Back in the Jura

Sunday 2nd October 2005, Champagne-sur-Loue continued
This morning we woke refreshed. After setting the washing machine going we drove down to Arc et Senans to join the rest of the local population in the popular Sunday morning activity of shopping in the local supermarket. The rest of the day we have spent sorting ourselves out while the rain has teamed down ceaselessly. Hugues and Thibault have been over from Dôle and stopped by to ask about our visit to Germany. Otherwise, until this evening when the weather started to improve, we have been happily housebound, catching up on reading and computing. Around 5pm we took a walk to the bridge over the Loue which is now huge and very fast flowing. It seems unbelievable that just three weeks ago Jill was swimming lazily around in it. The happy holiday families have disappeared and the campsite on the river bank has now closed for the season. As we gathered fallen walnuts along the roadside we fell into conversation with a barefooted dog walker from nearby Buffard. He told us he came here from Italy thirty years ago and as he liked the cold winters and the place pleased him, he’d been here ever since.

Monday 3rd October 2005, Champagne-sur-Loue
It’s really good to spend a bit of time in the same place, watching village life and passing the time of day with the local people. Being Monday, and the holiday season officially ended, shops were closed and the countryside deserted. There is a definite chill in the air now and the leaves are turning colour. Along the roadside they have started to fall and gather in soft, wet, yellow drifts. Children here show absolutely no interest in conkers so thousands of then lie shining in the roads until crushed by passing tractors. The maize is steadily being cut for silage and the cattle are gradually being brought in from the fields. The landscape is starting to look bare and empty.

After lunch we drove to Dôle. Last time we were there, only four weeks ago, it was so hot all we could do was seek the shade. Today we shivered in our coats but it was certainly more comfortable for walking around. Dôle is a very attractive old town, filled with tiny cobbled passageways between imposing white stone buildings. There is a lovely park above the River and a very nice fountain in the main square symbolising the two main rivers of this region, the Doubs and the Loue. Of course its main claim to fame is as the birthplace of Louis Pasteur and all roads seem to lead to the museum that was his home. We still haven’t found time to visit but hopefully it won’t shut just yet for the season.

Fontaine du Doubs et de la Loue

There are more wonderful buildings in the town than can be put to good use. The beautiful former Hôtel Dieu or religious hospital with its cloistered courtyard has been turned into the town’s Médiathèque housing the public library and municipal archives. A truly stunning building for a library in a town of only 30,000 inhabitants!

The Médiathèque in the former Hôtel Dieu

The courtyard of the Médiathèque

As dusk now falls around 6.30pm we did not linger too long, returning around the massive Forêt de Chaux rather than through the middle as it provided the chance to visit the rather dilapidated little town of Orchamps. It was here that for several years Jill’s late friend Soeur Martine was responsible for a small Dominican convent. As we had never visited her during her time here we were interested to see what it was like. It was rather a disappointment however and we continued on to Arc et Senans and home.

Tuesday 4th October 2005, Champagne-sur-Loue
Today France was enjoying one of its many strikes with at least 150 manifestions taking place across the country and Paris apparently bought to its knees with trains and buses running greatly restricted services. The most obvious effect of the strikes here was that the schools were closed. One young pupil was passing his unexpected day off helping customers in the internet shop in Salins where he seemed far more capable than the normal staff! We spent the entire morning there sorting out a backlog of emails and loading some of our recent pictures onto our website. By the time we came out everywhere had closed for lunch!

So we drove up into the hills above Salins to the Pont du Diable, (Devil’s Bridge) a narrow bridge linking the two sides of the valley across the deep ravine of a little river that later disappears into the limestone rocks to flow through subterranean caverns to reappear at the source of the River Lison.

The name of the bridge, according to local legend, relates to a pact made between the builder and the Devil that in exchange for the soul of the first person to cross, the Devil would complete the bridge overnight, otherwise he would put a curse on the bridge so that it would never be built. Once completed the builder sent the local priest across carrying the sacrament. The Devil was so horrified he jumped over the bridge into the river far below, where if you look carefully you can just see his tail disappearing into the water to this very day!!

It was certainly very impressive and quite deserted with the river flowing far below the parapet amongst the brightly coloured autumn trees. We were astonished to see a sign forbidding bungee-jumping. You’d need to be stark crazy to even consider it!

