The Cevenne is a wonderful place to visit but it can darken the soul when the land is covered in dense spreading conifers and heavy chestnut trees. The shade & the shadows hide & create monsters & ghouls to pick at your imagination. The sun fails to penetrate the foliage and gnomesteads remain undiscovered and ancient villages suck in visitors to gape at empty windows & dusty doorways. Any sign of human life own here tends to be on the topside of 60, leaving younger years to a few straggling tourists who forget that the visiting season ends with the start of September.
Saint-Guileme-le-Desert is a popular tourist watering hole on the edge of the Herault region with all the required elements for a gnomevillage – narrow, cobbled streets,
an ancient Abbey on the Pilgrim Route (you know all about that from previous blogs!)
evidence of high hill forts from early times with testing trails that provide a challenge to modern traiblazing athletes.
At the end of a hairpin lane, it tempts families up for a few hours. Never crammed, the limited sized carpark sees to that, the visitors spread them selves through the narrow lanes & burrows and then leave the ancients to their own haven. It would be interesting to know how many folk actually live here today. The answer may well be in double figures – a proper ghost town!
A circular route takes us into the high country. Narrow roads, so well maintained & surfaced clawed across the landscape to the far, faint horizon. Mixed woodland, girding its loins to begin the change from green to brown to bare, covers straight ridge lines and sharp-sided valleys across the spreading landscape in subtle shades and interlace their fingers like a congregation of parishioners about to settle into prayer.
The weather drops a very wet load on this land, particularly in winter when the snow & ice melt. Streams & rivers have cut & hacked away at the land over the years leaving evidence of the power at work in the form of gushing torrents, sharp ridge lines or bottomless ravines. Man does the best to cope with such obstacles, building bridges & settlements at suitable places in an attempt to tame it.
Villages are small and ancient; old lanes & trails, designed for another age when feet and the cart were the main form of transport, hug the valley sides or crawl to the top to peer over to follow the chicanes down to the distant settlement far down at the next crossing over a tumbling water course. In places, the old tracks can be seen cutting a bend or smooth modern tarmac has been layed over the ancient route, providing a wonderful course for speeding motorbikes. Settlements can be too small to even mention – a handful of houses clustered around a small church & maybe a graveyard, but some grew to be essential to folk of the time – around here it was to provide sanctuary and respite to those passing on the Pilgrim’s Trail.
St-Gervais-sur-Mare is a stunning little village that grew up in the 13th-century as a staging post on the route to Spain.
A largish village, it is dominated by the nave of the church of Saint-Gervai-Saint-Protais. Wide, ancient steps lead up past the arched doorway and historic dwellings to the ramparts & the château.
Peeking inside the historic church, an old lady follows us in and points out in local, incomprehensible French a side chapel containing a font made from the same marble as used in Versailles by French kings (I think!). She turns out to be the organist – having left through the front door, she appears up on the organ loft & proceeds to give a private rendition of some wonderfully poignant piece that echoes around this empty space, leaving emotions exposed and senses shredded.
The high spot of this place is the village square. stands on above a small river that runs through the middle of the settlement.
If any place is quintessentially French, it is here.
Elegant buildings form 3 sides, with the Post Office, two bars & a hotel tucked into one corner & at the other corner of the same side a second bar;
empty tables with rather ornate chairs, cushions piled up under cover, await ’the rush’ (although, I’m not sure there’s going to be one any time soon)
a war memorial reminds everyone of the nation’s past; shade is provided by staggered plane trees – high & impervious to sunshine & showers.
To complete the scene an old couple come out for a game of petanque, chatting away and traversing across the crunching stones between camouflaged trunks, clunking their boules as they go…. all so French!
Herepian Is the neighbouring village to Villemagne l’Argentier and it’s the main centre for food, bars, petrol etc. The drive south west from Herepian takes you on smooth, gently winding roads straight into this wonderful calming landscape of layers of sharpened ridges & scraggy outcrops covered in bubbling mixed woodlands & forests of cherry & hornbeam & chestnut alongside pine & cypress. Streams & rivers have cut their course deep into the landscape creating rocked ravines & razored gorges. Evidence of human habitation is left to the occasional ruin amongst the trees or the occasional small settlement that clusters around a crossing point over a steep valley bottomed by water of some sort – a stream or something a bit more substantial. Usually this takes the form of an old, arched, stone bridge which contributes to the general air of medieval living in these closed, tight, squeezed collections of cobbled lanes & stoned buildings.
