Although my cell phone's weather app forecasts a storm, today it's all blue skies and a balmy 31 degrees Celsius (see how I am adjusting to the heat wave? lol). We have really loved wandering in the Cantinière forest (walking with Littlest Hobo has been a highlight of my summer, and sharing the top of the world with crazy motorbikes was also really memorable), so we plot a new route to discover more of the forest.
This time, we will drive to the intersection where Highway D116 passes the town of La Cantinière (where we ran into Alban on his bike), but instead of heading into the town, we will take a left at the goat pen and head towards Le Plat
Quentin. From there, we'll take a switchback over to Bois Cantinière, and walk the last couple kilometers to Bois Magnin and arrive to the intersection via the town. All told, it is a randonée of just under 8km, with a quick elevation drop of 268m, and a gradual 268m back up again.
We drive the 3km park at the intersection where Highway D116 meets a mess of roads: La Cantinière, Hameau de la Cantinière, Le Crèt Fourchet, and La Bonnaire (twice). We parallel park in front of a giant hay bale. Because France. The yellow randonée signpost is a couple metres away, on the other side of the bench. While we can see the town of La Cantinière ahead of us along the paved road, the signpost points us towards "Chambost-Allières," along the gravel path located just to the left of the gate where we met such cute goats in the past. Today, sadly, we don't see any goats in the field.
Almost immediately, Colin finds me a raven feather. It seems strange, since I haven’t seen any ravens around here, but the iridescent green and purple colors mean the feathers are definitely not crow. It takes one of the ubiquitous magpies of the area flying by to make me realize it is probably a magpie feather. Despite seeing these birds every single day, the photo below is the only decent image I capture all summer.
There are blue colored berries lining both sides of the trail here. I love berries, and can identify many types of tasty berries (and several poisonous ones!) in my home province of British Columbia. These look like sloe berries, but we don't have sloe berries in my home province, so I'm uncertain on my identification, and my general rule about berries are: if I'm not 100% sure, I don't eat them. Too bad. There are so many here, we could feast!!
Just where fields give way to trees, there is a path that leads off to the left, but we continue straight onward. The road slopes gently downwards, and is heavily grooved from some past rainstorm.
There is a path leading off to the left. I peek down it: it turns West past a cornfield (!) and we can see where someone is clear-cutting the forest on the other side of the valley ahead of us to the West. The logs are neatly arranged in rows down the hill, and in a gigantic wall-like woodpile at the bottom. A road or path can be seen running past the "wall." We had seen this area before, when walking in the Bois Magnin, and were hoping that our randonnée today would take us on that path through it. It appears we are still not far enough West. This trail wanders back South in the direction we had just come from, and if we were to follow it in this direction, it would supposedly lead through a switchback trail across the valley to the clearcut area. We don't take the path past the cornfield, but instead continue onward on the right hand fork..
At the next fork, Google tells us to take the right hand trail, but that path is really overgrown. The left seems really well-established, and it seems like both paths will loop back to each other and meet very quickly, so we take the left. A sensible assumption, and one we've successfully made in the past... but our next mistake. There are so many trails--and even roads--showing on googlemaps... so many more than on our randonnée map... it seems like they all intertwine. They do not. As we discovered before on our waylaid hike to Létra, Google does not show some important hiking details... like fences. With no yellow randonnée signs here, we struggle identifying the right paths.
At the point where we expect the two paths to meet up again, we can see the other path a few feet below us. It would be an easy jump down, but the path still looks horrendously overgrown. So we keep going. Also a mistake. This will be our last chance to get on the correct path for quite a while.
The road starts to pitch downward very steeply. It is really difficult, and the hike slows to a crawl. There are sharp pointy sticks jutting out from the ground, which spur images of me falling and impaling myself. I slow even more. After every turn the road just keeps pitching downward. I start singing to myself: "DOWN DOWN TO GOBLIN TOWN… YOU GO MY LADS! HO HO MY LADS!" I start to worry that at some point we will have to come back UP all this elevation.
We are looking for the next few meeting points with the other trail, but at all the points where the map says they should meet, there is a wire fence barring the way. We keep going steeply downwards.
Finally, we are at the last possible meeting point, which still has a wire fence, but we can see two places where people have pushed the fence down to climb over. If we don’t meet up with the other path here, we will have to go to Chambost-Allières, and take the very very long way back. Or else we’ll have to turn around and climb back up the infinite hill we just descended. I peer over the fence. It seems like I can see a path. Colin has his doubts, but I think it’s worth a look. As soon as we get over the fence and a few metres in, we can clearly see the looping path we are trying to meet up with. It should take us to the other path.
A little bit farther along, and it has become a really really overgrown trail, path dropping down onto another very well-established path. The latter is lit by sunlight, as if to say, "here I am!" Looking at the map, this extremely well-established path is the other end of the right-hand path of the first fork google told us to take. We should have just taken that road from the beginning. We turn left onto it, and follow it a tiny ways until it meets up with the beginning of the switchback trail.
If we were to continue straight from here, we would end up in Chambost Allières, So we turn right to begin the switchback trail. The road is wide, level gravel. While there are some other smaller paths branching off here and there, the main switchback is really easy to follow. The switchback slowly and steadily climbs up the 268m of elevation: even though it's the same change in elevation we just came down with great difficulty, going up it this way is not challenging at all.
About 500m later, we see a sign announcing our official entry into the Cantinière forest. Another couple hundred metres later, we are about half way from the sign to the first switchback, and we spot a rough trail heading off to the left. The map says it is a shortcut that leads straight up to the main trail above, rather than meandering through all the switchbacks. Colin and I have had enough with getting lost on rough non-official trails, so we stick to the well-established set of switchbacks.
We both really enjoy this portion of the trail. It's easy, and leads through a beautiful forest. Ivy covers the trunks of many trees, giving the forest a fairy-tale appearance. Unfortunately, about half way up the set of switchbacks, we start hearing the rumblings of thunder. We hope we don’t get caught out in a storm. There was a storm in the forecast today, but when we left the skies were clear and blue. Now, they are getting ominously grey. Then... a scattered few drops of rain, but the clouds don't break. The rain stops.
We join the road about 500m from the Bois Chapelin randonnée signpost and head towards Bois Magnin randonnée signpost . I totally recognize this intersection from walking on the trail to Bois Chapelin in the past! I also remember wondering at the time where this path led. Mystery solved!
We follow this flat open path to the Source de Font Froide, which sports a multilingual plaque that we have much difficulty disciphering. All we an figure is that someone German from the Black Forest gave this water fountain to their French friends in the Pierres Dorées. I remember my efforts trying to get our Littlest Hobo to drink from the water here. I miss him.
The road stays the same the whole way back, although the clouds towards the town of La Cantinière seem to be getting darker and darker. Colin finds me a small brown and black feather. He’s on a roll today!
We pass the yellow randonnée signpost of Le Bois Magnin--the first randonnée signpost since the Cantinière signpost at the start of our hike. We're almost back to the camionette. It is not long before we can see the ridge we walked along at the start of our hike today.
Colin rushes into the gite and quickly turns off the wifi and flips the breaker. When I was in Paris, and Colin's family was here, a bad storm here knocked out the power and burned out several of our host's appliances. Colin doesn't want to take the chance again. A little while later, the rain abates and our host Alban pops by to thank Colin for switching everything off, and tells us he thinks the danger has passed. Good thing for Colin, who needs to start his evening "work shift" pretty soon. Colin sets up "Cheese time" while I admire my new feathers and settle in for some blogging.
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