The Pont du Diable

You’d need to be stark crazy to even consider it!

The Jura is a karstic landscape. As already mentioned elsewhere, most rivers here come out of the limestone cliff face as waterfalls from subterranean water courses that may well have flowed underground for many miles and gathered water from a variety of different sources. Rivers may emerge and then disappear again, or only appear at all during periods of heavy rain or melting snow. After the recent rains the source of the River Lison is most impressive as it cascades out of the rocks in a white torrent wreathed in a haze of spray where it swirls and swishes violently along to eventually join up with the River Loue.

Having seen the cascade from below we scrambled up through wet woodland to the entrance to the cave and up a dark, slippery, rocky tunnel to emerge above the cascade well inside the cave where we could look down on the black waters as they flowed silently “through caverns measureless to man” to drop suddenly over the edge in a crescendo of sound. It was an awesome experience, the more so as the area was quite deserted.

The Source du Lison

”Caverns measureless to man”

Returning to the woodland we followed a steep, narrow track up through bushes and wet grass, where a few pink flowers still added spots of colour. Here we found ourselves in the Creux Billard, a huge grey limestone hole about 50 metres deep which was originally a massive underground cavern before the roof collapsed. At the bottom is a lake formed from the outfall of the several water courses that emerge on the rockface. The waters of the lake then continue underground to feed the Lison.

The Creux Billard

Feeling very small and insignificant we returned through the woods to see yet another wonder. The Grotte Sarrazine is a natural cave 90 metres high at the back of which is a small cave from which, in times of extreme flood, the river flows. The rest of the time it is dry. The flow can be sudden and unpredictable and although the passage continues way back into the cliff, its dangers mean only very experienced speleologists attempt to explore it. The arch itself is stunning in size and grandeur. St.Paul’s Cathedral would fit comfortably inside.

The Grotte Sarrazine

Bief (occasional source) of the Sarrazine

Finally we walked a kilometre along beside the Lison to the Taillanderie, a 19th century water-powered metal factory specialising in edge-tools for farming and agriculture. It survived until the 1960s and has now been restored as a working museum.

La Taillanderie

Jill measures the effects of too much German food

Wednesday 5th October 2005, Champagne-sur-Loue
Jill’s shoes having worn right through we decided a trip to Besançon was called for but the hassle of driving to Besançon and finding somewhere to park did not appeal. So we cycled to Arc et Senans, chained the bikes to the railings and climbed aboard the local train which skimmed us along the valley to reach Besançon a mere 20 minutes later. The on-board guard/ticket man even gave us 25% discount because we were poor old pensioners. (Fortunately he’s not observed us peddling furiously through Arc et Senans to catch the train or he may not have been so kind.)

Once in Besançon our plans to buy shoes gradually faded as we explored libraries, bookshops, churches and fascinating back streets and courtyards. We have returned with a couple of books and a copy of the Times, but no new shoes.

Besançon with the citadelle viewed from the station

The Palais Granvelle

One of the many fountains in Besançon

We visited an excellent exhibition of early botanical books at the Bibliothèque Municipale with beautifully illustrated, hand coloured prints and herbals from the collections. The library is one of the oldest public libraries in France the present building dating from 1818, many of its collections coming from works confiscated by the State following the French Revolution. (Even many of the smaller towns in France have wonderful collections of early printed materials acquired during the Revolution that major libraries in Britain could never aspire to own.) In the case of Besançon there had been a public library since 1694 when Jean-Baptiste Boisot bequeathed his collections to the town. Boisot had saved much of the collections of the Granvelle family, leading figures and patrons of the arts in the 16th century, and many of their specially commissioned bindings are included among the library’s 500,000 items. The library suffers from the problem of having to live in the straightjacket of the original building of 1818. Despite having an out-store, the reading room is cramped with no space even for an adequate working collection of open access books. Most items are on an on-line union catalogue of all the main libraries in the town, covering public, university and museum collections. Exhibitions have to be held in one of the store rooms, with leather-bound books piled high in bays to the ceiling, reachable by ladder. Ian got reprimanded for touching a volume of correspondence between Diderot and Grimm which intrigued him. Having apologised and explained our interest in early printed material we were introduced to the charming and knowledgeable conservatrice who was delighted to discuss her work and the exhibitions for which she has responsibility.

