When the canal boat trip falls through, decisions have to be made and action has to be taken.  I make a random booking for Bescançon which turns out to be a really good decision. We hire a car, book an apartment and head off.  We check the temperatures for the week, knowing a heatwave is likely. Our first day promises a mere 27°C, so we make an early start to walk up the hill to the Citadelle. No one else is about so we are the first to arrive at the entry gate.  

At the behest of Louis XIV, Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, an engineer and military architect, designed and managed the construction of the Citadelle. Vauban was a man who knew what he was doing, and the result dominates the loop of the River Doubs. In a time of siege warfare, in more than 50 years working for Louis XIV, Vauban designed 160 fortresses and directed 47 sieges. Although his fame rests on the fortifications he built, Vauban’s greatest innovations were offensive operations, an approach he summarised as ‘More powder, less blood.’ This is the equivalent of throwing money at the problem, except in this case it actually worked.

The Bescançon citadelle is massive: just when you think you’ve seen it all, hello! another pathway leading to another bastion, terrace, or viewpoint. The views across Besançon are magnificent, although by midday even Vauban would be looking for a shady tree and a cold beer.

The city’s famous Astronomical Clock celebrates an entirely different type of precision – or least it does when it’s working. When we enter the too small room in which the clock sits, ticking off the years until it is finally working again, we gasp in astonishment at the size and beauty of the thing. But when we get a closer look, it’s the bewildering complexity that astounds us. The clock, built between 1858 and 1860 comprises more than 30,000 hand tooled parts, with 57 dials providing a wealth of information, including calendars, the movement of the planets, eclipses and the time of high tide in various ports. It tells us almost everything except when it will again be fully operational.

As close to Switzerland as Bescançon is, we should realise there’s a long horological history, and the Musée du Temps details it across four floors of an heritage mansion.  For me the highlight is Foucault’s pendulum, silently proving the Earth rotates. Galileo theorised it, Foucault proved it. There’s something meditative about watching a simple swinging weight calmly prove that the entire planet is moving.

As Besançon sits on a tight curve of the Doubs, we take the tourist boat tour to check out the old town from the water.  Surprise! There’s a 388 meter river tunnel beneath the Citadelle. In 1882 it was carved through the base of a limestone cliff to bypass a tricky bend in the river which was difficult to navigate. Fantastic, not just for the engineering, but also because it provides cool relief from the heat.

As the temperature ramps up through the week, we start looking beyond the city for opportunities to cool down. Our first excursion turns into another lesson in the universal principle that shit happens: the small lake and its surroundings are closed while preparations for the weekend triathlon are underway. With temperatures forecast to hit 38°C, organisers have thoughtfully chosen conditions ideal for heat exhaustion, dehydration and the occasional cardiac event.  Accepting defeat, we do the only sensible thing and go for lunch instead.

Better luck next time. Heading southwest into the Jura, we visit the Source de Lison. This is spectacular. Water erupts dramatically from the base of towering limestone cliffs, and after days of temperatures in the mid-thirties, the shade and cool air feel positively decadent.  We are brought up short, however, by the temperature of the water, which turns out to be less refreshingly cool and more recently melted glacier.  Diana and I brave it anyway. The experience is exhilarating, character-building, and mercifully brief. We emerge refreshed, and with parts of our anatomy numb. 

I’m discussing the heatwave with the lovely young woman giving me a pedicure when she reveals what is apparently local insider knowledge: the best swimming spot is Lac de Vouglans, a 35-kilometre-long hydro lake with several beaches. Given that the alternative was slowly melting in Lyon, it sounded like an excellent plan.

It’s a lovely drive of an hour and a half, winding through a rolling landscape of crop farms and vineyards.  We find a shady tree to park under, squeezed between two other cars as half of eastern France is looking to cool off. A short walk brings us to what you’d expect on the edge of a man made lake where the level rises and falls. It’s rocky, pebbly, not quite dirt and not quite sand, but very effective at making you appreciate footwear.  The water, however, is gloriously refreshing, and just the right temperature. We enjoy several swims, emerging each time convinced we’ve solved the heatwave problem once and for all. And then we do what any sensible people do and we head off for a very late lunch. After all, no French day trip is complete without treating swimming as merely the interval between meals.

Which brings us to food. The evenings bring their own rewards after long days spent climbing hills, admiring clocks, and seeking refuge from the relentless sunshine.  Aside from haunting the pastry shops, bakers, markets, and cheese shops, we eat at some very good restaurants. We spend an evening at Le Saint-Cerf which offers the sort of modern French dining that we didn’t expect to find in Bescançon. Although the menu was very short, every dish is stunningly styled and delivers maximum flavour: such as delicately coiled salmon gravlax; focaccia with confit tomatoes with pancetta chips and rocket and pea purée. 

We agree our unplanned week in Besançon is a triumph, and highly recommend it as a destination, though not in a heatwave. No one regrets giving the canal boat trip a miss (see previous blog). In the middle of a heatwave, a week cooped up together on the water could all too easily have turned a delightful holiday into a relationship stress test, with the survivors left to write the memoirs.