Waterfalls, rivers and springs

What most characterises the rivers of Franche-Comté as they hurtle down the Jura is their strength and force of character and, like the Doubs, they were among the first in France to provide hydro-electrical energy.

Similarly, the River Lison worked the tilt hammers of the cutting edge manufacturer which used to be the leading producer of scythes. These days, the mossy old mill wheels turn silently in memory of days gone by, and the wild valleys have returned to their splendid isolation. 

They go by the names of Furieuse or Doubs. Or Savoureuse, or Lanterne...
All of them, in the Vosges and elsewhere, run, fall, crash and splash. With limestone or sandstone, the eternal struggle between water and rock is a ceaseless and often grandiose spectacle.

The Loue Valley is located in the département of Doubs, to the east of Besançon. The River Loue, which travels for 126 km, is a resurgence of the River Doubs. The valley is the most beautiful and interesting between the source of the Loue and Ornans, the capital of the upper Loue Valley. It is classed as one of the finest rivers in Europe for angling, and is also a great favourite with canoeists.

Running parallel to the upper Loue Valley, the River Lison rises at Crouzet-Migette south of Nans-sous-Sainte-Anne. Upstream of the source, the Lison runs underground, following the course of the Bief des Laizines fault trough. The Creux-Billard, the Sarrazine cave and the resurgences of the Lison the Verneau form a remarkable hydrological basin and landscape. After running for some 25 km, the Lison flows into the River Loue in the village of Châtillon sur Lison.

Follow the Doubs, the ideal guide for discovering the rich diversity of a Jura river: it begins with a resurgence from the earth; then a peat bog and a mountain stream; and then a lake at Saint-Point; an invisible river which disappears from time to time upstream of Pontarlier; then a watercourse which reappears to force open the mountain, before relaxing in the meanders of Morteau, falling asleep in Lake Chaillexon and in the Franco-Swiss lakes surrounded by hug cliffs, before falling from its bed: a 27 m fall at the Saut du Doubs.

The River Saône rises in the Vosges and travels 130 km through the département before entering Burgundy. Forests and alluvial prairies, each characterised by the diversity of animal and plant species, many of which are threatened, which have made the valley their home, and the 13,400 hectares of the Natura 2000 site of the Saône valley stretching from the foothills of the Vosges (Jonvelle) to the edge of the Côte-d'Or (Broye-Aubigney-Montseugny). 

 

Sources and re-sources

While the “droplets” of the Vosges respect the textbook image of small streams joining other small streams to form large rivers, the same cannot be said of the Jura: in the massif's huge rocky amphitheatres, viewers are treated to the spectacle of the birth of a river.

From the mountain issues forth a river that is already powerful: a phenomenon known as a resurgences.

Examples are the sources of the Doubs at Mouthe,
of the Ain at the end of the Miège Valley,
the Loue at Ouhans, which rises in a 60 m cave, along a cliff face over 100 m high,
of the Lison at Nans-sous-Sainte-Anne,
of the Dessoubre at Consolation,
of the Saine which comes from a cave near Arbois, to mention just a few of the most remarkable.

These resurgences are also referred to by geographers as Vauclusian springs, although it is hard to see why the name Jurassian spring has not been used, so characteristic are they of the geology of the region? These sources are in fact more re-sources, in that they mark the spot where a river returns to the surface after a long underground journey. A river which, further up the slopes, may already have lived part of its life as a stream or a lake.