EUROPE · EXPEDITION E13 · EU MEGA TRIP
Twenty-one days through the France that has no coast: Champagne and the Lac du Der, where over two hundred thousand cranes gather each autumn; Alsace, its storks and the Route des Vins; the Vosges ridge road and its lynx; the Doubs, the karst and the high Jura — which named the Jurassic and has the dinosaur trackways to prove it — and Burgundy. The only French file with two entirely different seasons, and the winter one is the better.
01 / MISSION PROFILE
Three French files already reach the sea. This one deliberately does not, and it is the better for it.
May to October gives you the ridge road, the peat bogs, the waterfalls in melt, the vendange and the whole Jura on foot. October to February gives you the cranes — and two hundred thousand cranes lifting off one lake at dawn is the single greatest wildlife spectacle in France. Pick deliberately; you cannot have both.
The Lac du Der was flooded in 1974 to protect Paris and accidentally created the most important crane stopover in western Europe. Numbers peak in late autumn and again in February. Dawn from a north-shore hide, and the noise arrives before the birds do.
The Jura gave its name to a whole period of earth history. Sauropod trackways at Loulle and Coisia, ammonites in every road cutting, and a karst landscape of blind valleys and springs that is a textbook you can walk through.
Cut Burgundy and the Morvan and come north from the Jura. You keep the cranes, Alsace, the Vosges and the whole Jura — and the Burgundy leg pairs perfectly with a separate long weekend anyway.
02 / JOURNEY LOG
South-east to Champagne and the lakes, east into Alsace, south along the Vosges ridge, down the Doubs into the high Jura, then west through Burgundy and the Morvan for home.
Off the shuttle and south-east to the chalk. A short transit by the standards of this archive, and Reims cathedral at the end of it.
NIGHT BASE Reims outskirts
Cellars cut into Roman chalk quarries in the morning, then the largest artificial lake in western Europe in the afternoon.
NIGHT BASE Giffaumont / Éclaron
If your dates fall between October and February this is the single best wildlife day in France: over two hundred thousand cranes lifting off at dawn in waves.
NIGHT BASE Giffaumont / Éclaron
The second great Champagne lake, then east into Lorraine and a Place Stanislas that is essentially a stage set.
NIGHT BASE Nancy outskirts
Park on the edge and take the tram. The cathedral, the Petite France quarter and a low-emission zone that a van has no business in.
NIGHT BASE Strasbourg outskirts
A day off the road. The Rhine backwaters north of the city hold beavers, and the Ill runs through the old town.
NIGHT BASE Strasbourg / La Wantzenau
South along the Vosges foothills through villages that look like an argument about half-timbering. Vendange from mid-September.
NIGHT BASE Obernai / Riquewihr
Colmar in the morning, then France’s oldest nature reserve on the Rhine — old river backwaters, gravel islands and a fish hatchery working since 1852.
NIGHT BASE Colmar / Sierentz
Up onto the ridge road built as a military supply route in 1915, running the length of the high Vosges with the plain on one side and the Black Forest beyond it.
NIGHT BASE Le Hohneck / Munster
A walking day on the high pasture — glacial cirque lakes, peat bog boardwalks, arnica, and marcaire farms making Munster as they have since the ninth century.
NIGHT BASE Le Hohneck / Gérardmer
The southern end of the range, and Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp on the way down — which is worth the detour even if you dislike concrete.
NIGHT BASE Belfort / Ronchamp
Into the Jura proper. Besançon sits inside a loop of the Doubs under a Vauban citadel, and Courbet painted the valley above it.
NIGHT BASE Besançon / Ornans
The Loue rises full-grown out of a cliff — proved in 1901 to be the Doubs, which had vanished underground twelve kilometres away. Then the falls on the Swiss border.
NIGHT BASE Ornans / Villers-le-Lac
Up to the Haut-Doubs, where Mouthe records some of the coldest temperatures in France and is called la petite Sibérie for it. Lynx country, on paper.
