Creux du Van
Interesting facts
- The name is usually traced to a Franco-Provençal dialect word for rock, so it means roughly a hollow ringed by rock rather than a hollow of the wind.
- The vertical upper walls are Kimmeridgian limestone about 150 metres thick, resting on softer marly layers that erode more easily beneath them.
- The cirque formed where erosion broke open a fractured fold in the rock known as the Soliat anticline, later deepened by glacial ice.
- A Bronze Age axe has been found at the site, showing that people passed through this high corner of the Jura thousands of years ago.
- Protection began early: in 1870 Louis Guillaume bought land here to create a reserve, and in 1876 the Club Jurassien acquired about 25 hectares.
- Golden eagles nest on the cliff faces, and the reserve is also home to wallcreepers, capercaillie, badgers and lynx.
- Switzerland issued a postage stamp featuring the Creux du Van on 7 September 2017.
Why it is worth it
The Creux du Van is a vast natural amphitheatre carved into the crest of the Jura mountains: a horseshoe of pale limestone cliffs, about 160 metres high and around four kilometres long in total, enclosing a bowl more than a kilometre wide. From the rim the ground simply stops, and the view drops into the wooded hollow and runs on across the Swiss Plateau towards the Alps.
The cirque lies on the north side of Le Soliat, on the border between the cantons of Neuchâtel and Vaud above the Val de Travers. It was shaped during and after the last ice ages, as glaciers and meltwater cut into the layered rock and the cliffs retreated through erosion; until recently the ground beneath it held patches of permafrost. The floor of the bowl is covered with moraine and rockfall debris on which fir and beech grow, and in the middle rises the spring of the Fontaine Froide, whose water keeps a steady 4 °C all year.
The cliffs are home to chamois and to Alpine ibex, which were reintroduced here in 1965. The last bear in the canton of Neuchâtel was killed in the area in 1770, and two pairs of lynx captured in the Slovak Carpathians were released here in 1974 and 1975. The surrounding uplands are thinly settled karst country of forest and pasture dotted with sinkholes. Along the open upper edge runs a dry-stone wall about two kilometres long, built by an international team of volunteers in place of a wire fence and known as the Wall of Friendship.
In the 19th century the place was often written Creux du Vent, the "hollow of the wind", until the rector of the University of Neuchâtel, Cyprien Ayer, argued for the present spelling. The arrival of the railway in the 1860s made it a popular excursion, and since 1972 it has been protected as a landscape of national importance, at the heart of a nature reserve of about 15.5 square kilometres.
Getting there
The Creux du Van is about 19 km from Yverdon-les-Bains. A classic footpath, the Sentier des Quatorze Contours, climbs from Noiraigue railway station in the Val-de-Travers, and paved roads from Saint-Aubin-Sauges and Couvet lead to the Ferme du Soliat near the rim. The nearest airport is Bern Airport (BRN), about 59 km away; Geneva Airport (GVA) is about 91 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Creux du Van is a natural rocky cirque approximately 1,400 metres (4,600 ft) wide and 150 metres (490 ft) deep, on the north side of Le Soliat, in the Val de Travers district in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. A very well known, amphitheatre-shaped natural attraction, it is at the heart of a nature reservation area of 15.5 km2 (6.0 sq mi).
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