There is a changing series of exhibitions, often with catalogues. The present exhibition formed part of the annual “Month of written heritage” for which the Ministry of Culture suggests a theme each year. This year’s is entitled “Se réunir et se distraire”, revolving around leisure and social life. The library had departed from this theme as it had been working cooperatively to produce a DVD of treasures of botanical literature in the region. Items exhibited included the work of Maria Sybilla Merian, represented by Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamiensium (Amsterdam, 1705), Pierre-Joseph Redouté Choix des plus belles fleurs (Paris, 1827) and the remarkable six volume work of Elisabeth Blackwell Collectio stirpium … (Nuremberg, 1750). English imprints included Mark Catesby’s Natural history of Carolina (London, 1731-43) and John Martyn’s Historia plantarum rariorum (London, 1728). There were also interesting collections of pressed specimens of local lichens with printed labels, reminiscent of the specimens of local seaweeds published as Algae damnonienses, exhibited in Exeter in 2004 as part of the “Picturing plants” exhibition which Ian worked on together with the Royal Albert Museum.

The Bibliothèque Municipale

Some of the items exhibited

Around 5pm we returned to Arc et Senans and collected our bikes for the ride back home where after supper we entertained/bored Susanne with pictures and accounts of our recent visit to Germany.

Thursday 6th October 2005, Champagne-sur-Loue
After a morning on the internet in Salins-les-Bains we had a picnic lunch by the River Lison at Nans-sous-Sainte-Anne before continuing along wooded canyons and across grassy plateaux to the little town of Ornans, charmingly located higher up the River Loue which is placid at that point, offering picturesque reflections of the old houses on stilts beside the river. Photographs in the town hall, located in a limestone Renaissance building, showed that the stilts were not always sufficient to protect the houses from flooding and there were dramatic views of the main street awash in the 1950s – there were also floods earlier this year. The town is perhaps best known as the birthplace of the painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), the leading light of the realist school in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century. We visited the house where he was born, now a museum, which included a special exhibition of other artists from Franche Comté during the 19th and 20th centuries. Courbet took much of his inspiration from his home town and region. His landscapes seemed in many instances to foreshadow the impressionists and his portraits are penetrating studies of their subjects. Scenes included the Castle at Chillon and the Ornans “mirror” or view of the river with reflections of houses. Courbet was a controversial figure, both artistically and as a socialist. Involved in the Paris commune of 1870, he was accused of toppling the Vendôme column and, after having served a term in prison, was ordered to meet the enormous costs of re-erecting the column. Ruined, he sought exile in Switzerland in 1873 – his sculpture “Helvetia or Liberty” dates from this period – and he died near Vevey in 1877. Unfortunately the museum shows the difficulties of maintaining an important piece of national heritage in a small town of only 5,000 people. The house is rambling and the displays somewhat formless. Also the originals of many key paintings are in the Musée d’Orsay and other collections in Paris. Still, we understand that there are plans to redevelop the museum.

The view from the bridge at Ornans

The birthplace of Courbet

We ended our visit to Ornans by driving up the very steep, spiralling road to the castle ruins above the town with views down onto the river and the rooftops.

The Castle above Ornans

Ornans from above the town

Ornans from the castle

Friday 7th October 2005, Champagne-sur-Loue
The day dawned misty with poor visibility but the promise of a warm day once it lifted. We passed the time of day in Susanne’s kitchen upstairs for an hour where she told us tales of village life in the this part of rural France before and during the war and we added several new words to our vocabulary. By 10.30 the sun had dispelled the mist and the temperature had risen making it by far the nicest day since we returned from Germany.

We drove to Arbois on yet another fruitless mission for shoes. This time we were seduced by the weekly market with its stalls of cheeses and dairy produce, vegetables and flowers, local wines and beers, clothing and footwear, meat and charcuterie. There was a pleasant, friendly atmosphere and most people seemed to know each other. We queued with the locals for spit-roasted meat and for 3.50 euros we took home for lunch half a cooked chicken in its own sauce with roast potatoes. We also bought a bunch of bright blue and red anemones as a little present for Susanne. On the way back to Modestine we noticed different little groups of people converging on a small restaurant on the banks of the Cuissance and decided it merited further investigation. It looks delightful with several set menus that include local terrines, game, cheeses and wine. It would be good to try it before we move on from here.

