Forest Adventure

Recently thinned or trimmed oaks

Picnic area in the forest

We are staying near the second largest forest in France, the Foret Bertrange.  On Sunday, the weather cleared and we decided to go for a hike.  I guided us on the windy roads to the Fontaine du Vaux which appeared to have a walking path leading to other dirt roads through the forest.  We parked just outside a gate near another car and a short walk down the rutted dirt road led us to a beautiful open forest area where there appeared to be some ancient stone lined ditches for directing water, presumably from a spring.  There was a sign and a stone commemorating the members of the Resistance who had used the woods as their base of operations during WWII. 

Paths radiated out from this central area and we followed one uphill.  The forest is mostly managed for timber, I think cooperatively by local villages.  We passed relatively recently cutover areas filled with brush, thinned areas of red oak and white oak, and saw above us an area of evergreen spruce or fir.  There were lots of different mushrooms including a few boletes, lots of amanitas, russulas, and others I could not id (see photos). Our road reached a larger dirt road and we decided to go back by way of another small road that led back downhill.  We figured it would probably end up back where we started since so many roads had radiated off of that area. 

After walking some time, we saw several hunters with rifles sitting or standing along the road.  The second one said bon jour and set off an explanation of how the paths were closed because Sundays are set aside for hunting various animals including sanglier, which we thought meant deer.   We could hear dogs baying in the distance.    We explained that we were trying to get back to the Fontaine de Vaux, and he explained that if we took the path behind him down hill to a smaller path, continue downhill to a larger dirt road, turn left, that would eventually take us back to the Fontaine.  Merci, desolee (sorry!) and we headed off downhill.   We sort of thought we'd walked too far by the time we got to the hunters so just as well!  We found our way to the dirt road and went left and after a much more extensive and muddy walk than we predicted we did eventually reach the Fontaine Vaux without running into any animals or other hunters!  Today it occurred to me that we had stayed in Hotel Sanglier in Belgium several years ago, and that sanglier meant boar, not deer!  I am very glad that we did not run into any boar being chased by dogs towards a line of hunters!