Mountains

When I moved to Grenoble from Aix-en-Provence, I thought I would never get used to the mountains. Grenoble is surrounded by three mountain ranges: the Chartreuse, the Belledonne and the Vercors so there was – as the writer, Stendhal once put it – a mountain at the end of every street. I did not find them beautiful, I found them oppressive - aggressive even. I missed the airy blue spaces of Provence.


However, it looked as if I was going to be here for a while so I decided to make an effort to know the mountains better. I began at the Musée Dauphinois, housed in a former convent perched on the slopes of the Mont Rachais that overlooks the town. Here they have a whole floor dedicated to an exhibition called Les Gens de L’Alpe – The people of the Alps – who, from about three thousand years ago until the beginning of the twentieth century, chose to live at altitudes of between four thousand and six and a half thousand feet. They must have had a good reason to choose this way of life because it was a gruelling one and, cut off from the valley, they had to be self-sufficient. Life was not possible without animals and it was thanks to the goats, sheep, cows and mules that they were able to feed and clothe themselves, keep warm and move from place to place in search of fresh pasture. Animals also gave them the necessary goods for bartering: wool, cheese, meat and skins. The museum has a collection of tools and everyday objects used by these people and you can peer into life-size reconstructions of their living spaces, including a school room.


Society evolved, communications improved and les gens de l’Alpe moved down to the valley. However, the mountains were still a part of their lives. In the same museum, on the floor above, is an exhibition dedicated to the history of skiing. Cave paintings suggest that skis have been around for a long time. Originally, they were used for travelling and hunting and skiing only became a sport at the beginning of the eighteenth century. With the invention of ski lifts in the 1930s, Alpine skiing became popular and today, people come here from all over Europe to ski.


I don’t ski because I find it too uncomfortable, too expensive and too frightening. Climbing seems a little dangerous and paragliding downright foolhardy. But I do love walking in the mountains when the snow has melted, the Alpine meadows are turning green again and flowers are pushing up their heads between the rocks. France has 110,000 miles of hiking trails among which are the Grande Randonnées (GR) which are long distance trails. Part of the GR5 crosses the Alps from Lake Geneva to Nice and takes about four weeks to walk, if you are reasonably fit. French hiking trails are well-marked with coloured blazes painted on trees and rocks to guide you and I have only ever been lost once – and that was because I was following my husband.


In order to preserve the many species of mountain flowers, it is forbidden to pick them and if you are caught with an illicit posy you will be heavily fined. Certain flowers may be picked in moderation – for example, génépi, a flower used to make a delicious digestif – but you are only allowed to pick forty sprigs. As many people make their own génépi liqueur, I’m sure most of them pick flowers by the bagful but I have never heard of anyone being caught.


Mountain air and water, of course, are renowned for their restorative properties. “Taking the waters” became popular with the upper classes at the end of the nineteenth century, especially in France, and mountain spa towns like Uriage and Allevard had elegant hotels and guesthouses built as well as a casino for their wealthy and rheumatic patrons.

Mountains offer not only pleasure and good health but also protection. The Vercors range is a natural fortress of sheer cliffs looming above deep gorges - I once drove through there in a thunderstorm on tortuous, narrow passes and had nightmares for several nights afterwards. During the German Occupation of France in World War II, the hostile, rugged Vercors was a refuge for those who wanted to escape the political and racial discriminations of the Vichy government. When the Germans moved south, the French Resistance movement set up a dozen camps in the Vercors’ forests and by July 1944, there were four thousand civilians and military men camped there. The inhabitants provided food and clothing for them while the Allies dropped weapons and medicine by parachute. In defiance of the Occupation, the résistants raised the French flag and in the name of liberty they proclaimed the Republic of Vercors, This provoked the Germans into launching a ferocious attack by road, on foot and from the air. The fighting lasted for a week: six hundred résistants were killed as well as more than two hundred local people.


Today, I am beginning to see the beauty and the majesty in these mountains. They have become comforting and familiar and I love to see them change with the seasons, from warm, bare rock against a blue sky to snowy peaks sparkling in the winter sun. And, as the French writer Boris Vian once said – what’s the point of moving mountains when you can simply walk over them?