NIGHT BASE Métabief / Mouthe
Chalain and Vouglans, and the Cascades du Hérisson — thirty-one falls in three kilometres, best in the melt and frozen solid in a hard winter.
NIGHT BASE Clairvaux / Doucier
A blind valley cut back into the plateau by its own spring, with an abbey at the bottom and eagle owls on the walls. Château-Chalon above it makes vin jaune.
NIGHT BASE Baume / Château-Chalon
Salt worked since the Iron Age, piped fifteen kilometres to a royal saltworks designed in 1775 as an ideal industrial city. Both are UNESCO sites.
NIGHT BASE Arc-et-Senans / Salins
West to the Côte d’Or. The Hôtel-Dieu’s glazed roof, and a slope of vineyards divided into plots so small they have their own names.
NIGHT BASE Beaune outskirts
Granite, oak and lakes in a regional park that floated firewood to Paris down the Yonne. Bibracte, a Celtic hill city, sits under beech on Mont Beuvray.
NIGHT BASE Saint-Brisson / Château-Chinon
A castle being built from scratch since 1997 using only thirteenth-century methods. Then north for the run home.
NIGHT BASE Auxerre / Sens
North through Picardy to the shuttle. Book an afternoon crossing.
NIGHT BASE — aboard —
One road decides the middle of this file. The Route des Crêtes was built as a military supply road in 1915 and runs the length of the high Vosges. It is closed by snow through the winter — which is precisely when the cranes are at the Der. If you come for the birds, plan the valley route through Alsace instead and accept that the ridge is for another year.
03 / OPERATIONS BRIEFING
04 / THE ACCESS STACK
The Ballons des Vosges, the Haut-Jura and the Morvan are parcs naturels régionaux — lived-in working landscapes rather than wilderness, free to enter, and all three publish excellent walking material.
The Champagne hillsides and cellars, the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, the Vauban fortifications at Besançon, and the Le Corbusier chapel at Ronchamp. An unusually dense stretch of world heritage for a file with no coast.
National Trust covers Northern Ireland and nothing on the continent; English Heritage has no reciprocal arrangement anywhere here. Budget an access line for this file.
Most of these bodies protect land that is already free to walk on — joining funds the work rather than buying entry. The exceptions worth real money are the Dutch Museumkaart, the Irish OPW card, and DNT or STF if you will use the hut networks.
05 / THE EUROPE MATRIX
The largest bird gathering in the archive and two of France’s most threatened mammals on the same file. The European hamster survives in France only on the Alsace plain, and the lynx holds the Jura while barely clinging to the Vosges. The whole archive lives on the Europe Matrix page.
LIKELY
The largest crane gathering in western Europe — well over two hundred thousand birds on one artificial lake in a good autumn. They lift off at dawn in waves and the noise carries for miles.
★ RARE
Reintroduced from Slovakia in the 1970s and now France’s core population. Effectively a camera-trap animal, and a track in fresh snow is the honest sighting.
★ RARE
Critically endangered, found in France only on the Alsace plain, and down to a few hundred animals. France has been taken to court over its decline.
COMMON
The Jura gives its name to the Jurassic, and the limestone at Loulle and Coisia carries sauropod trackways you can walk beside.
COMMON
Down to nine pairs in Alsace by 1974 and reintroduced deliberately; now on chimneys and platforms in every village, and increasingly staying all winter.
LIKELY
Introduced in 1956 and thoroughly established on the sandstone and granite crags of the Hautes-Chaumes.
LIKELY
Following the cranes and the wildfowl in, and now breeding on the lake after recolonising from the east.
COMMON
The Der and the Forêt d’Orient hold hundreds of thousands of duck, geese and swans through the winter.
LIKELY
The lake is ringed by wet oak forest, and the woodpecker is the architect of most holes in it.
LIKELY
An old-oak specialist, and the Der woodland is one of the best places in France for it.
LIKELY
On the Champagne chalk — bee, pyramidal and monkey orchids on thin soil above the cellars.
COMMON
Roman chalk quarries turned into hundreds of kilometres of cellar, at a constant twelve degrees, and cut into a sixty-million-year-old sea bed.
