Saturday 17th May 2025

Once again it was very difficult to start the van from cold. When you turn the ignition on the glow plug symbol on the dash only comes on for a fraction of a second and then goes out so the combustion chambers are too cold to ignite the diesel air mixture when the starter motor turns the engine! Anyway we managed to get it going and we moved on to the source of the Doubs close to the village of Mouthe.

There is a campsite and a restaurant here.

This is a really beautiful place.

The infant Doubs flows by over by those trees.

Unfortunately the path up to the source is too rocky for Ann's little machine so she decides to try to make it on foot - a round trip of 600 metres - the first leg of which has some uphill!

An interpretive sign explains the geology of the source.

The river comes pouring our of the rock at the base of a steep cliff......

......and then sets off on its long journey to join up with the Rhone and eventually flow out into the Mediterranean.

          Ann managed the trip there and back with the help of her stick and a hand from me.

The river pours over a weir just after emerging from the cliff.

The rest of today was not particularly successful. We headed to an Aire at Bois D'Amont but when we got there we found we had no phone or internet reception and felt it was too risky to stay there as if we couldn't start the van in the morning we would have no way of calling out our breakdown service. So once again we moved on, this time to the town of Clairvaux les Lacs. We are parked at the Musee des Maquettes a Nourrir et Courir le Monde - see: Musee I walked into town and bought some bread and cake. We had grilled asparagus and fresh baguette for our tea followed by supermarket cake.

Today we travelled 107 miles (172 kilometres). We are at: N46.5849 E5.7386

Clairvaux les Lacs    Street View