sun illuminating mossy branches.
on our last day in france we headed out to find the voie verte des hautes-vosges, a hiking trail that is based on two former railway tracks. it's currently about 53 kilometers long, and still not finished, as the planners want to turn it into a circuit eventually, beginning and ending in bussang. the trail links various vosgiennes cities and villages with each other, creating a network that unites them all. it basically leads through the valleys of the rivers moselle & moselotte, which both have their sources in the region.
we embarked on the trail in fresse-sur-moselle, which is a few kilometers away from ramonchamp, the twin city of my hometown. naturally this means that ramonchamp is also part of the green lane, but we decided against heading into that direction and voted for a 9 km hike towards the starting point, bussang. we also headed back those 9 km eventually, and let me tell you, we knew by the end of the day what we managed to walk ;P fresse-sur-moselle is a really small village and there's not awfully much to be seen around here, except, duh, the mountains, so just in case you are wondering why i don't have a lot to tell about it, it's just because there isn't much. we simply started in the middle of the village at the old train station and made our way towards the southeast, into the direction of saint-maurice-sur-moselle.
the voie verte is in close vicinity to some of the tallest vosges mountains ( like the ballon d'alsace or the ballon de servance ), so when you walk this route you will be able to see their peaks. since it was early march you could still find snow-capped mountains, which looked really nice from down in the valley. of course they are not really the alps, you know, with their dramatic rocky silhouettes, but seeing snow up on 'normal' mountains while there was none left in the valleys anymore, it still makes you stand in awe. add to that some clouds that are flying by real low, and you have the perfect scenery for a photo ;) btw, i captured the ballon d'alsace here!
i really, really liked the way the sun hit the peak while some really dark clouds were looming in the background. it created a kind of monochrome setting!
it almost looked like a painting!
down in the valley we had sun gallore, though at least we had when we started our little hike. along the voie verte you will often find rusty machinery or old cars. it is so often that i sometimes thought we were walking next to a rusty vehicle cemetery ;P
and these vehicles were often parked totally random on fields instead of any backyards or parking lots. as if they drove themselves there and just stayed. so, instead of abandoned buidings, should i start a thing with abandoned cars? is that something that already exists, like are there people who are crazy about such a thing? can cars & vehicles be haunted? questions upon questions.
this is the pathway we hiked on, it was fairly low maintenance when it came to its level of difficulty. every now and then you would find something that reminded you of its former history of being train tracks, like this overpass bridge.
some ferns and other growth loved the overpass quite a lot, it was deliciously overgrown.
the train tracks went through a whole lot of rock of course, as is custom in the mountains. the people who built the tracks often had to blast away some rocks so that the train wouldn't have to copiously circumnavigate around it. therefore you can often find some neat outcrops.
on the other side of the bridge. can you imagine one of those old trains choo-choo-ing underneath it?
the moselle river ( or mosel in german ) often runs right next to the green lane. here you see the original bed of it and a separated branch that probably is used on a nearby site for construction material? the river actually has its source not far away from here ( in bussang! ), but judging from the force and the size of the river you would probably think otherwise. it grows to a big river pretty fast, thanks to the feeding of many other streams. did you know that it is a tributary branch to the rhine river and the second largest one at that? it's 544 kilometers in length and runs through france, luxembourg and germany until it meets the rhine river near koblenz. i've been to the middle mosel valley before a long, long time ago and it's a really beautiful region. it has middle rhine valley qualities, some even say it's the little sister of the rhine river. i remember it being a bit lovelier and charming than the middle rhine valley, but to be honest, it is quite tough to choose between the two. i love the rhine river a lot, despite it being such a busy one. anyways, i have to say that since i know where the moselle river pushes through to the daylight and where it flows through for the first couple of kilometers, i still kinda developed this sense of endearment towards it. it's like i wrote in my last blog post, there's something about rivers that is incredibly applicable to life, from its birth to its end. and when you have the chance to witness the start and the end of a river, you know, following its banks along the way, it's like you are witness to a special formation, a formation of life. and i have that feeling with the moselle river. i didn't see the whole length of it yet, but i've seen its birthplace and the place where it ends in the rhine river and even a little part of its middle existence and i always muse about whether that is what a mother must feel like when she's watching her kid growing up. without the sad part at the end though, because technically the moselle lives on inside the rhine river, which is basically a really cool transformation, right?