COMMON
Throughout the oak and hornbeam around the lakes, at first and last light.
LIKELY
Back on the French Rhine after centuries, and reshaping the side channels of the Petite Camargue.
COMMON
France’s oldest nature reserve in Alsace — old Rhine backwaters, gravel islands and reed, with a fish hatchery from 1852 still in it.
COMMON
On every Rhine backwater and ditch, and neither was here a generation ago.
LIKELY
A blue bolt along the Ill and every clean Alsatian side-stream.
LIKELY
Forked tails over the vineyards and the cereal, and increasing steadily.
LIKELY
Quartering the river for anything dead, and in numbers at the barrages.
LUCKY
On the warm terraces of the Route des Vins, and recolonising steadily northward.
LUCKY
Electric green on the dry-stone walls between the vines, at the northern edge of its range.
COMMON
Riesling and Gewürztraminer off the Vosges foothills, picked from mid-September, with the villages open all night.
COMMON
Made on the high Vosges pastures by the marcaires since the ninth century, and the herds still go up in May.
★ RARE
Down to a handful of birds and probably beyond saving as a wild French population. Lek zones are closed and unpublished.
★ RARE
On the open high pasture, and declining with the same pressures as the capercaillie.
★ RARE
A thin whistle from dense cover, and a bird most French foresters have never seen.
★ RARE
A separate and much more fragile population than the Jura’s, reinforced by release and repeatedly set back by poaching.
LIKELY
On the red sandstone crags and the castle rocks, recovered from extinction in the region.
LUCKY
Both in the high Vosges spruce, and both far more often heard on a cold night than seen.
LIKELY
On the Hautes-Chaumes scree and the corrie edges.
COMMON
Raised bog with cotton grass, sundew and cranberry in glacial hollows, on boardwalks throughout.
COMMON
Lac Blanc, Lac Noir and the rest, each sitting in a hollow the ice scooped out of the granite.
LIKELY
Yellow across the high pasture, still hand-picked under licence for the pharmaceutical trade.
COMMON
The Vosges slopes in copper and dark green, and the whole region walks in it.
LIKELY
Abundant through the northern Vosges, nocturnal, and the reason the vineyards are fenced.
LIKELY
The September rut carries a long way in the corries, and the park runs listening evenings for it.
LIKELY
On wet Vosges paths at dusk, and the sandstone forest is classic ground for them.
LIKELY
Orange-bellied and slate-blue, in every wheel rut and pool in spring.
LIKELY
The Jura’s own heavy breed, chestnut with a flaxen mane, still worked in forests too steep for machines.
COMMON
Red and white, on every Jura pasture, and the reason Comté exists. The cheese is legally tied to the breed.
COMMON
Walking underwater against the current in the middle of winter, on every clean Jura river.
COMMON
On every rock in the Hérisson falls and the Doubs tributaries.
LIKELY
On the limestone reculées, and the climbing bans in spring exist for them.
LUCKY
Europe’s largest owl, on the box-canyon walls at Baume-les-Messieurs and Cirque de Baume.
★ RARE
Crimson against grey limestone on the Jura cliffs, and easier in winter when they come down.
LIKELY
In the Loue and the Doubs, and the Loue is one of the most famous fly rivers in Europe — and one of the most troubled.
★ RARE
A small bottom-living fish found only in the Rhône basin and among the most threatened in France. The Loue holds some of the last.
★ RARE
The white-clawed crayfish survives in a few cold Jura headwaters, and the American signal crayfish is why there are not more.
LIKELY
Recolonised from the Rhône, and gnawed willow along every quiet stretch.
★ RARE
Effectively lost by the 1980s and now recolonising from the Massif Central. Spraint on a boulder is the realistic sighting.
COMMON
Thirty-one falls in three kilometres, best in the spring melt and frozen solid in a hard winter.
COMMON
Blind valleys cut back into the limestone plateau by springs — Baume-les-Messieurs is the textbook example.
COMMON
The Loue rises full-grown out of a cliff, and dye tests in 1901 proved it was the Doubs disappearing underground.
