Читать книгу Walking in the Cevennes. 31 walks and the Tour of Mont Lozere онлайн

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Sandwiched between the upland regions of Mont Aigoual to the south and Mont Lozère to the north is the isolated small town of Florac. At the confluence of three valleys on the northern edge of the Cevennes National Park and the entrance to the famous Gorges du Tarn, it is dominated by the rocky crags of the Rocher du Rochefort, the edge of the Causse Méjean to the west; north is the Mont Lozère, with the larger town of Mende beyond. To the southeast is the scenic Cevennes ridge (Corniche des Cevennes). The D106 winds through the Mimente valley (Walk 30) linking Florac with the large town of Alès to the southeast, but it takes at least an hour to get there!

The pink rocky walls of this valley especially impressed Robert Louis Stevenson – he said that‘steep rocky red mountains overhung the stream’, but he couldn’t find a spot to tie up his donkey because the valley was so narrow. Apart from the road it has not changed!

Chapel St Cyprien (Walk 8)

Formerly under the sovereignty of the Bishop of Mende, Florac was constantly revolting under the yoke of its oppressors and then, in the 16th century, it became one of the centres of the conversion to Calvinism (see‘A Short History of the Cevennes’). Now it serves as the administrative centre of a large rural region and also lives off tourism.