France - Part Trois — What We Saw, What We Read

A beautiful morning in the French countryside.

Our second Workaway experience in France was in the Rhone-Alps region of western France, a department called Ain, an area with inhabitants dating back 15,000 years. The hilly countryside is dotted with tiny medieval villages and we would be spending a little over a week learning about this area and helping out in a B&B run by a fun young couple (and their cat Cannelle). We spent most of our working hours in the garden or helping with cleaning the B&B, but when the hours were done we were off to explore the beauty of the country. We navigated the many trails through the surrounding medieval towns that sent us up to the peaks of the nearby hills. From the B&B we would often see paragliders floating over the hilltops, a common pastime in the area. After long evening hikes, we would typically enjoy delicious food with our hosts. Our hosts even went so far as to take us to the local fromagerie (cheese shop) and pick out a variety of cheese for us to try. We marveled at the giant bucket of fresh cream from which the woman behind the counter poured us fresh cream. Nearly every meal was followed by cheese and bread, and preceded by an aperitif (appetizer). We've come a long way from camping out of a car and eating out of the same pot!

The B&B where we worked was originally built in the late 1700s!

Another look at the property with the B&B at center and several outbuildings surrounding it.

On our day off, after a long morning hike, our host and a few friends took us to an Accrobranche park, another popular pastime in France. The virtually unsupervised adventure ropes course built into the trees was a little unsettling at first, but we got the hang of it. We were particularly amused that besides 5 minutes of safety training, we had to sign no legal safety waivers (something that could never happen in the States).

We finished off our evening with aperitifs in the backyard of our host's home watching the sunset over the western mountains, eating cheese, drinking wine. This workaway definitely made us feel like we were getting a true taste (figuratively and literally) of France.

The small picturesque French town of Cuisiat.

Storms brought incredible sunsets and  rainbows to the hilly landscape. This photo from our last night is courtesy of our host Laetitia. — Storms brought incredible sunsets and rainbows to the hilly landscape. This photo from our last night is courtesy of our host Laetitia.

We left our hosts on a rainy morning (somehow we always seem to be traveling on rainy days) and caught a ride to Bourg-en-Bresse where we would be catching a train to our next destination. The hours before our train gave us enough time to explore some more local history and take one last look at Ain. All these little details that we encounter, we could have never experienced if we hadn't been open to staying with local hosts and catching a train to a place we had never heard of.