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Walking the Stevenson Trail, which takes around five days (though it took Stevenson longer), is still very popular, and on some walks in this book (Walk 31 and the Tour of Mont Lozère) you will see signposting indicating that you are on the Sentier Stevenson.

Cevenese Life

The Bible, the tree of bread and the tree of gold: these were the three mainstays of Cevenese life – the Bible their source of culture, the chestnut tree their source of food and the mulberry tree fed the silkworms providing economic stability. Through these three resources the Cevennes people emerged from obscurity in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Chestnut Industry

The origins of the chestnut tree forests are obscure but could date from the Iron Age, when the religious orders penetrated the region and began to clear the land and create the farms and villages that remain today. Chestnut trees were never part of the natural vegetation of the Cevennes, which was mainly oak, green oak and beech, but were planted on the slopes between 300m and 900m. In order to prosper the trees required constant maintenance, as they hate the cold and fog, needing a deep, rich soil with long periods of sunshine to ripen the nuts; they also need constant pruning, thinning out and manuring (they particularly like iron deposits) – all time-consuming and manpower-intensive activities. Indeed the Cevennes population could not cope alone, and itinerant workers came every year from surrounding regions to help with the chestnut harvest, and special markets were held to recruit these labourers (see Walk 29).