Back in Champagne it was so warm that after lunch we sat in the garden watching the lizards enjoying the unexpected sunshine on the old stone wall as we drank our coffee. Susanne’s niece lives in nearby Chissey and arrived to take an afternoon walk with Susanne. They invited us to join them and we have spent a very pleasant afternoon on a local ramble beside the Loue, crossing from the Jura into the Doubs and continuing through the neighbouring village of Buffard. Beyond this we climbed up through the woodland to the wooden cabin where the local huntsmen gather for their lunch when they are out together searching for deer or sangliers (wild boar.) They have the right to hunt six days out of seven during the season and last week they shot a sanglier here. Fortunately we saw no sign of any wild animals and the only evidence of the huntsmen was the table inside the cabin covered in used wine glasses, several pruning knives used for cutting their lunchtime bread and cheese, and an assortment of half empty wine bottles. We suspect that probably the hunting is little more than an excuse to get together in the woods for a drink and to avoid being given tasks to do by their long-suffering wives!

After a brief rest in the cabin on one of the long wooden benches, the walls covered in pictures of pheasants, hares, deer, sangliers and other wild game, we continued along the ridge of the hill with pretty views back down to Buffard and the Loue until we reached a statue of the Virgin, placed there to watch over the village in 1946. It is not a wonderful work of art but is dedicated to the memory of the Abbé Coutteret, the priest of Buffard and Champagne who died in Germany after being deported. (See entry for 4th September, “A local hero.”)

The Virgin of Buffard

View from the statue, Buffard in front, Champagne beyond

Here we gathered wild mushrooms before returning to the village through an area of woodland where horses roamed free. They quickly discovered our presence and within minutes ten of them emerged onto the path from the surrounding bushes. There is little for them to eat here and they seemed thinner than they should be. They eagerly searched us for food but sadly we had nothing for them. Ever hopeful they accompanied us on our way until we reached the gate half a mile further on. Some were really very tall and they completely surrounded us but were not at all aggressive though their noses were permanently in our hands and pockets.

Some of our walking companions

Our way then took us through the vineyards, now robbed of their grapes and with the leaves turning colour from green to gold and bright scarlet. Finally we returned to the pretty village with its traditional farmhouses where the roads are lined with walnut trees. The nuts have now burst out of their protective coverings and lie on the verge waiting to be gathered. Soon we had a big bagful which we shared out between the four of us while chatting about French bureaucracy and the incomprehensible tax laws over cold drinks once we reached home.

Changing colours in the vineyard

A typical farmhouse in Buffard

Susanne is either related to or knows everyone locally so whenever we passed people we stopped to chat and to be introduced, so it has been excellent language practice for us. It really has been a lovely day.

For old time’s sake – Jill was photographed exactly here in 1962.

Incidentally, we forgot to mention that Roland’s vendange, (grape harvest) which took place while we were in Germany, was a great success and it is reckoned to be an excellent year. Certainly the remaining grapes we tasted in Susanne’s kitchen this morning were wonderfully sweet and juicy. Nineteen members of the family turned up from as far away as Paris and they all worked solidly on the hillside for the weekend. Now everything is fermenting happily in the large wooded vats down in the cellar. We’ve been warned that this might smell a bit but as yet we’ve noticed nothing. The neighbours cultivate a different strain of grape which is harvested later so they were out gathering theirs today. We watched them at lunchtime loading huge round barrels onto their tractor and driving off with them to the vineyard.

Swiss Roll

Tuesday 30th August 2005, Champagne-sur-Loue
The sun today has been fierce and bright. It would have been foolish to venture far in such heat, so we contented ourselves with a relaxing morning chasing the shade around the garden. Around 2pm we decided to cycle the 5km shady route beside the Loue to Port Lesney for a swim in the river, which at Champagne is only really deep enough for paddling. The narrow road through fields and woodland with the river shining through the leaves was completely deserted until we arrived in the centre of Port Lesney. Although several times larger than Champagne, with a couple of bars, a restaurant, a baker and small general store, it is still no bigger than a village and sits astride the river.

We found a deserted place beneath the trees near the rue du Moulin and while Ian read, Jill swam in the clean smoothly flowing river accompanied by several curious ducks. Swallows skimmed the surface and further down river a cow wandered down from the opposite bank to drink. The current here was not strong and the water was sufficiently cold to make coming out almost pleasurable.


