The Châtillonnais sits at the northern tip of the Parc National de Forêts, France's newest national park, and the countryside here is quietly magnificent. Rolling limestone plateaux, deep river valleys, and one of the largest ancient beech and oak forests in France — the Forêt de Châtillon — spread across tens of thousands of hectares right on the doorstep.

AIn town, the Source de la Douix is the perfect introduction to the area's relationship with water — a serene spring emerging from the limestone, feeding the shortest river in France before it joins the Seine just metres away. Follow the river upstream and the landscape opens out into wide, quiet meadows where the only sound is the wind in the willows.

This is a part of Burgundy that rewards slow travel: unhurried walks, picnics in clearings, and the particular satisfaction of a landscape that feels genuinely untouched.