this is the canalized part of the river, the branch that leads toward that construction material company.
it's always quite fascinating to me how much force the river already has, despite its source being only about 10 kilometers away. the little barrage thing on the left probably regulates the water of the side branch, should it carry too much water.
oh, how i love cascades like this, when the water swooshes around rocks and whirls and twirls until it flows down more calmly again.
the green lane reached the first outskirts of saint-maurice-sur-moselle, our next stage goal. the mountain on the left should be the hieucon, but i could be totally wrong, as smaller mountains oftentimes don't really get the press they should receive.
a typical landscape in the vosges mountains. the tête des fourneaux might be the mountain you look at here, but again, please don't hold me accountable ^^;
always happy to see a beekeeper's colony! it is not so common anymore to keep bees, and it's really important that we support those who still do! bees for president! 🐝
a small wild feeder to the moselle river. i think it was the 'ruisseau de la feigne' we encountered here.
it was definitely close to this part of the moselle. loved the little bridge leading over the river.
we continued on our way on the green lane and spotted another rusty relict, this time it was an impoldered boat! how that came to rest here, we will never know, especially because the moselle river is actually too small for boats in this part of the region. maybe there had been a flood sometime in the past and an especially 'smart' someone went on a boat ride during this?
at the city limits between saint-maurice-sur-moselle and bussang you will meet this yellow ant dude. there's a history behind this, so here's the deal:
the inhabitants of saint-maurice-sur-moselle are called frémis, which sounds kiiiinda similar to the word fourmi, which is the word for ant in french. in historic times people from bussang, who always went to saint-maurice-sur-moselle to visit the church masses and vespers, often sat down on the meadows between bussang and saint-maurice to have a picknick inbetween the church shenanigans. and for some reason there always were lots of ant hills on these meadows, which inspired the bussang people to say 'let's visit the ants' when they made their way to saint-maurice. and over time the word fourmis turned into 'frémis', which is the local dialect word for the ant. since that time the coat of arms of saint-maurice also carries three ants in it. and what's the consequence of all the ant business? right, this statue is a consequence. people here are proud to be 'ants'. ( i would be proud as well, because ants are such cool little critters! )
another cute bridge leading over the moselle river. there were quite a few, and they always were tiny!
these old barrage constructions are also seen from time to time, but they didn't seem to serve a purpose anymore. they were just relicts of the old ways of regulating the water levels of the moselle river.
rusty metals and green lichen overgrowth, these are two really perfect ingredients for people who love these kinda things ;)
marching on. the green lane itself isn't really challenging, it's pretty even and perfect for bicycles, inline skaters or people who have walking impediments. there's almost no inclines in the path, which makes it really easy to walk on. often it is also a pretty straight line. you find yourself concentrating less on the path and more on what is surrounding you! which of course is what the voie verte was created for, it wants to present you the region of the haute-moselle ( and the moselotte ).
entering bussang. bussang sits in a part of the moselle valley that opens up wide, which is different for the other towns you pass before arriving here. saint-maurice and fresse-sur-moselle are pretty much sandwiched inbetween the mountains, whereas bussang has more room to spread out. it feels a little less... claustrophobic? claustrophobic isn't the right word here, maybe confined fits better? yup, less confined is perfect.
the houses and homes on bussang's slopes do have a lot more space inbetween them.
of course every once in a while you will find the odd abandoned hut as well.
this slope was kinda curious, it was overgrown with tufts of grass that looked like little balls.
