Source of the Seine

A quick right just north of Dijon took us two kilometres up into the Cote d'Or to the source of the Seine. Too enticing to pass up. Way back when the Gauls ruled this part of the world, in the 1st century B.C. there were pilgrimages to the source of the Seine. But once the Romans held sway they frowned on such practises and soon closed the temples at the Seine's source and gave the collected artifacts to the local religious institutions.

Later in the 17th century visitors from Paris believed that the waters from the source of the Seine held healing powers. Ever ready to cash in on the resulting tourist trade the city of Paris soon sent architects out into these hills to build a grotto to the Seine Nymph, sinewy Sequana, and here it stands today. A gaudy grotto in a delightful setting, with coins in its fountain.  

Lying in a hilly forest of beech trees the Seine begins here as a baby spring that bubbles up continuously. It slithers, serpentlike and thin, across a pretty green vale until it meanders downhill in a north easterly direction accumulating water until it eventually empties into the English channel not far from Honfleur. The second longest river in France and one of our favourites, whether it be at its source, at its heart: Paris, or at its mouth, near Le Havre.

oooOOOooo

A snail supervising the Seine source 

Grotto of the Seine Nymph, Sequana

The trickle at the beginning of the Seine