View of the Loue at Port Lesney with Jill’s head

Tower beside the river at the end of the rue du Moulin


As we returned to the village centre for a beer at the Café Edgar with its vine covered terrace, a creamy Labrador at a garden gate woofed to attract our attention. He then deliberately pushed his ball through the railings and waited expectantly for us to throw it back into his garden for him to chase. Ten minutes later we finally had to throw it back for one last time and run while he went to catch it!

One cold drink and a chat with the barman later - who told us Louis Pasteur used to eat omelettes there, we crossed the bridge to explore a little road of huge old stone houses and farmsteads their fronts covered in roses, hollyhocks, nasturtiums and vines of ripe grapes. Doors and windows were filled with hanging baskets of geraniums and petunias. Odd corners provided space for vegetable plots with ripening tomatoes and huge orange pumpkins. An elderly lady sat in the shade of her doorway, directly on the street and we stopped to pass the time of day. She invited us into her home to see the massive beams that support the whole structure and explained that the houses were built to provide accommodation not just for the farmer and his family, but also for the farm animals, farm machinery, winter fodder and logs for winter fires. The supporting timbers were entire trunks of local sapins and, she assured us, well over three hundred years old! Nearby we noticed a woodstore already set up for the winter. On the wall nearby was a blacksmith’s sign dated 1638.


Winter fuel store

Blacksmith’s sign


We cycled back to Champagne around 6pm with the sun still far too hot for comfort. On the way we helped ourselves to a couple of heads of maize, hoping neither the farmer nor his cattle would notice. Back home we discovered they were not really very nice anyway being rather hard, so the cattle are welcome to them.

Sorry to keep eulogising about this area but words and photos simply cannot express just how wonderful it is here. Next week we will be moving on to Germany for a while so you will be spared details of Roland’s grape harvest which we will have to miss.

Wednesday 31st August 2005. Champagne-sur-Loue
Today was a long day of driving which took us into Switzerland. We left via Salins-les-Bains and Pontarlier to reach the Mont d’Or, the highest point in the French Jurassic chain. The route climbed through pine forests to mountain pastures, gradually getting steeper with the highest gradient 19% just before the nearest access point to le Mont d’Or. It was then a short walk across open grassland until the ground dropped abruptly away beneath our feet. Approaching from the west the Jurassic chain rises in a series of steps, each with sheer cliffs in many places, each leading onto a plateau above. When it reaches its highest point at 1463 meters it drops sheer for 450 meters with views across the Vallée de Joux to the Swiss plains. On a clear day (which unfortunately was not the case when we visited) it is possible to see Lake Geneva with Mont Blanc and the Swiss Alps beyond. As it was, the views were impressive enough with the town of Vallorbe laid out like a map below us and pine-clad mountains rising behind. Looking back the way we had come the landscape was more undulating but the views equally extensive. We walked along the level top of the escarpment for a while before returning to Modestine and continuing south-west along flat bottomed glacial valleys with rich pasture-land on the valley floor and forested hills on either side, timbered farmhouses with their huge sloping roofs and projecting eaves scattered along the road. One of these proved to be a gentian distillery, where the deep bitter tasting roots of the tall yellow gentian, which are often a meter or more long, have been painstakingly grubbed out and distilled into a brandy or used in a liqueur. The strange thing is that, with gentians growing all around, they use plants from the Auvergne to make the local tipple!


View from Mont d’Or towards Vallorbe

Limestone cliffs of Mont d’Or


We made a brief detour to find the source of the river Doubs, which, although a major river which gives its name to the department, has a less grand entry into the world than most rivers in this area.


Limestone strata at the source of the Doubs


With frequent stops to admire some of the elaborately tiled belfries which enliven even the most ordinary of churches in this region we reached the pleasant winter sports resort of Les Rousses, today basking in a temperature of 32 degrees. Notre Dame des Neiges, the sister convent to the one in Champagne, was here and Jill vividly recalls winter visits through the mountains in thick snow with Champagne’s director, Soeur Martine. Hard to imagine with the heat of today! We visited the church where we registered the curious fact that the rainwater that falls on the northern slope of the roof runs off into the River Orbe. From there it reaches the Rhein and the North Sea. The rain that falls on the southern half of the roof however, runs into the River Bienne and thence to the Ain and the Rhone into the Mediterranean.


