Come for a ramble with me, along the walk I took yesterday morning. Our clocks went back Saturday night, so I was up early, ready for some physical exertion, but it ended up being an exercise in mindfulness (an oft-overused but appropriate word).

I'll begin at the end so that you understand. I was on the home-stretch of this overly-long 14 km walk, mostly past fields of grass or turnip or cows, and felt annoyed. My feet were sore and my head full of swear words. Walks were so boring, I decided. Next time, I would take a bike or a bus to somewhere I could do a proper hike. A feat with steep climbs, majestic views and a feeling of accomplishment.

This, and I gestured for my own benefit at the neat rows of espaliered apple trees nearby, the expansive slopes of green just beyond, this was just boring, repetitive agricultural terrain broken up by the occasional horse or cow, a golf course, or maybe a tree-flanked stream. With my feet hurting and home 2 kms too far away, I was sliding straight into a grumpy mindset when I stopped myself. I literally stopped myself. I stood and turned in a full circle under a sky of high clouds, and thought about what I'd done for the past three hours.

I'd started out from the small town of Crassier, spitting distance from the French-Swiss border, passing the large stone house with its green-and-white striped shutters where Suzanne Curchod had been born in 1737. The family was of modest means but her father had chosen to educate her in Latin and she showed a real aptitude for mathematics and science. So a pretty interesting young woman, particularly for that era.

At the age of twenty, she was courted by Edward Gibbon - he of the six-volume History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire - but paternal disapproval meant that the engagement was broken off. With the death of her parents shortly thereafter, she went to Paris to be the companion to a young French widow who at the time was being courted by an ambitious Swiss financier, Jacques Necker. He, however, turned his attention to young Suzanne and they were soon married. No mention of what the young widow thought of this turn of events.

Madame Necker's husband owed a great deal of his success to his wife's salon, where the luminaries of the day gathered to discuss art, literature and politics, and eventually he became Director-General of Finances for Louis XVI in 1776. Necker advised the king to stop wringing taxes out of his people to increase the wealth amongst the nobility and to fund the wars in the US - but we know how that ended. Fortunately, the Neckers had returned to Switzerland by the time of the French Revolution. 

Suzanne devoted considerable time, while running her famous salon, to ensure that their one child, Anne Louise Germaine, received the best education possible. Daughters often benefit when no sons are born (is that relevant to me, I wonder?) Germaine grew up to be a phenomenal intellectual as well, running her own salon first in Paris and then, after the Revolution, back in Switzerland. We should know more about Madame de Stael, as she was by then, but I won't give you the lecture now. Suffice to say that she herself was interested in Edward Gibbon, which is a little weird, almost married William Pitt the Younger, drew together the anti-slavery set and a great quote about her from the time says, "There were three great powers struggling for the soul of Europe: Napoleon, Russia and Madame de Stael."

I left the village with its rich history and continued on into the countryside, passing a long row of multi-coloured beehives, a coop of pristine white chickens with striking red combs and an open-sided barn with classical music playing for the cows being milked. It was all lovely and pastoral, early on this Sunday morning.

Or maybe quite boring, I began to think, as the agricultural fields repeated themselves beside me along the dirt road. So I took a left at the next opportunity and headed into the Jura Mountains, towards the Abbey of Bonmont. The forest was lovely - quiet and wild, a little mysterious. Eventually I arrived at the Abbey, the first in Switzerland, which also has an interesting story. It began around 500 or 600 AD when the Christians headed towards the mountains from Lyon. The way it worked was that a monk wanted the wilderness experience and moved into the Jura from the other (French) side to become a hermit. Others inevitably joined and a farming community grew which became an austere monastery. A village develops with its indentured peasants, but that becomes too cosy and someone decides to leave for the wilderness experience, goes deeper into the forest to become a hermit, others join, etc. It's like a game of leap frog.

The Abbeye de Bromont was the last frog - the next leap would have put the wilderness-seeking monk into Lake Leman (or Lake Geneva, as the English-speaking world calls it).

Yesterday morning, though, the Abbey was closed and the public path that ran alongside was shut off with construction gates. There was no way that I was going to return down the same road, so in the end I went past a "Défence d'Entrer" (no entry) sign and bushwacked through some woods until I arrived at a track that ran alongside a rather beautiful golf course (would the monks have approved?) which brought me back to the ramble along agricultural fields.

I sighed, but continued.

I decided to use my senses, to try to notice specifics. Across the lake, I could see Mount Blanc behind the first row of mountains but taller, its snowy peak lit up by sun coming through a break in the clouds. I could smell the rich loamy fields, taste the gingered chocolate I'd brought along, and hear the piercing shriek of a hawk, some cowbells and the polite greetings of the various people who passed on foot, bicycle or horse.

I stopped for a slightly longer conversation with an older man walking his dog. Was he older? Sometimes I forget my own age, and of course he was a farmer so perhaps he was just more aged than I, like a cheese, or a wine. He was insistent that he'd seen me earlier in the village of Gingins, a place I'd decided to miss as my deviation to the Abbey had added too many kilometres and I just wanted to be home. Red hair, curly, black backpack. He was sure of it. So I told him it must have been my sister.

As I came down the slopes back towards home, I passed through the hamlet of Tranchepied. This unusual name literally means foot slice or piece of foot. Supposedly, when Calvin was thundering from the pulpit in Geneva, a mere 20 kilometres away, the indentured serfs started to walk in on Sundays to listen to him. The monks did not like this so they cut a piece of the villagers' feet to hobble them. How awful is that?

It was just past Tranchepied that I had my little strop, which made me reflect on everything I had seen and thought of - the history, the trees, the wild cyclamen, the donkeys, a particularly hairy horse and the cow bells, the majesty of the mountains and the green of the fields.

It was a real lesson in being present. Perhaps I hadn't had the excitement of climbing 500 metres up to a summit or the blissful meanderings on a winding path through a forest. But look at what I had had! The kind of history that exists where political civilisation has unfolded dramatically for millennia (although the hobbling of serfs might not be considered civilised).

It's rich and deep and interesting, and there is always something awe-inspiring to find in even the smallest patch of ground or the vast expanse of repetitive fields. 

My grumblings brought me up short, reminded me of all that I had noticed during my walk. So I'm glad they did, but maybe next time I'll skip the whinge.