La Fontaine Ardente – the Sixth Wonder of Dauphiné

There are something called Sept Merveilles du Dauphiné (Seven Wonders of Dauphiné); they are natural or man-made sites or monuments of special interest or significance located in the historic Dauphiné region (in Isère department). On today’s hike we visited the sixth one ( see the list below for the first five): La Fontaine Ardente du Gua (a source of natural gas), a point on the ground where gas (methane) leaks from the layers of sediment below. One can light up the gas, and there is usually a flame burning, unless heavy rain or a gust of wind has extinguished it.

The steep descent down to the Fontaine Ardente was a bit tricky because of previous days’ heavy rains, and so was the second half of the hike when we went down to the river Gresse on “Parcours sportif”.

The hike started from the village of Saint-Barthélemy and took us to a couple of more villages — Miribel-Lanchâtre and Essart-Garin — but mostly we stayed in the forest. This wasn’t all bad since the trees offered a little protection from chilly and gusty wind that was particularly nasty on open fields we traversed. Overall, this was quite a grey and dull day, but luckily it did not rain much, and towards the end of the 12.5km hike we saw some blue sky and occasionally even the sun came out.