Hike around la Barme

Coiselet lake is an artificial lake created in 1970, when the dam of the same name was first commissioned. It is located on the edge of the Ain and Jura departments. It is the Jura’s southern-most lake, fed by the Bienne and Ain rivers.

The short-toed snake eagle feeds mainly on reptiles (snakes, large lizards, etc.). It can therefore sometimes be seen gliding over dry and rocky grasslands in search of food. In the winter, when reptiles are rarely found, it leaves the Jura and heads to Africa.

This is the largest nocturnal bird of prey in the world! It is almost 70 centimetres tall (as tall as a table). This formidable night hunter feeds on various type of prey including voles, fox cubs, hedgehogs and even peregrine falcons.

Cliffs, screes and rocks are rocky, rupestrine environments. Their long exposure to shade or sun, and the lack of soil mean that the plant species living there must constantly adapt. Storing water in thick leaves, hairiness, leaf folds to avoid perspiration and dwarfism are all features that plants have developed to survive in this mineral environment. Some birds have become specialists in nesting in cliffsides, such as the peregrine falcon, the alpine swift and its 60-cm wingspan or the Eurasian crag martin. Uninterested in these open environments, the rare short-toed snake eagle, which eats snakes, the Eurasian eagle-owl or the red kite prefer to nest in the large trees below.

From here you will see the valley of the Bienne and the mountains surrounding Saint-Claude, such as the pyramid of the Crêt Pourri, bordered by the Fresnois rock, and in the distance, the High-Jura mountain range.

Particularly partial to prairies scattered with hedges and bushes, both leafy and thorny, the red-backed shrike is easily recognised. The black band around its eyes gives it the look of a masked avenger. Despite its timid nature, it doesn’t mind being exposed atop a high perch, in search of its next meal. A migratory bird, this species lives in France from May to the end of August or mid-September and spends its winters in Africa.

In 1926, wood turning represented two-thirds of industrial activity in the canton of Moirans. In Martigna in 1930, of 300 inhabitants, 30 were wood turners or farmer/wood-turners (D. Schwint, 1997). Like in Martigna, the small sawmills that used the lake’s spillway to action the paddle wheels were turned into wood-turning workshops as soon as electricity became available.

“It spoke with a young and resounding voice, with a Jura accent with wide open vowels, clear like a white loaf in which consonants take a decisive bite. [...] The Vouivre flat on its stomach in a bed of reeds, bathing in the sun with a bare bottom and its ruby dress alongside it, indeed.” This is how Marcel Aymé, an author from Franche-Comté, described the Vouivre in his book of the same name; The Vouivre is usually described like a winged, flamboyant serpent with a garnet as its only eye, a fabulous diamond whose value, beauty and power is equalled only by the lust that it arouses in men. Often associated with desire, the Vouivre is also represented as a half-woman, half-serpent. Legend says that the creature only left its treasure to bask in the calm waters of the humid Jura environments. But beware of still waters... we don’t recommend attempting to steal its garnet!

Note the old lactometer visible at the junction of the two roads in Nezan. Livestock breeders and dairy producers working together under cooperatives would bring their production to the shared dairy (“fruitière”) in the morning and the evening to transform it into cheese and to mature. The milk was weighed using this object to calculate their production, paid for based on weight and quality (pureness, fat content, dry weight, etc.), and not based on the number of litres.

These “municipal” wood turning factories, built by the Union Électrique (electricity union), were used for rural production, but were also important social locations, particularly during the winter period. Several members of one family could rent a wood-turning space in the workshop, pooling their production for sale to the Moirans traders. According to some authors, municipal workshops weren’t used by specialised craftsmen, who preferred to protect their manufacturing secrets for specific markets. Spaces in the wood-turning workshop were mostly beneficial to farmers who could use them to earn additional income without any investment costs (C. Picod, 1991).