The bell tower of Rochejean

The bell tower of Mouthe

The watershed church at Les Rousses


At Les Rousses we crossed the frontier into Switzerland and continued along a wide bottomed valley, this one with a series of glacial lakes, most notably the Lac de Joux. With commendable exactitude – after all the Swiss are renowned for their precision engineering, a notice at Le Pont on the north end of the lake told us that it was 1008 metres and 50 centimetres above sea level. Our route took us past scattered wooden chalets, each worthy of a picture postcard with their steep roofs, wood stores, open shutters and gardens of bright flowers set against the steep, dark green sapins covering the hillsides. Beside the road were the occasional linear villages of old farmsteads and huge houses with their overhanging roofs and tiled facades of wood and galvanised metal. (This latter struck us as curious and rather unsightly.) However the roadsides verges were well-kept and, unlike in Franche-Comté, the tangle of overhead cables and wires had been neatly tucked underground.


The village of Le Pont at the north end of the Lac de Joux


Time was moving on, so we crossed the frontier again at Vallorbe and made our way home via Pontarlier, driving head-on into the setting sun in an almost cloudless sky at the end of a baking day, back to dinner in the twilight in our garden with the occasional bat darting between the trees in the grounds of the former convent immediately behind our home.

Thursday 1st September 2005 Champagne-sur-Loue
Thunderstorms were promised for later today which we hoped would give some respite from the oppressive heat, but temperatures soon reached the thirties. As we had been invited to spend the afternoon with Hugues family in Dole we made a leisurely start through the pretty villages that edge the Forêt de Chaux to the west of Arc-et -Senans. Among them was Chissey, a lovely little place of well maintained old houses and barns and what is reputed to be the finest gothic village church in the region, dedicated to St. Christophe. It is certainly very beautiful and renowned for its so-called baboons, grotesque figures which line the tops of the arcades on either side of the nave. They probably date from the 12th century, a time when the little village was a centre of pilgrimage to cure the mentally afflicted. Fortunately for the village a fragment of the jaw-bone of St. Christophe was discovered, perhaps on the crusades, and the relic of the saint, who was supposed to help the insane, soon proved a great attraction. The tormented souls were safely shut away in a room in the tower while services were said in an attempt to obtain some kind of exorcism. It is considered that these grotesques depict the various types of insanity, some seen vomiting out the devil within them, others looking more serene but all showing great vitality. There is also a magnificent sculpture of St. Christophe dating from the late 15th century and a gilt reliquary where the jawbone is prominently displayed. In the 16th century the authorities in Dole attempted to put an end to the excesses associated with these gatherings, but cures were still being recorded in parish registers into the 17th century. In the 1930s an attempt was made to update the pilgrimage centre using the figure of Saint Christophe as the patron saint of travellers. Motorists would drive to Chissey from far and wide to have their motor cars blessed. It was suggested in the church that motorists could be considered the 20th century lunatics par excellence.


St. Christophe. 15th century. Chissey

Altarpiece with the reliquary containing (supposedly) the
jawbone of St. Christophe

Interior of the church of St. Christophe, Chissey

One of the strange carvings in the church

Another carving possibly depicting a tormented being



We continued towards Dole through the Forêt de Chaux which is the second largest deciduous forest in France, a country which takes great care of its woodlands. It stretches between Arc et Senanas and Dole along near deserted, identical straight roads laid out as a grid. The thought of us getting lost on bikes there is rather frightening so we will probably abandon our plan to cycle there in cooler weather. We found blessed shade for lunch in a woodland glade by a small pond and through our binoculars (thank you Devon Libraries staff!), watched the birds scrabbling up and down the trunks pecking at insects.

