Salt built Salins-les-Bains, and the name gives it away. A salt spring, rich in brine, rises in this narrow valley in the Jura, and people have been boiling it for salt since Roman times or earlier. In the Middle Ages the saltworks were among the largest in the region, and the spring made the town and its lords rich. The Grande Saline, the great saltworks, is now a museum, and together with the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, the neoclassical complex designed by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, it has been listed by UNESCO.
The two sites were linked. Brine was piped from Salins to Arc-et-Senans, about twenty kilometres away, where forest wood was abundant for fuel, and the pipeline was an early feat of engineering. At Salins, you can walk through underground galleries, where the salt water was drawn from deep wells, and see old pumps and great wooden machines. The town sits in a deep valley, with steep slopes of forest, and two forts, Belin and Saint-Andre, built by the military engineer Vauban, stand guard on the hills above.
The riding in the area is wonderful. The Jura is a land of limestone plateaux, deep valleys and green hills, and the roads around Salins wind up and down with good surface and moderate traffic. The Cret de Chalam, a high ridge in the southern Jura, is a longer ride away, but the road up to the villages above Salins gives long views over the valley. Autumn is lovely, with golden beech forests, and in winter snow can close the higher roads.
The town has about three and a half thousand people, with fuel, bakeries, cafes and a thermal spa that uses the same salty water. Jura food is rich and satisfying: Comte cheese, smoked sausages from Morteau, Morbier cheese, and the strange yellow wine called vin jaune, which is aged for years under a film of yeast. Take time to look at the old town hall and the church, and consider a visit to the spa. A long dip in warm brine is a good remedy for a day in the saddle.