The Loue Valley: The Source, Courbet's Ornans, Lods and the Gorges de Nouailles
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France
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275
XP
+100 France
= 375 total
2 days
The Loue Valley: The Source, Courbet's Ornans, Lods and the Gorges de Nouailles
275 + 100 XP
The Loue comes out of a rock porch 60 m high and 32 m wide at the foot of a 104 m cliff curved like a hemicycle, a resurgence of the Doubs, and Gustave Courbet painted it fourteen times; his birthplace at Ornans, down the valley, is now his museum. The link with the Doubs showed itself in August 1901, when about a million litres of absinthe poured away during a fire at the Pernod works in Pontarlier came out in the Loue two days later, and was proved with fluorescein in 1910. Between the source and Ornans, Lods, one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France, climbs the slope with its 18th-century winegrowers' houses above the forges and mills on the river, and at Mouthier-Haute-Pierre, where cherry trees for kirsch replaced the vines after phylloxera, the Gorges de Nouailles cut a canyon 150 to 350 m deep.
Required Activities
1
of 4
Walk down to the Source de la Loue at Ouhans, stand under the porch 60 m high and 32 m wide at the foot of the 104 m hemicycle of cliff, then follow the water 100 m downstream to the three further springs that add between a third and a half of the river's flow
2
of 4
In the Musée Courbet at Ornans, the painter's birthplace on the bank of the Loue, find among its 41 Courbet paintings the Vue d'Ornans, or Miroir d'Ornans, of about 1872 — catalogued MNR 181, recovered at the end of the Second World War and still waiting to be returned to its owners
3
of 4
Walk down through Lods from the 18th-century winegrowers' houses round the church to the water: find the forges begun in 1760, a wire-drawing mill and nail works, the edge-tool workshop of 1822, and the surviving arch of the 16th-century bridge over the Loue
4
of 4
Walk the left-bank path into the Gorges de Nouailles, the canyon 150 to 350 m deep that cuts 4 km through the Levier plateau between the source and Mouthier-Haute-Pierre, and find the Cascade de Syratu dropping 50 m from the plateau rim
Walk down to the Source de la Loue at Ouhans, stand under the porch 60 m high and 32 m wide at the foot of the 104 m hemicycle of cliff, then follow the water 100 m downstream to the three further springs that add between a third and a half of the river's flow
In the Musée Courbet at Ornans, the painter's birthplace on the bank of the Loue, find among its 41 Courbet paintings the Vue d'Ornans, or Miroir d'Ornans, of about 1872 — catalogued MNR 181, recovered at the end of the Second World War and still waiting to be returned to its owners
Walk down through Lods from the 18th-century winegrowers' houses round the church to the water: find the forges begun in 1760, a wire-drawing mill and nail works, the edge-tool workshop of 1822, and the surviving arch of the 16th-century bridge over the Loue
Walk the left-bank path into the Gorges de Nouailles, the canyon 150 to 350 m deep that cuts 4 km through the Levier plateau between the source and Mouthier-Haute-Pierre, and find the Cascade de Syratu dropping 50 m from the plateau rim
Before you go
The Musée Courbet is open all year but never on a Tuesday, and from November to May it shuts for two hours at midday and closes at 5pm, with Monday mornings closed as well. The valley is the part to think about in winter: the path into the Gorges de Nouailles is a narrow left-bank trod under a canyon wall 150 to 350 m deep, it ices up, and the Source de la Loue runs hardest and most dangerously after snowmelt and rain, when the viewing platform area can be awash. Boots and daylight, not trainers and an afternoon.
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XP Breakdown
Challenge XP
275 XP
France country bonus
+100 XP
Potential total
375 XP
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