Until the French conquest in 1674 Dole had been the capital of Franche-Comté. Louis XIV transferred that status to Besançon in retribution for the resistance that the city had shown to Richelieu in the 1630s when it withstood continuous bombardment. Despite various depredations it remains a very grand town with a jumble of ancient houses rising up from the river to the impressive church of Notre-Dame with its famous series of sculptures of apostles dating from the late 15th century. One of the houses by the river is the former tannery where Louis Pasteur was born in 1822. It was too hot to undertake anything too strenuous, so we made our way to the pleasant residential outskirts of the town to spend a happy couple of hours with Hugues, Christine and their three children who eagerly tried out their English on us. Hugues, Thibaut and Valentin then accompanied us back to Modestine, left in the shade on the banks of the Doubs. Our walk took us along the riverside, past a leper’s well hidden deep below the street, Thibault’s very impressive lycée and the newly refurbished mediathèque, a library in the magnificent former Hôtel-Dieu – splendid for a city the size of Exeter, let alone the 30,000 people of Dole! With internet access, it is a place to be explored later, together with many other sights of Dole.


Dole, showing the church of Notre Dame


We returned home through the Forêt de Chaux, this time following the Route Forestière du Grand Contour, a forest road which runs straight as an arrow for 20 Km, past grand columns set up as monuments at cross roads. Along the side of the road, huge piles of cut wood were neatly stacked, carefully marked for the recipients. In the gathering gloom the endless banks of trees began to take on a menacing aspect, rather like the forests in The Lord of the Rings, which Hugues’ children have devoured in translation and now on multilingual DVD – a novel way of learning English! Perhaps after all it was really orcs we had seen depicted in the church at Chissey this morning!

Friday 2nd September 2005 Champagne-sur-Loue
The hot weather continues and we are flagging! This afternoon we sheltered from the suffocating heat in the internet café in Salins. While Jill loaded up pages onto our blog site, Ian went to the supermarket in search of tea bags. It was still shut at 3pm! That’s what frequently happens with the government imposed 35 hour week! It’s almost impossible to plan several activities in a day because places only seem to open for a few hours and each one is different. Even when the supermarket opened they did not sell teabags! Honest! They had all sorts of exotic tisanes, but no tea! However, Ian took a gamble and went to the Casino where we eventually found a rather dusty and faded box of Lipton’s tea bags. (A chain of small supermarkets here is called Casino.)

Today everything changes in France. It is the rentrée when all the children return to school, summer is officially declared over and all the tourist attractions and campsites start to close down for the season. Here in Champagne we have seen more of the local people today than we have since our arrival as the pickup point for the school bus is just nearby. Mums were taking tots to catch the bus for their first ever day at school in nearby Cramens – Champagne is too small to have its own school for the half dozen or so children who live here. Toddlers were running after the bus waving their “big” brothers and sisters off as the bus moved on the collect the children at Buffard.

Late in the afternoon we drove up onto Mont Poupet, 850 metres high with spectacular views over the surrounding countryside. We could even see Port Lesney and the Loue flowing towards Champagne some ten km away. It was on this mountain that Louis Pasteur conducted experiments in the 1860s to disprove the theory of spontaneous generation of microbes, showing that the rate of their development is affected by the altitude and purity if the air. We left Modestine part way up the mountain and walked the remaining 2km to the highest point. There was nobody around and the track took us through mixed woodland, open meadowland full of wild flowers and cool forests of dark pines. At the summit we discovered a launch pad for hang gliders. The ground simply dropped away into nothing! Wonderful if one only had the courage! Instead, we sat as near as we dared to the edge and listened to the total silence except for the hum of bees, the distant gentle clanking of cowbells in the valley below and the ominous rumble of thunder reverberating around the mountains of the high Jura. From here it is claimed, Mont Blanc can be seen. The distance was far too hazy today however. We expect the rain here at any time. The heat is very oppressive. On the way down, in one of the meadows we discovered a patch of huge horse mushrooms – much like the common field mushrooms but with a yellowish tinge – and filled our rucksack.

Ian gleefully discovers an orientation table on Mount Poupet

Salins, 500 metres below us

View from Mount Poupet in the direction of Champagne


We expected to find Suzanne and Roland back from Brittany when we reached home, but as yet there has been no sign of them. We cooked our free supper of mushrooms which we ate with chicken salad and an accompanying bottle of wine in the garden with bats skimming around just above our heads.

