easy walking for all, and then go to a nearby restaurant for a good meal and put the world on the right path in the conversations.
All turned up on time at the meeting place at the Camping des Cheseaux just west of the village of St-Cergue where there was plenty of parking along the roadside and we then started the walk along the road to the hamlet of La St-Cergue as the paths over the meadows were muddy after recent heavy rain which would have been to easy to slip and fall on, so we stayed on the road all the time.
The Vuarne is a dale to the north of the Barillette hill and the slope of the road there is much less than the earlier part of the walk. A feature there is a pond with a well built wall around it but with no entrance, and by the roadside is a stone with a small metal plate screwed on it and engraved with “La pierre à Vogler”. A farmer who had grazed her cows there had been asked about it but did not know anything about it. Maybe she was in a hurry to start milking the cows.
When we reached the path leading up to the pass between the Barillette and the Dole we turned back and headed down at a slightly faster speed than on the way up. We were lucky to have Philip Jenkins in the group who was able to point out different features of the wayside plants and these were then photographed by Tim Goodyear. When passing through the hamlet of La St-Cergue we were allowed to photograph a pack of sled dogs which were housed in the garden of a chalet there and were not in the least upset by our interest in them. A pleasant change from the guard dogs sometimes found in house gardens.
The restaurant we had booked was the Maison de Ville in the middle of the village and we were joined for the meal by Brian Allardyce who was not able to go on the walk as he is recovering from an operation, so that made the group up to twelve. We were all seated at a long table and were very well fed. At the end of the meal Alan Baker gave a short speech as walk coordinator and we then went out to our nearby cars. By this time it had started to rain so we were lucky with the weather on the walk.
The men on the walk were:
Alan Baker, Barry Armstrong, Tim Goodyear, Gerry Swart, Mark Warren, Mike Price, Paul Sochaczewski , Philip Jenkins, Richard Saynor, Rob MacKenzie, Wouter Van Ginneken.
Rob MacKenzie
2021.07.19
