The Gratteris viewpoint, from sharp limestone pavement to dolmen

Car park at the foot of Tarcenay Church in the village centre. Yellow-blue markings. Some sections without markings.

(S/E) Enter the churchyard to take a look inside through the porch gate. Exit via the upper gate and head down the Route de Trépot to the right for fifty metres. Then head up to the far left along Rue du Stade, which becomes a stony track and branches off as it enters the woods. Continue straight on, passing a beautiful sinkhole on your right. After walking alongside old moss-covered walls, you’ll reach a fork. Continue straight on again to leave the woods and reach the town hall in Foucherans.

(1) Turn left, walking past the church for about thirty metres. Turn sharply right onto the short, narrow street which becomes a stony path in the middle of the pastures and leads you to the church of Trèpot with its beautiful churchyard.

(2) Continue along the path running alongside the church façade, passing an old standpipe. Immediately turn left downhill to the Cheese Museum at the rear of the town hall. Return to the church (nice view of the rear and a charming old house).

(2) Leave the village by turning right onto a short stretch of the main road towards Tarcenay, passing an old wash house. Continue for another hundred metres.

(3) Turn sharp right onto the stony path which quickly enters the woods; look for the sign ‘De lapiaz en Dolmen’ facing away from the direction of travel. At the entrance to the woods, you’ll come to a first fork. Carry straight on. Shortly afterwards, at another fork, keep right and stay on this well-defined, mostly straight path. Pass by sharp limestone pavements and numerous sinkholes (on your left), typical of the karst landscape. Join the D112

(4). Head up it to the left for about a hundred metres and re-enter the woods via the lovely path on the left (signposted ‘Belvédère de la Roche du Gratteris’). Note the beautiful sinkholes again. Join an ascending path at a right angle. Take this path to the left towards the nearby viewpoint. A little further up, look out for a track on the right leading to a promontory visible through the trees. View of the Gratteris, whose name derives from the Celtic word ‘kratt’, meaning a stony field where one had to work hard to scrape a living. Far to the left, the silhouette of Mont Poupet.

(5) Set off again along the path on the right which joins the track; continue straight on until you reach a small tarmac road. Head down to the left for 200 m and turn right onto a path leading to a large slab of sharp limestone pavement that one might be tempted to mistake for a dolmen.

(6) Continue along the narrow track that starts at the corner of the stone, crossing a strip of pastureland, and re-enter the woods. At the fork, keep left to find yourself on the side of a sinkhole and reach the lovely picnic area behind the wash house. Go round the beautifully renovated wash house (built in 1855) on the left.

(7) Cross the zigzagging path to the left of the building. Climb up the pasture, keeping the chapel in sight. Enter via a wooden ladder onto a lovely sunken path that climbs up to the Chapel of Saint-Maximin, where the parishioners of the Middle Ages led a joyful life.

(8) Head back into the woods via the lovely straight path opposite the entrance (despite the crosses). Walk through a lovely, open forest until you reach a crossroads. Continue straight on until the nearby fork. Take the right-hand path and you’ll come to a wide gravel road.

(9) Turn left, leaving the signposted path, and you will soon reach a stony track on your right, which you follow downwards. Leave the woods and arrive at Tarcenay. Turn left onto Chemin des Sorbiers, then right to join Route de Besançon and, turning left, the car park. (S/E)

(2) Trépot Cheese Museum: guided tour of the former Trépot Comté cheese-making workshop, topped by its tall chimney.

(3) Karst landscape: a sinkhole is a characteristic form of limestone erosion specific to karst landscapes. The dissolution of surface limestone leads to the formation of circular depressions ranging from a few metres to several hundred metres in diameter. Sharp limestone pavement is a surface relief feature found in limestone regions.

(6) The Foucherans dolmen: this slab, situated in the commune of Foucherans, measuring 3 m in length, 1 m in width and 40 cm in thickness, is placed on two parallel slabs, forming a chamber 1.23 m wide and 57 cm high. The St Maximin stone thus displays all the characteristics of a dolmen. However, the lack of excavations means it cannot be confirmed as an authentic Neolithic dolmen. Experts believe the Jura region is not particularly associated with this type of megalith. Is it a site of pagan worship, or an imposing sharp limestone pavement formed by rainwater runoff dissolving the rock?

(8) Saint-Maximin Chapel: in the Middle Ages, the popularity of this place was such that merchants and innkeepers set up shop there and, after a few initial drinks no doubt in honour of the good saint, people would celebrate merrily, dancing right inside the building. The ecclesiastical authorities, who did not appreciate such boisterous devotions, ordered the demolition of the chapel in 1777. It was rebuilt a century later.