Saturday 3rd September 2005 Champagne-sur-Loue
The expected rain never arrived and this afternoon has been as hot as ever with temperatures into the 30s. We decided the pictures taken in the church at Chissey on Thursday could be improved upon, so this morning we cycled there via Cramans and Villers Farley returning via Arc-et-Senans where we stopped at the restaurant opposite the entrance to the Saline Royale for a very welcome cold drink on the terrace. Ian’s just measured on his map and declared we did 20 kilometres. (Thanks for the measuring device Jean it’s given Ian endless delight.) The roads around here are all very peaceful and cycling is a real pleasure if there is shade. This is fine when passing through woodland but generally the roads linking the villages on the valley floor are long, straight and devoid of shelter, passing through endless fields of maize stubble and sunflowers, both crops that would never have existed in the days when Jill worked here and the fields were still being ploughed by yoked oxen!


Entrance to the Salines at Arc-et-Senans

Sunflowers ripening in the fields


As we cycled along the banks of the Loue below Champagne this morning we passed the poor cow that looked so plaintive in the picture we recently posted up for you. Today she was standing, covered in buzzing flies in the hot sunshine, her udder still dragging the ground. At her feet lay a wet, exhausted calf just a few moments old and already suffering the torment of thousands of buzzing flies attracted by the blood and afterbirth still hanging from the mother. It was not a happy sight. The calf was too weak to move and mum just kept eating grass, pausing occasionally to lick away the flies from her calf. Her flanks were hollow now with the bones protruding and her udder larger and more grotesque than ever. What a life for both of them! We continued on our ride wondering whether the calf was going to make it, it looked so weak and helpless. (You will be pleased to hear matters had improved considerably when we went in search of them this evening, as this picture shows.)


Mother and child


We returned home for lunch in a cool corner of the garden and then set out in Modestine on a mission to Villers Robert, a village some 25 km from here and the birthplace of the French writer Marcel Aymé. It is also the place where Jill’s friend Danielle spent her youth. As she now lives in Brittany and no longer has family in the Jura, she has been delighted to see so many pictures of familiar places on our blogsite. She asked us if we could put up a few pictures of her village and as she does not read English, could we add a few words in French for her. (English readers can skip this bit unless they want to pick up on all our errors….)

Alors Danielle, comme tu nous as commandés, quelques photos exprès pour toi. Nous espérons qu’elles te feront plaisir et te rappeleront les années que tu habitais Villers Robert. Nous avons trouvé la maison de Marcel Aymé sur la route de Séligny et nous croyons que c’est tout près de la maison de tes parents. Nous l’avons cherchée mais nous ne souvenons pas exactement où elle se trouve. Nous avons visité aussi l’église, très fraiche et agréable dedans car c’était un veritable four dehors (34 degrés.) En face de l’église il y a l’école Marcel Aymé et on nous a dit qu’il y était etudiant. Est-ce-que tu aussi étais élève dans cette école? Dans la cimetière nous avons trouvé son tombeau, ainsi celui de ta famille.


Dans l’église à Villers Robert. On traite les livres comme ça en France? (So thats what is meant by an absorbing book!)

Ecole Marcel Aymé, (where the French writer was educated)

Maison natale de l’auteur (the writer’s birthplace in the village)

Statue de la Sainte Vierge (typical of most villages around here)



In the village we were greeted by a group of children giggling and saying “Hello mister” So we replied in English which quite terrified them! We chatted with them – mainly in French as they were too shy to try out their English, about their lessons and the amount of homework they had to do.

Leaving Villers Robert we sought out Chateau Clairvans, an impressive 18th century style building of indeterminate date. We have often seen it on the hillside from the main road but never had time to investigate. We arrived in the middle of a wedding reception when the building was closed to the public. However, there was so much hooting of car horns (customary at weddings in France) and general goodwill that nobody seemed to mind us wandering around amongst the smartly dressed guests for a few minutes taking photos.


Chateau Clairvans


Returning through Villers Farlay Ian noticed a sign to a Gallo-Roman tile works which proved to be deep in the woodland along a 4 km unmade track. It was part of a much larger site located on the main roman road between the towns of Vesontio and Lugdunum (Besançon and Lyon) and the furnaces and heaps of tile waste could be clearly seen.


Gallo-Roman tile kiln


Back in Champagne we discovered Suzanne and Roland had returned from Brittany during our absence. We joined them for an aperitif made from Roland’s white grapes and eau de vie, chilled from his cave below the house. We spent a very happy evening swapping holiday experiences in Brittany and Franche Comté as we nibbled walnuts from the trees around the village.


Suzanne’s and Roland’s camping car on its return from Brittany