Thursday 3 August 2017
| Distance (km) | 25 kms | |||
| Distance (time) | 6 hrs | |||
| Climb / Descent | 400m / 480m | |||
| Hard / Soft surface | 70% / 30% | |||
| Landscape |
|
|||
| Weather |
 32° 4 Bft
|
|||
|
|
||||
|
It is said to be a warm day today and so we'd rather walk as early as possible. In summer holiday that means that we take the first bus to Giromagny leaveing 7:20 from Valdoie. And now equipped with a real 10-ticket bus card we arrive at 7:45 in Giromagny. The digestive system is a bit upset so we visit the local pub for a coffee and the toilet before starting our walk. There is no wind, it's overcast, a bit misty and 24 degrees. So it will be a sticky walk today. Gently climbing we leave the town towards the fortress Dorsner that we pass in a large loop around. The moat impressively deep and the warning signs to not fall in are certainly not exaggerated. After the fortress we slowly descend through the forest which is nice and cool and an easy walk: a perfect start of the day! But there is no such thing as a free lunch and so at some point we enter the fields where it is warm and sticky. It looks very idyllic but we are also immediately prey for a small cloud of horse-flies and though we keep swinging our arms one of them manages to put his jaws in right popliteus giving an immediate strong itch. Very annoying. Swaying and slapping we enter Lachappelle-sous-Chaux where we get rid off the horse-flies. We need a sit for a bite, but the route hardly passes through the village. So we decide to take a little detour along the church. We can't find a bench, but the low wall in front of the municipality is good enough. The only disadvantage of our little detour is that if we return through Rue du Moulin and Rue de Bellevue to get back to the GR5 we have to pass over a rather serious hill that the GR5 itself probably surpasses. After that it is more and more tarmac along some lakes to Bas-Evette, actually a little bit boring. That boringness remains: parallel to a railroad at least through the fields but then entering Valdoie. Here a loooong part through built-up area starts and in spite of the attempts to avoid busy through-going roads it is in the end tarmac and houses. By the time we reached the D13 we decide to skip the loop through the park of Offremont and just take the shortest way to the camping site and have a half an hour break there. But the camping site is not our end point today, so we will have to gather energy and go on. For a short distance it's still flat along the lake but then it starts to climb to the defense works of Belfort: Miotte fotress. Until the foot of Miotte tower everything is fine. There we have to turn right and that's it with respect to indications. Along the wall then? We walk slowly down along the wall but we don't see any furth signposting. That can't be right but going back up to the tower is not an attractive idea either so we decide to push on. Not a good idea as we keep descending towards the city until we sharply turn left to end up on top of the wall. We're clearly wrong and so in the end we do decide to walk back to the Miotte tower, but along the top of the wall. At the tower we spot the problem: we should have passed through a narrow little tunnel along the foot of the tunnel but we didn't see any indication for that.... From here we pass in between defense walls and towers, very impressive. Finally we descend to a larger ongoing road from where we can take the bus to the downtown of Belfort, connecting to the bus back to the camping. A flat and slightly boring day with the best part in the last 5 kms. |
    |
|||
|
|
||||