Chartreuse

"They say Christianity is in decay; but no religion that invented green Chartreuse can ever die”

Saki

Grenoble lies in a hollow encircled by three mountain ranges: the Belledonne, famous for its ski slopes; the Vercors, a stronghold for the Résistance during World War II - and the Chartreuse, home to the Carthusian monks and their famous green liqueur. Now, I'm not a great skier and I wasn't around during World War II but I do know a bit about the liqueur: it is a beautiful colour; it smells and tastes like a summer’s evening in an Alpine meadow and ...it gives you a Day-Glo hangover that you’re not expecting because it is really strong.

The Order of the Grande Chartreuse was founded in 1084 by a German writer and academic, Bruno, who taught at the University of Rheims. Weary of the endless piles of marking, pointless administration and mind-numbingly boring staff meetings – or perhaps simply obeying a call from God – Bruno decided to become a monk. Together with six friends, he scoured France for a suitable isolated spot and happened on the Chartreuse Desert, an inhospitable snowbound place near Grenoble in the French Alps. The group built themselves seven simple wooden cells, a chapel and a dining hall and enjoyed a life of prayerful contemplation and light snacks, thus establishing the first Carthusian (Charterhouse) monastery. Today there are twenty-four of these communities around the world and their way of life has not changed for over nine hundred years.

In 1605, the monks at a Carthusian monastery outside Paris were given an ancient manuscript of unknown origin, entitled An Elixir of Long Life. At that time, few people knew how to use herbs and plants for medicinal purposes and the monks were only able to understand and use parts of the recipe. By 1737, the manuscript had found its way to the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble where the monastery’s apothecary managed to unravel the complex formula and create the Herbal Elixir de la Grande Chartreuse, from the maceration and distillation in alcohol of one hundred and thirty plants, flowers and various other bits of vegetation.

This new medicine was distributed locally, by mule, to Grenoble and the surrounding villages. It became surprisingly popular and the monks soon caught on to the old ‘for medicinal purposes’ routine and adapted the recipe to make a milder drink – that is to say, ninety-six rather than one hundred and twenty-four proof - which they called Chartreuse verte, Elixir de Santé.

During the French Revolution, members of all religious orders were driven out of the country. The Carthusian monks fled in 1793 and as a precaution, made a copy of their precious manuscript. One monk was allowed to stay in the monastery and he was given this copy to look after while the original was given to another monk. Unfortunately, the latter was arrested and thrown into prison in Bordeaux but was able to pass the manuscript to a mysterious hero who somehow smuggled it back to the Chartreuse, where he gave it to a monk who was in hiding near the monastery.

This monk didn’t have a clue what to do with the manuscript - and who could blame him? He had his own problems to deal with (imminent death by guillotine, hypothermia, starvation and so forth), and he promptly sold it to a local chemist, Monsieur Liotard - who didn’t have a clue either, so why he bought it in the first place is anybody’s guess.

In 1810, Napoleon ordered all secret recipes of medicines to be sent to the Ministry of the Interior, and a relieved Monsieur Liotard dutifully sent in his white elephant of a manuscript. Despite being experts in irrelevant waffle, nobody in the Ministry could decipher the thing either, but rather than admit that, they sent it back marked REFUSED. When Monsieur Liotard died, his heirs returned the manuscript to the monastery with, one imagines, a puzzled shrug.

The monks were thrown out of France once more in 1903 under a law that prohibited all religious orders. They were allowed back in 1932 when they began producing their liqueur again. In 1935, their distillery in Fourvoirie was destroyed by a landslide and a new one was built in Voiron, which is where Chartreuse is produced today. The blending of the plants, however, is done in the monastery by two monks – the only two people in the world to be in possession of the formula. Each monk knows half the recipe and because they don’t talk to anybody – not even to each other - it remains a secret. They are linked to the distillery by computer and are therefore able to oversee production while keeping their vows of solitude and silence and doing a bit of on-line shopping at the same time. Green and yellow Chartreuse – the yellow is sweeter and not as strong as the green – is matured in oaken casks in the longest liqueur cellar in the world.

The original elixir is still used for medicinal purposes today but frankly, you’d have to be pretty ill not to notice the taste. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to cure – although farmers here do swear by it for the treatment of flatulence in cows (note to tourists: do not be alarmed at the sight of staggering cows. They are not suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy – it’s Happy Hour on the Prairie). Green Chartreuse, however, is one of my favourite drinks; it is so sweet and fragrant that I hardly notice how potent it is - but the fact that Saint Bruno is traditionally depicted nursing a skull (even if it isn’t his own) should have alerted me. Hmmm. If you ask me, these monks have a lot to answer for…