Trip Report - L'Échappée Jurassienne (GR59): Day 5

 Another Sunday, another hiking post! Day 5 has arrived!

STATS

START: Lons-le-Saunier

END: Doucier

KM: 29.75km

TIME: 5:51:51

I started the day going to Perrigny from Hotel Terminus in Lons-le-Saunier. The first stretch of this led through a lovely park:

(Squirrel says hi!)

 Followed by some graffiti-decorated underpasses underneath a roadway:

 

 

and a bit of logistical difficulty due to Google Maps deciding to send me straight across roads you definitely cannot walk on/at the side of.

After about 45minutes I was back on the GR59 and at the *beginning* of the day's trail in Perrigny. (Note: There are GR flags throughout the park as well. These indicate offshoots of the GR59 (559 or 509 but I've seen other numbers as well) that'll usually guide you back to the main GR59 at some point.)

 My starting point in Perrigny.

 

I stopped for breakfast (had been cold-soaking some oats... 😊) then headed to the voie verte. The voie verte is a network of hiking trails around Perrigny. Here's where I actually met the largest amount of other hikers (I suspect day hikers rather than thru-hikers though) though it might have had something to do with it being the weekend...

 

The area was just amazing!

 

 

As you can see it was fairly dry and leaf-y. The ground was soft with barely any roots and the trail went up and down. I actually jogged/ran a part of this because the weather was so nice and I'd shed a lot of backpack weight by eating the food I'd brought. I was also wearing trail runners... so why not!  This area reminded me a lot of another trail I'd done in Luxembourg... The rock and the semi-sandy ground were very similar!

 Do you see the walls?

It went up and down (but mostly up) for about an hour or so in this super pleasant forest. The air was hot again and the clouds had disappeared overnight so the weather was perfect. The only thing I'd have changed was the enormous amount of caterpillars hanging from every branch here. There must have been hundreds just on the stretch I walked. And some of them hung in thick clusters from a single strand of web... 😬

 

Around lunchtime I reached a little resting hut with the kind of plastic curtains horror and crime shows use in butchers' shops and other creepy locations to hide killers/bodies/meat/what have you in the back. I found a sign that warned me of ticks...

aaand literally 50m afterwards I look down onto my leg (as you do when in tick-y places) and saw a tick had found me. It was still crawling so it was easy enough to get off (check your legs and exposed body parts frequenty when in the forest, folks!). This was the first out of two ticks that got to me in the nine days I was on trail.

 

Ten or so minutes later I came to another crossroads. The route curves oddly here- you can either go straight on the road for 5 minutes or do a loop through the roadside forest for roughly 30 minutes. This was a tough decision. I was still tired from long days with little rest in between and the road was so easy to walk on! But I'd come there to see things and actually do the GR59 (as much as I'd already failed to stick to it by this point...) so decided to do the pointless loop.

 

I didn't regret it. The loop was a bit boring (mostly more forest) and I could've just gone on the road and saved myself some kms/pain/time but in the middle of it was a lovely bench in the center of a patch of sunlight. This resting spot is called Belvédére de la Guillotine for some reason.

 

 

Interlude: So the day before I'd resolved to take more breaks. As I stated before I don't usually like to stop for long on hikes and will go until I absolutely can't go anymore before even considering a rest. As you can imagine, this isn't super productive, but I somehow can't shake the habit. Anyway, the bench was lovely, so I decided to follow through on my good resolution and rest. I took off my backpack and ate food. I laid down on the bench and closed my eyes.

 

Until I heard a roaring buzz. And through cracked eyelids saw a hornet the size of a large man's thumb soaring at me. (Note: I believe they're called Asian hornets? I'm not entirely sure. In German they're called Hornisse. It's not a regular hornet though. It's the ten-times the normal size variety.)

 

So yeah. That's the plan for the rest foiled. I was able to grab my backpack (the hornet was trying to get into it) and exit stage left ASAP. The above pictures was taken after my great escape.

Continuing on I walked on the same road as I'd previously deserted for the pointless loop for a while and encountered mostly prettty fields and some houses:

I crossed the town of Châtillon then took another shortcut right on the road.

 

The road wasn't super pleasant as there were a few more cars than in the last few days. There were however some rivers as well where you can do activities such as kayaking.

 This last stretch took me past a supermarket where I finally found cold cans (not plastic bottles!) of coke zero and promptly bought and drank one on the way to the hotel in Doucier. They also had a lot of locals food like biscuits and honeys and wines.

I finally arrived in Doucier winded and checked into my hotel. This is a really cute place called Hôtel-Resto La Maison du Lac Chalain. I'm assuming Lac Chalain is the great lake you can see on Google Maps if you go to the area but unfortunately I didn't get to see it in person. I'd bought some food at the supermarket but decided to go to the restaurant Le Pic Vert instead. I... honestly don't recommend it. It wasn't super special (but expensive) and I wasn't very impressed with the food either.

I paid like 30€ for the above. The salad was decent. The tartar with fries... eh. I might just not be a great fan of tartar. Then again they didn't really have anything that I would have really liked and I wanted some protein after eating mostly junk during the day. In hindsight I wish I'd simply eaten at the hotel I was staying at.

The hôtel on the other hand was great. It's really cute and quiet and there's a bonus bakery just across the road. (More on this next week... but let's just say they have awesome sweet treats and crunchy baguettes!)

A bit rustic? I loved it!

 

 This sums up day 5 of my journey in the Jura region! A lot fewer vineyards than the previous days and lot more deciduous forest. If you're ever in the region, stay at La Maison du Lac Chalain! It's definitely worth it and the owner is very friendly.

 

See you again for the next post! In the meantime you can follow me on Instagram: @jimneyhikes

- Jimney