28th August 2024

Today we headed off on a tourist trail, to visit museums.  First was the Musée de la Lunette in Morez. The drive to Morez on the N5 was spectacular. Lots of sharp corners, with the road built into a steep valley. There were rail tracks and large viaducts passing through the valley.  Morez was the centre for the manufacture of glasses frames. Seemingly spectacle frames manufacture was a cottage industry, which grew into a larger industry, but focussed on this town. Eventually most of this industry moved to Asia.  Seemed to be a new museum. Only one other group of people visited while we were there for more than two hours.  There was a wonderful clock in the museum, alongside the spectacle making equipment.  We did spot a glasses factory in the town, but part of it looked derelict.

The museum had a collection of glasses through the centuries, showing how fashion changed over time. It also showed glasses from around the world and specialized ones such as protective glasses used in the snow which were just slits in pieces of wood.

We left, looking for a place for a picnic lunch, continuing to our next museum. We stopped at a small waterfall where we ate lunch, before heading to the Lapidary Museum in Lamoura.  Here we were told we must watch the 20-minute French film to get an understanding of how gemstones were cut. A French woman from the audience then gave us a brief overview of what we had seen and heard.  This area was the centre of gemstone cutting. What else have farmers to do in the long winter evenings?  They cut gemstones & made glasses frames.  Now the industry has gone, with most stones now cut in Asia.

Afterwards headed back through winding upland hills, all the way back to Morez and then onwards to the campsite.

R did some more work on S’s thesis. I cooked supper, duck breast and potatoes fried in duck fat.

While R was working on the thesis there was a huge cloud over us. It was attempting to rain; a few large water drops.  The sun continued to shine. The rain never came to anything. I sat outside in it. 

We discovered we had one can of beer in the back which had sprung a leak. A small pin hole in the can. Not the first time this has happened. Very annoying, but luckily not too much mess.