My path follows a flower fringed stream on the slopes of a high mountain peak overlooking Verbier. This is May, snow capped Mont Blanc is shimmering in the distance, and the only things that break the silence apart from rushing water are the scrunch of tyres as the occasional mountain-biker hurtles downhill, and the faint whirr of a hang-glider as it whispers past overhead. Plus, the sound of nature’s perennial gamelan: an orchestra of cowbells.
A hundred years ago, this region of the Francophone high
