Travelogue

Construire N°20, 15-05-01

The aestheticism of "Toblerones"

From Bassins to Prangins, on the fortified line Promenthouse

When in 1998 individuals had planned to create, along the fortified line of the Promenthouse (the famous "toblerones"), a didactic trail and to convert the army bunkers into museums, we wrote in these columns ( walk published in Build # 15 of April 7, 1998): let us hurry to do the course as is. Implied: before the nature that has taken possession of the place in sixty years it is again violated.

After three years of work, this 15-kilometer trail, which goes from Bassins to Prangins through Vich, the "Villa Rose" (a camouflaged fort in a house that stands guard on the road to Switzerland near Gland) and by the edge of the lake, is completed. All that is missing what is the unavoidable didactic material that will hopefully be the least visible and the most informative possible.

Because for the rest, we were surprised well by browsing the site again. The wild side of the latter has been respected. A passage was laid along the river under the motorway, which avoids the detour through the industrial area of ​​Vich. The field work was carried out with great skill by volunteers, schools of recruits, civil protection, apprentices of an insurance company, municipal services and the Vaudoise Hiking Association. has achieved an irreproachable markup, both precise and discreet.

Originally, the idea of ​​Gérald Berutto, a reservist officer and project soul, was to bring a historical and military testimony to the era of Mobilization. But quickly the project promoter and his team had to see that the site of this line Maginot Helvetic was interesting in many other ways. Nature conservation organizations have discovered that the spaces between large blocks of concrete harbor many animal species that would have been damaged in the event of demolition of these remnants of the Second World War ...

The landscapes, the nature, the forests are of a rare sumptuousness in the first part of the way up to Vich, through the wild valley of Serine. After the highway, the trail alongside a vast country estate with a serenity out of time. As for the line of toblerones, haunting presence and almost uninterrupted, sometimes close to the path or running in the plain, sometimes eaten by ivy and moss or ripoline at the edge of a supermarket, it appears a crazy aestheticism.

A land art work before the letter! Except that we can not repress a shudder by thinking of what we escaped when we know that, from 1941, the crossing of this barrier by the new panzers of the Wehrmacht would have been a breeze ...

Text and photo Jean-Pierre Arn