In the morning we headed up to the small town of Moléson to watch cheese being made traditionally in an alpine hut. When we arrived, the curds were being heated in a huge cauldron over a wood fire. After they reached the correct consistency and temperature, the man making the cheese reached in with cheesecloth of some sort to lift out the curds and put them into the cheese mould. We decided he must have very strong arms to lift that amount of curd out of the cauldron – it looked really heavy but he did use small electric crane to aid him along! After he put them in the mould, he put a weight on them to press the liquid out. We learned that his cheese is an "alpage" cheese which means that all of the milk comes from one herd of cows. If he used cheese from his neighbour's herd, it would be called “montagne” (mountain). We then watched a video on them making the cheese in the high alps during the summer. At the end, Anoop sampled some of their cheeses and picked up a “petit lutin”.

After lunch we drove over to Gruyères to go to the factory; the entrance fee included a fairly large sample of 3 different ages of gruyere which were sealed for sampling then or later. The audio guided tour was from the cow’s perspective and our guide, Cherry (named so because she was born in the cherry season), led us through the cheese making process with lots of useful information. On the tour, we could smell the different flowers and herbs that the cows would eat and that you can smell or taste in the cheese. We continued listening while we waited for the cheese curds to reach the correct consistency in the vats. The men kept checking it by scooping some out and squeezing it in their hands; once it reached the right consistency, they started filling the moulds with the mixture. The curds and liquid come pouring out of tubes until the huge vat is empty. Then, once some of the liquid has drained out, they put on the date and batch number to identify the cheese and a lid to continue pressing it. The factory makes 12 rounds of gruyere per vat and up to 48 rounds per day. The rounds are then aged on untreated, spruce planks for various times.

Afterwards we headed up to the town of Gruyères to wander around. We saw an old stone structure in the middle of town that had different sized holes in it that were used for measuring grain in the old days. We also stopped off at a small shop that had a fabulous exhibit of an Italian artist, Massimo Cruciani. He does painting on glass and the shop had done a great job with the displays; the light shining on the paintings was beautiful. We particularly liked the pictures of poppies since they stood out so well. We walked around the outside of the castle, but our guidebook had said it wasn’t particularly interesting inside so we gave it a miss.

Once back in camp, Anoop decided to head up to le Moléson (where we had been earlier this morning at the Alpine hut) on his bike to get in a hill ride before Dad & Tan arrived. The steepest section was for 3 km at 12% and he arrived back to camp absolutely starving. After I made a quick dinner, he promptly felt sick and curled up on the back seat for a while. I folded the laundry (our first wash & dry in a machine since they didn’t have laundry sinks at the campsite) and washed the dishes that had piled up for a few days since I hadn’t been feeling 100%. I then put Anoop’s dinner back in the fridge for later and tidied up around camp for heading off in the morning. The next morning he woke up feeling just fine and decided that perhaps he needed to eat at least a snack before heading off on a ride next time.