Unusual travel suggestions are missions from God. You may be familiar with this quote (it comes from Kurt Vonnegut).
But the Easy Hikers have always gone one further: rather than waiting for someone to make such an unusual suggestion, we actively search for pretexts to go to places where one would not normally go.
Because if you are travelling somewhere famous or familiar, you already know what to expect. Which is like visiting a museum to see all the paintings “in the flesh“ (in the canvas?) that you have already encountered countless times in books and TV programmes. Where is the excitement in that?
It is far better to go to places of which you know little – or nothing. At best, you will make a real find. At worst, you will have a slightly shitty weekend. What have you got to loose? You will live.
This, by the way, is what is known as Adventures for Beginners.
More than any other country in Europe, France is full of places that provide the perfect scenery for such adventurettes. Provincial France features many towns and cities with unique flavours that are richly steeped in the colours of history.
Cities with glorious cathedrals, with improbably grand castles of ruling dukes and princes of which you have never heard, luscious gardens and parks but also a bit of rough, and on top of all that, the traces of famous artists, writers and scientists.
Famous French people all wind up in Paris, but few have been born there! Above all, these are cities full of dignity and proud citizens, cities of which young people in smaller towns in their rural départements are dreaming, in the way that young people from larger towns are dreaming of settling in Paris or London or New York. There are entire worlds to discover!
Besançon – Between Paris and the Bayou!
This has been an admittedly rather long-winded intro as a preparation for telling you: last week, we went to Besançon.
For a number of reasons, we did not fancy taking the plane on our way back home to the south of France, and there happened to be a train that went into the right direction – but not further than to Besançon.
Great, we said: let’s go! A mission from God! And once we are there, we might as well stay for a couple of nights rather than a single afternoon.
From the viewpoint of Easy Hikers, there is something else that is great about provincial towns. Whereas larger towns slowly blur into the countryside through acres and acres of suburban sprawl.
While it takes you ages before you get some clean air in your nostrils, this process unfolds rather more quickly in provincial towns.
Take Besancon, for example: One moment you feel you are in Paris…
… and the next, everything around you looks as though Besançon had been “Born on the Bayou“.
Like most non-seaside provincial cities in France, Besançon features a river, although it is fair to say that only few of the other provincial cities will have one which is quite as attractive and picturesque …
… or one which plays as central a role in both the history and the image of the modern town.
The horseshoe-shaped city of Besançon is surrounded by its river, called the Doubs, on three sides – which makes sure you rarely lose sight of it for long. The Doubs is also one reason why Besançon never fell into total oblivion in its long and chequered history.
The buildings of the old port have been largely torn down, however, and the area was used for the construction of a Cite des Arts.
The other reason for Besançon’s resilience is its geographic location. Much like the Alsace in the north, it belongs to that slice of land between France and Germany that was a bone of contention between those two rivals for centuries.
On top of that, there is Besançon’s strategic location at the foot of the Alps. You can spot the walls of ancient fortresses everywhere across town, and it seems that, up to a point, the entire city was once a fortress.
And at the heart of these fortifications, there is the majestic Citadel.
But we shall leave this for last and start our walk around the Besancon horseshoe on the Citadel’s south-western flank.
The foot path alongside the Doubs extends, with only a few interruptions, beyond the municipal frontiers of Besançon, but for practical reasons, we shall concentrate on the central stretch around the old town.
Which means that we will start near the Iles des Grand Bouez and continue clockwise past the Chamars park towards the Quai Vauban near the heart of the city.
This quai is particularly popular with the townsfolk and consequently very lively. On a sunny day, it provides great street theatre.
But there are also calmer stretches, veering from the nearly wild …
… to the idyllic.
This section of the river Doubs has been integrated into the network of the Rhine-Rhone canal, and Besançon is an obligatory stopping point for canal boat trips.
And obligatory means just that: boat captains are forced to disembark here to open and close one of the few remaining manually operated locks along their way.
Here is a tip: when you come across the Robert Schwint Bridge, use its central stairway to descend to the narrow island underneath, turn right and then walk on the island right up to the next bridge, the Pont de la Republique.
This is one of most picturesque bits of the walk.
Besançon prides itself on its large number of green spaces (it has more per-capita parkland than any other city in France), but this is probably the best of the lot.
Half urban space, half “the small outdoors”: the perfect place for a little adventure.
