Vosges

The Graben is a down-faulted block, meaning the floor of the Rhine valley dropped while the shoulders on either side rose.

The Black Forest is the eastern shoulder of this rift, the Vosges Mountains in France are the western shoulder.

They were once a single highland, a continuous upland surface, and the rift tore them apart, dropping the centre and lifting the edges, and the result is the landscape you see today.

The flat, low-lying Rhine Valley, flanked by two mountain ranges.

They did not know the stone was a billion years old.

because the concept of deep geological time had not yet been invented but they knew the stone was old in the way that all miners know the rock they work in is old by the feel of it by the way it resists the pick by the way it holds its secrets A second mining boom came after the early 1700s, when the loss of Alsace to France cut off access to mines on the western side of the Rhine and drove prospectors deeper into the Black Forest's interior.

The political border that now ran down the Rhine valley was also a geological border, separating the western shoulder of the rift, the Vosges, from the eastern shoulder.

The Black Forest and the miners, who had been working deposits on both sides of the valley, were now confined to one side.

The view of the garden is splendid and a canal three-quarters of a league long which leads straight up to the middle of the castle gives a high idea of the taste and resources of the former possessors.

We rambled up and down there and enjoyed many parts of this beautifully situated hole which lies on the outskirts of the magnificent plain of Alsace at the foot of the Vosges.

After we had enjoyed ourselves at this clerical outpost of a royal power and had made ourselves comfortable in its region, we arrived early next morning at a public work which most nobly opens the entrance into a mighty kingdom.

Illumined by the beams of the rising sun, the famous Savern Stairs, a work of incredible labor rose before us.

Germany is the land by pre-eminence.

Towards the north lies a fruitful plain interspersed with little forests and bounded by a stern row of mountains that stretches itself westward towards Saabair, where the episcopal palace and the abbey of St. John, lying a league beyond it, may be plainly recognised.

Thence the eye follows the more and more vanishing chain of the Vosges towards the south.

If you turn to the north-east you see the castle of Lichtenberg upon a rock, and towards the south-east the eye has the boundless plain of Alsace to scrutinise, which afar off withdraws itself from the sight in the more and more misty landscape, until at last the Swabian mountains melt away like shadows into the horizon.

Where they were to go after they did not know, but they presumed it would be the Somme.

As a matter of fact, the escadrille was to be sent to Luxville in the Vosges to take part in the Mauser raid.

Besides Captain Thenon and Lieutenant Delage de Mieux, our French officers, the following American pilots were in the escadrille at this time.

Lt. Thaw, who had returned to the front even though his wounded arm had not entirely healed, Adjutants Norman Prince, Hall, Loughbury, and Masson, and Sergeants Kiffin, Rockwell, Hill, Pavelka, Johnson, and Rumsey.

It had its own transport service.

Our escadrille had been in Lusail during the months of April and May.

We had made many friends amongst the townspeople and the French pilots stationed there, so the older members of the American unit were welcomed with open arms, and their new comrades made to feel at home in the quaint Vosges town.

It wasn't long, however, before the americans and the british got together at first there was a feeling of reserve on both sides but once acquainted they became fast friends the naval pilots were quite representative of the united kingdom hailing as they did from england canada new south wales south africa and other parts of the empire most of them were soldiers by profession all were officers but they were as democratic as it is possible to be as a result there was a continuous exchange of dinners In a few days, everyone in this Anglo-American alliance was calling each other by some nickname and swearing lifelong friendship.

In particular, some of the faults of the East African rift system are normal faults, a common type of fault created where the crust is moving apart vertically.

On a grand scale, when pairs of faults work together, they produce block or fault-block mountain ranges, like the Vosges in France.

Though faults and fissures, and the volcanic and earthquake activity that comes along with them, haven't prevented humans from living on the edge.

Tectonic clashes in the Great Rift Valley have carried on for tens of millions of years.

Alsace is a big valley floor that runs north to south in about 130, 140 kilometers.

On the French side, on the west, you've got the Vosges Mountains.

They are middle-sized mountains, quite high for some people.

I always tell the people from UK that the tallest mountain of the Vosges is just a few meters taller than the Ben Nevis.

That gives you an idea of the size of the mountains.

They create a very important barrier to whatever comes from the west, which means often winds, rains, and things like that, which makes Alsace, the valley floor, a very dry place.

It dominates the valley floor of Alsace.

And its slopes are orientated from the south to the southeast.

Too late, but I'll come and see you in France." So I went to see him, and we had a jolly time, and of course, sure enough, he did have some wonderful stuff.

And during the course of the visit, his son, um, Bruno said to me, "Look, what do you know about my, my grandfather, Robert de Lesseps, Agent Goodfellow, and the SAS in the Vosges Mountains, Operation Loyton?" And I said, "Well, actually, uh, Bruno, not very much, but it sounds interesting." And then I was thinking, what, how on earth did one of Biffy's men that worked in his headquarters be allowed to be parachuted behind the lines with the SAS? I subsequently discovered actually he'd been to France two or three times for Biffy, and he wasn't an office wallah, he was an agent.

I get back from France, and almost immediately my telephone rings.

A dear old friend of mine who I was in the army with, who said to me, and this is completely unrelated to my visit to France, "Do you remember that my wife's maiden name was Franks?" And I said, "Well, no, actually, Jeremy, I didn't, but I know where this is going because I've just had this very strange [chuckles] meeting in France." And as soon as I got back, I looked up Loyton, Operation Loyton, which was the operation in the Vosges Mountains, and I knew, I knew a little bit about Brian Franks, not very much.

And he said, "Well, the Franks family loved the Biffy book.

Would you consider writing Brian's biography? Because nobody's ever done it." And there I was thinking, well, you know, this was a, to me, a quite a famous SAS commander, but there was no book on him.

He, he got half his regiment under command of Paddy Mayne, sorry, Roy Farran, to break out of the bridgehead in Jeeps and just conduct murder and mayhem along a route across central France with the intention of getting to somewhere called the Belfort Gap, which was the confluence of where the German, two German armies, one from Normandy and one from the South of France, were withdrawing into Germany, in d- into the sort of Rhine Valley and, and back into Germany.

And there were so many Germans there that, that Roy Farran couldn't get through.

After full maturation, the Kentucky straight bourbon is removed from the first barrel and placed into a second new custom French fine grain oak barrel.

The wood for these were sourced from the Tronçay, Allier, Nevers, and Vosges forests.

The wood was air-dried out- outdoors for a minimum, again, 40 months in France-

Nice

Oh, yeah.

Some of the fully matured whiskey was finished in toasted only French oak barrels that were not charred.

This wood was sourced from the Vosges region-