JURA

You’ll have enormous vistas across green valleys this morning. You’ll start easy and it will become even easier with a 500-meter descent to the Doubs river and the hidden medieval village of St. Ursanne.

We’ll stop here for a walk through town so that you can see it all: churches, chapels, cloister, castle, hermitage, stone bridges. This ancient architecture is dressed-up every summer for a week-long medieval celebration. You’ll want to linger a bit and so we’ll do coffee and pastries or perhaps even an early lunch. But go easy on what you eat, there is a nice long 500 meter climb out of this valley.

Afterwards we’re off to the town of Courgenay and its open plains. Although the region is still desolate, there have been settlements here since the Neolithic Period and the municipality is very proud of its Roman ruins. Still, history never stops , and Courgenay is now well-known for precision engineering and manufacturing vending machines !

It’s then off to Lucelle, our last French-speaking town before changing to German. Lucelle is right on the border with France and we’ll be following its river which makes up the border between the two countries.

We’ve got another 45 kilometers and one 400 meter climb before Basel. From this point on, you’ll notice how the path changes from forest and pastures to villages and then city outskirts, tall 19th century apartments and finally the city center. After four nights of chirping crickets and slow-moving cows, we hope that Basel’s wide streets and city smells will be a welcome change.

Images of today