Seine’s source a concern

FLAME IS DUE TO BE CARRIED PAST HISTORIC AREA ON ITS WAY TO PARIS Residents are worried the site where river starts will disappear.

The river Seine – the centrepiece of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony in July – starts with a few drops of water in a mossy grotto deep in the woods of central France.

And not a day goes by without Jacques and Marie-Jeanne Fournier going to check the source only a few paces from their door.

“I go there at least three times a day. It’s part of me,” 74-year-old Marie-Jeanne said.

Her parents were once the guardians of the source, and now that unofficial mantle has fallen on her and husband Jacques.

Barely 60 souls live in the village of Source-Seine in the wooded hills north of Dijon.

By the time the tiny stream has reached the French capital 300km away, it has become a mighty river 200m wide.

But some mornings barely a few damp traces are visible at the source beneath the swirling dragonflies. If you scratch about a bit in the grass, however, a small stream quickly forms.

The source – one of two spots where the river officially starts – bubbles up through the remains of an ancient Gallo-Roman temple built about 2 000 years ago, said Jacques, 73.

But you could easily miss this small outof-the-way valley. There are few signs to direct tourists to the statue of the goddess Sequana, the Celtic deity who gave her name to the river.

In the mid-19th century, Napoleon III had a grotto and cave built “where the source was captured to honour the city of Paris and Sequana,” said Marie-Jeanne.

Her parents moved into a house next to the grotto and its reclining nymph in the early ’50s when she was four years old. Her father Paul Lamarche was later appointed its caretaker and would regularly welcome visitors. A small stone bridge over the Seine while it is still a stream, is named after him. “Like most children in the village in the 1960s,” she learned to swim in a natural pool in the river just downstream from her home.

“It was part of my identity,” said Marie-Jeanne. She retired back to Source-Seine to run a guesthouse because “the Seine is a part of my parents’ legacy”.

The Olympic flame will be carried past the site on 12 July on its way to Paris. The couple will be there to greet it, but as members of the Sources of the Seine Association, they’re worried how long the river will continue to rise near their home.

Every year the grotto has become drier and drier as climate change hits the region, where some of France’s finest Burgundy wines are produced.

“My fear is that the source of the Seine will disappear,” said Marie-Jeanne. “Perhaps the source will be further downstream in a few years.” –

Perhaps source of Seine will be further downstream in a few years