COMMON
The Haut-Doubs holds real snow and records some of the coldest temperatures in France — Mouthe is called la petite Sibérie.
COMMON
Mont d’Or made only between August and March, boxed in spruce bark; Comté aged in old forts. Both are tied to the mountain by law.
COMMON
Aged six years under a veil of yeast in barrels deliberately left unfilled, and bottled in a clavelin holding what is left.
COMMON
Wormwood on the Val-de-Travers slopes either side of the border, and the drink is legal again after a century.
COMMON
Granite, oak and beech in a regional park that supplied Paris with firewood by floating it down the Yonne.
COMMON
White, enormous, and on every Burgundian pasture. The breed is named for a single town.
LUCKY
On passage down the flyway, and increasingly lingering on the reservoirs.
★ RARE
Nesting deep in old forest, and among the shyest breeding birds in France.
LIKELY
A serious flush under the oak and beech, and a local pursuit with local secrecy.
COMMON
The Côte d’Or picked by hand from mid-September, and the whole slope smells of it.
LUCKY
The tuber uncinatum, less famous than the black Périgord and found under the same hornbeam the whole region grows.
COMMON
A Celtic hill city on Mont Beuvray, abandoned two thousand years ago, and still being excavated under beech.
COMMON
A castle being built from scratch since 1997 using only thirteenth-century methods and materials. It will take another decade.
LIKELY
Over the reed and the poplar at the lake edge, in the same hour as the cranes come in.
LIKELY
A regional park with almost no settlement and a genuine dark-sky programme.
LIKELY
August on the high Vosges pasture, above the valley haze and well away from Strasbourg.
LIKELY
Over the chalk grassland and the vineyard margins all summer.
★ RARE
A relict population on the high limestone, protected, and an indicator that the sward is still cut by hand.
LUCKY
Clattering out of the Der and Morvan oakwoods on warm June evenings.
LIKELY
The karst holds important hibernation roosts, and several show caves close sections for them.
The field law. Crane roosts are watched from hides and never approached — a flushed roost is abandoned. Capercaillie and black grouse lek zones in the Vosges are closed in spring and unpublished, and that population cannot absorb any disturbance at all. Peat bog boardwalks exist because peat does not recover. And never publish a lynx location: the Vosges population has been set back by poaching more than once.
06 / EXPEDITION TOOLKIT
Run the budget core with a small toll line and cheap pitches. Eastern France is the least expensive part of the country to tour, and the aires are frequently free.
If you come for the cranes, run the off-grid core with the heating on and the days short. Gas consumption in a Haut-Doubs February is the constraint, not the battery.
The Der hides, the Vosges crags and the Jura cliffs are all distance work. Binoculars are the minimum; a scope earns its space at the lake.
Check it in the Europe Engine — and note that a February crane trip and a September one fall in different rolling windows, which is often how two long files fit into a year.
07 / DEPARTURE CHECK
08 / OPEN MAP
09 / WHERE NEXT
The Jura runs into Switzerland at Basel, and E06 starts there. The two chain into six weeks of limestone and granite, from the Doubs to the Grossglockner.
Your Alsace days sit on the upper Rhine; E03 takes the same river from Koblenz to the sea. Between them the whole river is covered.
The Channel and the Loire, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. With this file, four separate three-week expeditions cover France more thoroughly than any other country in the archive.
FOUND THIS USEFUL?
Everything here is free and always will be — the expedition files, the Nature Matrix, the seven calculators and the Trip Engine. Nothing sits behind a paywall, and nothing unlocks if you pay.
But if a file saved you a wasted weekend, or the Matrix put a puffin in front of your children, you are very welcome to stand us a coffee. It goes on diesel, ferries and the next expedition — which comes back up here, free, for you.
Fuel for the Nebuchadnezzar£10 · ONE PAYMENT →Entirely optional. One payment, never a subscription — and you can set any number up to ten at the checkout if you are feeling especially kind. No perks, no supporter tier, and absolutely no hard feelings either way.