a more detailed look also revealed that this patch of land was probably landsliding as well.
reaching our goal in bussang, the old train station, we were greeted by this maiden. she's called 'la porteuse d'eau', the water carrier and was created by a sculptor named daniel didierlaurent. she is dedicated to bussang's most famous source, la source marie, the only still existing source of the former spa city bussang that attracted lots of people to its sources of water because they allegedly had healing properties. the source marie is a ferruginous source, and just like in many spa cities of yore it was said to heal anemia. it can be found outside of the city near the source of the moselle river - the moselle is really young and tiny there. we didn't visit it, because we still had 9 kilometers to walk back to fresse-sur-moselle in front of us and to visit the source would have meant that we would have to add another 2 kilometers. i think we weren't really up for that game anymore 😂
the green space next to the old train station also offered a picknick facility, so we used that to rest our feet and eat a few bites. we pondered over whether we should try to take a bus back to fresse-sur-moselle and even asked for details in the tourist office ( which is inside the old train station ), but since a bus wouldn't drive in the next hour, we decided against it. we didn't see too much of bussang's city either, which was okay for us since that means that we can return again for another time and check it out more thoroughly ( as well as the other towns we passed by along the lane: saint-maurice-sur-moselle & fresse-sur-moselle ).
on our walk back we passed by more of these idyllic mountain homes with the wide roofs. they are typical here!
i found some first signs of spring in the cold vosges valleys, little willow catkins!
i kinda love the mood in this picture, feels like a november scene, with the smoke rising from the chimneys and the snow on top of the ballon de servance. towards the end of our hike the sky started to overcast and the temperatures dropped to seemingly zero degree, so you can imagine that we hurried up. my camera also had zero juice in its battery anymore by then, but since we had already walked the green lane there wasn't a lot to discover anymore that we didn't see the first time. and after walking 18 km i have to confess that i didn't even feel like taking more pictures 🙀 i was exhausted, and cold, and these two facts are not really a good combination.
my last picture for the day and the last picture of our time in the vosges mountains was this one, the dark woods of the mountains shrouded in mist and deep-hanging clouds.
on the next day we were headed back to germany very early in the morning, our hosts coming by to bid us good-bye and send us off. like always we were having a hard time saying good-bye, there were a lot of hugs and bisous involved and the promise to soon return. i hope that we will do that in october this year... but with the corona virus being so unpredictable, it could be another thing we have to blow off, maybe... ( so many things i had planned this year already rained off - a visit to london, 3 concerts, easter holidays, a friend visiting me from leipzig )... and it looks like even our summer vacations in poland are on the way to be cancelled. and we wouldn't really be able to plan something in germany, because frankly, who knows if we will be allowed to go on vacations by the sea or in the mountains? all touristic destinations are pretty much warded off and closed at the moment and things look kinda bleak in that realm...
next week for example i do have a whole week of vacations and our government decided to prolong the restrictions until may, which means i am basically still not allowed to visit my parents and will have to spend my time on my own again... i mean, while i am quite a loner, i DO miss my parents and family and visiting friends and to stay away another two weeks... it slowly gets to me. i want to hug my loved ones again, spend some quality time with them, travel, visit places and SHARE those moments. so... you see, while i am not super affected by other things that relate to the shutdown, it seems that i begin to feel the absence of the very few dear people in my life... and that can be taxing, too...
well... but for now, i try to hang in there of course.
i hope you liked the little insight into our little france trip last year! i love showing you places that are not on everyone's radar ( trendy countries or cities and stuff ). i find beauty mostly in places that are not overrun by people and are not on the trend radar. sometimes good things are right in front of your doorstep, no need to find the touristic spots that everyone runs to. and if you really want to visit some of the touristic places that everyone wants to see... they can be equally as charming when you visit them in colder months of the year, or off-season. ( it's also way cheaper ;) ).
speaking of venturing outside your doorstep, next post we're gonna return to my current place of living, wiesbaden. until then!
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