I must not forget to add into the mix the fields of vines that squeeze onto any flattish land beside the road and the rows of ancient olive trees. Especially at this time of year as leaves are lightening & beginning to start their autumn tan. It is the time to get the harvest in and the roads are full of small trailered tractors, tonka type mini trucks, that fit neatly down the rows of straight-edged grapes, clogging the route to the local cooperative’s vats & casks.
Many state that Olargues is one of the prettiest villages in France. I’m not sure about that. From a distance it certainly looks pretty. Yet, inside the walls, it’s narrow passages & lanes inhibit vehicular traffic and it’s ancient buildings ooze history and passing time and seem to have sucked the life out of the place.
It feels a bit like a ghost town – there is little evidence of human habitation or even touristy visitors (at this time of year, anyway). Maybe it has more life when the sun shines!
St-Pons-de-Thomieres is further down the road and another village on the route to Spain. The church, which gives the place its name, is huge and must have provided relief & strength to those on the journey.
Pezanas deserves a mention on its own.
This picturesque town has a rich history & culture dating from Renaissance times. A fair has been held here since the Middle Ages. Wander its cobbled streets to discover private mansions and museums & galleries, all sprinkled with generous doses of artists & craftsmens’ street stalls and small independent shops selling good quality art, clothes & crafts.
It seems like ages since I last blogged on my travels and even longer since I visited ‘La belle’ France. This autumn trip takes me from the Cevennes on the south east area of the Central Massif, across the Rhone to just north of Toulon to a market town called Lourges and then north to friends near Manosque – all excellent wine growing areas you will notice!
My love affair with France goes back decades but I was introduced to The Cevennes by my dear friends, the family Friends, who completely by accident, had discovered Barjac when they broke down on the autoroute and they had to have it towed to a campsite outside the town where it still remains, drawing families & friends for memorable holidays ever since. I have countless memories of my girls & pals splashing & swishing about in The Gold River & the streams & lakes in the dry Provencal landscape, canoeing down the Ardeche or the Ceze and meandering drives through the Provencal landscape for a night visit to Avignon or a day treat to Saint-Remy-du-Provence, all indelibly ingrained into my very being.
Back at the hacienda, after food had been consumed the Cote du Rhone continued to flow and we would lie back and stargaze & count the numbers of shooting stars on show each night, absorbing the aroma of wild oregano & rosemary and the wafting lavender fields that were grazed by the breeze and sifted over our receptive senses in a constant perfume. In the darkness the clear outline of the distant Cevennes could be always picked out against the glories of the spinning stars. During the day these layered, straining landscapes provided a constant backdrop to everything that we did, offering the possibility of adventure and excitement, but always too far away – until today, that is!
This trip starts on the edge of the Cevennes National Park just outside the small village of Villemagne l’Argentier in the Languedoc region of France about 30 km north of Bezier.
Established on the banks of the Mare River in medieval times, this ‘Abbey city’ lay on the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela & provided rest & refreshment to pilgrims on their way to Spain. Three buildings are listed and still standing & in use – the 11th century Church of St Gregoire,
the 14th century Saint Majan Abbey
and the 13th-century Hotel des Monnaies, now used as the Town Hall.
Over the centuries the Abbey has been the main force in the village and across the surrounding landscape. Wandering around the narrow lanes of 13th-century buildings little has changed since those early days – the only thing to suggest that times have moved on is the shiny gleam of modern vehicles parked outside cold, ancient facades.
A five minute walk across the river on the old, red-rusting bridge and up the lane into the hills, amongst the steep hillside of trees & shrubs lies our home for the week – a great base from which to explore the Haut Aquitaine region in general and the Cevennes in particular.
My Travel Adventures 
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