Joanne's long walks: Road to Home 2023 Day 46: Vuillafans

It’s a dangerous business going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

A complicated day! As the French would say - they are very fond of saying that things are compliqués.

It started out all right, with a beautiful stroll along the Loue river, through a campground, past some old mills and a weir to the charming hillside village of Lods.

Here we climbed above the valley, through the village streets and onto a grassy path that took us as far as Mouthier-Haut-Pierre. Descending into the river valley again, we found a lovely grocery shop that sells not only organic food and toiletries but coffee and fresh croissants. There are tables outside, and a washroom reached via a secret absinthe room - we are walking through the homeland of absinthe, also known as the Green Fairy, la fée verte: France's favourite tipple in the nineteenth century, subsequently banned for its ill effects on the health and society and only rehabilitated in 2001.

The absinthe room

A curious moss-covered chair

We sat outside the café/grocery store innocently enjoying the shade, unaware of what fate - or rather, the Via Francigena - had in store for us. At breakfast our lovely hosts Solange and Bernard had told us there was a déviation, a detour off the trail due to a landslide last year which had not yet been cleared. They told us not to worry, because the detour was well signposted.

Once we had crossed the river, we did indeed see a large yellow sign with an arrow indicating trail closed - detour. But when we came to the next junction, there were two footpaths leading in the direction we wanted to go, along the river on the opposite bank compared to where the Via Francigena trail normally is, and a road paved in concrete going in the opposite direction, i.e. back in the direction we had come from. In the middle of this junction was the red and white GR trail symbol, in a temporary version that looked as if it had been added to indicate the detour. But it did not indicate which of the three routes to take!

We spoke to a lady who lived in a nearby house and she said the trail through the woods would take us where we wanted to go - to the source of the river Loue, which we had been told was where the detour ended and we could get back onto the Via Francigena. She said we would have to be careful as the trail was very narrow in some spots. I looked on my maps and the trail did in fact appear to take us to the right place. So we set off into the forest. Not only was the trail indeed narrow, with a steep drop to the river below, but we had to camber over several fallen trees. We were managing all right until we came to a rock wall that had to be climbed up a series of steps, whether natural or cut into the rock I cannot say. There was an iron handrail to hang onto, but it still looked rather dangerous to attempt with a heavy backpack and poles, in footwear that has already walked a thousand kilometres so that the tread is wearing down...

We were only about a kilometre and a half away from the Source de la Loue when we decided to turn around, not only because of the fallen trees and the rock face but because we couldn't see ahead and had no idea what the remainder of the trail might be like. It seemed to be getting worse and worse!

We turned around and returned to the intersection where we had taken the trail into the woods. The only information we had on the "recommended detour" was the map shown in the screenshot below, which is not interactive; it is a screenshot someone else has taken, in low resolution so it is hard to read the place names, and the lower part of the directions (available in French only, which is not a problem for us but may be for some) are covered up by the Via Francigena part below!

Peering at this map, we came to the conclusion that we did indeed have to walk up the concrete road leading back in the same general direction as we had come from, but on the opposite side of the river.

For future walkers, the road is called Rue de Longeville and you have to walk way up the hill; not until you get to the top will you have confirmation that you are indeed on the recommended detour, when you finally come to the sign shown below.

Here you take a left turn along a gravel road, following the direction shown on the sign; from here on, you follow the blue and yellow trail markers (not red and yellow as it says on the web site, but blue and yellow, at first; red and yellow ones also appear, but not until you are further down the trail). Occasionally a detour sign confirms that you are going the right way.

Once you are up at the top, the trail is really beautiful, taking you through the forest with some amazing views down to the river at the bottom of the gorge way down below.

But you do need to take into account, when planning your day, that you will be walking several extra kilometres and climbing from an altitude of 350 metres up to 750 metres, with quite a few ups and downs along the way. So you will probably not want to walk all the way from Mouthier-Haut-Pierre to Pontarlier in a single day, following the stages shown in the guidebook!

At the highest point on the trail, where we had all collapsed in a heap to catch our breath and take a few precious sips from our rapidly dwindling water supplies, we were surprised to see a man emerge from the forest in shorts and a t-shirt, with no apparent sweat stains, no backpack, and only a tiny 330 ml bottle of water! Audrey asked him if he was a Sasquatch, and then had to explain to a bewildered Frenchman what a Sasquatch is! 😄 It turned out he was from Pontarlier, and had driven to Ouhans to take a stroll up to the viewpoint and back. He invited us to come out to the viewpoint with him, but it was signposted and we could see that it was one kilometre out of our way. When we declined to make the detour, he said the view was really worth it, so we had to explain that when you are walking 25 to 30 kilometres a day on your way from Canterbury to Rome, you do not detour one kilometre out and another kilometre back just for a pretty view! 😆 Besides, the views we had along our route were more than pretty enough for us.

In view of the need to shorten this stage in order to allow for the strenuous detour up the mountain, I would definitely recommend a stopover at Gîte le Refuge des Loups Blancs in Ouhans, a brand new facility which is practically a whole house built as an extension on the owners' residence. It has three double bedrooms plus a sofabed and a small attic dormitory, which is super-cute and contains six additional sleeping places tucked into the sloping side walls of the attic, bring the total number of available beds up to 12. The entire wooden structure and all the furniture in it were made by the owner, and all the appliances (including a washing machine and even a dishwasher) are brand new. There are no shops in the village, but Claudine offered to get some groceries in for us, and we sent her a shopping list. We lucked out in being there on a Wednesday, as a food truck comes to the village square on Wednesday evenings only, so we were able to buy delicious burgers, fries and beer to supplement the eggs, bread and salad ingredients we had asked Claudine to buy. So hopefully we recovered some of the extra calories we expended on this unexpectedly difficult day! And tomorrow we should pass by a Decathlon store on our way into Pontarlier; I will definitely be shopping for a belt, to hold up my now baggy trousers; Elaine's are so baggy - even after tightening her belt as far as it will go - that she reckons she needs a whole new pair of hiking trousers in a smaller size! Energy bars and electrolytes will also be on our shopping list. And any other supplies we may need before we get into the most expensive part of the Via Francigena: Switzerland!