Walking Cevennes' Blue Waves
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Walking in Cevennes offers a special experience for Francophiles who enjoy walking: a fascinating journey from megalithic to modern times, demonstrating man’s capacity to innovate, destroy and yet survive. See our walking Cevennes programmes: The Cévennes is located in south-central France. Whilst in an administrative sense they do not constitute a region, to all intents and purposes they possess a singular identity. Thus the ‘La Cevenne’ reference in the works of its most famed writer, Jean-Pierre Chabrol.   Few locations for hiking in France offer the beauty or variety of walking in Cevennes, ranging from granite tors to deeply incised river valleys and some of Europe's most dramatic limestone gorges and caves. The latent geologist inside us all will delight in walking the granites of the Mont Lozere massif, the limestones of the Causse Mejan and Sauveterre, and the metamorphic schists and slatestone around Mont Aigoual and in the Cevenol valleys. The Cévennes’ highest peak, Mont Lozère (1702 metres), lies on the path affectionately referred to as The Stevenson Trail, AKA the long-distance walking route GR 70, which stretches from Le Puy en Velay in Haute-Loire to St Jean du Gard in Le Gard. In his book, “Travels with a donkey in the Cevennes,” a much-lauded and ground-breaking work of the travelogue genre, Robert Louis Stevenson referred to the Cevennes as “that undecipherable labyrinth of hills.” On Mont Lozere he noted that, “in clear weather [it]commands a view over all lower Languedoc to the Mediterranean Sea.”  Another peak of repute is Mont Aigoual (elevation 1567 metres or 5141 feet), lying to the north of Le Vigan and reachable from Vallerauge by the “trek of 4000 steps”. It boasts a relative height vis-à-vis the surrounding uplands of 730 metres, making it particularly prominent as a continual point of reference to hikers as they climb and descend the myriad hills en route to its eagle-nest-of-an- observatory, the last remaining inhabited weather station in France. Mont Aigoual forms part of the watershed between the Mediterranean and Atlantic, where rainfall can measure up to 2250 mm (over 7 feet), making it the wettest place in France. For those who brave the wind and the rain, as many hikers do, the views are spectacular. The valleys of the Loire and the Allier flow out westwards from The Cévennes towards the Atlantic Ocean, whilst the Ardèche, Chassezac and Cèze rivers flow eastwards and south-eastwards towards Provence, leaving spectacular gorges en route, cut deep into the limestone base. One particularly exciting way to enjoy such splendours of physical geography is by walking the lower section of the ‘Royal Route’ that traverses France from l'Ile de France to Lower Languedoc. Better known locally as the Regordane Way, this major thoroughfare of the Middle Ages is still largely walkable, and at its very best between the Chassezac Gorge, in and around the Medieval village of La Garde-Guerin, and the River Cèze, with its source just to the south of Lake Villefort. This really is the stuff of walking tours in France. The various Gardon rivers flow through the south-eastern section of the Cévennes and onwards into the Rhône, Vidourle, Hérault and Dourbie rivers en route to the Mediterranean. They are intermittently wild by nature, but thankfully only cause major flooding around once a decade. Discover these rivers whilst walking and hiking in and around Alès, Mialet and St Jean du Gard; perhaps retracing the steps of the Huguenot Protestants persecuted by Louis XIV’s excesses during the Camisard War of 1702. We become avid historians as we go trekking in France's hilltop paths in the footsteps of Huguenots chiefs, or budding geologists as we search limestone grottos for the vestiges of Protestant congregations at secret prayer or imprisoned by the King’s overzealous Black Dragoons. Fortunately, the Catholic locals are much more welcoming to Protestants nowadays!  The Cévennes has a national park, the Parc National des Cévennes, created in 1970 and one of only two parks in France that harbours ‘homo economicus.’ With people both living and making their living inside the park, this UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve has strict controls on the use of chemicals in farming, resulting in a phenomenal diversity of wild flowers and insects. Thus the human endeavours of tourism and agriculture are continually juxtaposed with the pressure to conserve landscape, habitats and species. Those interested in Human Geography will walk through myriad tiny village and hamlet, most of which have seen better economic days, and lived through the boom and bust years of various cycles of capitalism since the start of the Industrial Revolution – the rise and fall of chestnut tree harvesting, silk spinning, coal mining and wine growing are writ large in the terraced slopes of this harsh countryside, which is only now coming to terms with its massive rural depopulation. The Cevennes, traditional refuge to all manner of persecuted minority, is undergoing the slow process of re-population, albeit from a very low base. For the animal lover, you may witness the fruits of the reintroduction of capercaille and vultures, the wheeling of short-toed eagles overhead, or visit captive breeding programmes for European bison and Przewalskis horses. The only dangerous wild animal you are likely to encounter is a wild boar, although they are unlikely to chase you as they scurry to safety from the orange-capped huntsmen and their beagles that stalk them during ‘the season.’ Reintroduced deer and red fox are the other species of note, although you are far more likely to see small lizards, Praying Mantis and noisy crickets.  Botanists walking Cevennes will not be disappointed. Chestnut, green oak and pine are plentiful, although the strawberry tree is my favourite, in flower and fruit in Autumn. The heather and ‘Maquis’ which abound in the passes and on the open plains will bring tears to the toughest Scot, whilst chestnuts (the bread tree), figs and mushrooms (pick with caution) will have you striding to the restaurant at the end of another exhilarating day’s hill-walking. Finally, for those interested in walking Cevennes for architectural reasons, and at the level of the homestead, the Cévennes is a master class of how man has adapted to the riggers of nature and prevailed in a harsh environment. In hostile milieu, man learned to construct buildings out of local materials alone, and the three types of rock available in the Cévennes, limestone, schist and granite, have determined construction materials and given each geological bedrock its human characteristics. In the slate stone Cévennes, it is said that buildings grow out of the hillside instead of being constructed from human design. Most homesteads or ‘mas’ are built halfway up a slope and, where possible, just beneath a spring. As for the surrounding architecture, it takes the form of walled dry-stone terraces (full of fertile earth by man from nearby river-bed); ‘clèdes’ or chestnut drying houses, plus a chestnut orchard; a higher-lying area for goat and sheep grazing; walled paths connecting farm and hamlet buildings, designed to keep livestock out of cultivated land; the characteristic knurled mulberry tree for feeding silkworms; trellis-work for the ‘illegal’ hybrid grapes such as the ‘clinton’, ‘jacquet’, or ‘baco’; and the nearby Protestant tombs, often with a cypress tree symbolising the flame of eternity. Return to our Articles page. © Walking in Languedoc 2007
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