Day 8: Le Bleymard – Le-Pont-de-Montvert

The queen stage and the land of the camisards

83 km to go – 34,449 steps taken (26 km, including 19 km on the GR 70) 

609 m up, 814 m down

Le Bleymard (1069 m) – Col Santel (1200 m) – Pic de Finiels (1699 m) – Pont de Montvert (875 m)

After a few warm-ups, today was the day. We were off to the literal peak of the GR 70. The Pic de Finiels, the summit of Mont Lozère, is 1699 metres. Shame about that one metre. The whole trip you see the pictures, but you know from experience that you can never really know what it is and how it feels and what the view will be like. Until you finally walk up to it and actually stand there. And that took some doing, although, like most ‘climbing’ here, it wasn’t too bad.

To the peak of the GR 70

As is often the case on this Chemin de Stevenson, the first col of the day, the Col Santel, passed fairly silently. You do have an arrow to it, but when exactly you reached it is occasionally a mystery. The col itself is surrounded by trees and you then have a good 400 extra altitude metres to cover, albeit at a comfortable 7 kilometres. There’s no 360-degree panorama and you don’t start descending back right away.

After a short but steep climb to get out of the village, you take an open road through the hilly countryside. So this brings you into the forest that takes you to the first col. The first stretch was the trickiest, but once out of the forest, at the moment when the spruce trees gave way to the timid heather bushes, the gradient also became a bit gentler and you could actually take a breather.

The way up, in an open landscape, is first indicated by the ski lift route. You follow the wires to the top. It becomes even harder to imagine how different the landscape and atmosphere must be in winter when passing the chalet and ancillary entertainment complex. At 1700 metres, the Pic de Finiels and associated slopes are popular for winter sports of all kinds. But with temperatures near 30 degrees, and even higher later in the day, that is an abstract fact.

After passing the ski lift and the chalet, our directions were taken over by the so-called montjoies. They resemble monoliths or menhirs and serve to help us find our way in all weathers. The female half of the German couple, with whom we were hiking mont-jojo all the time, briefly thought we were dealing with a prehistoric spectacle, but it was quickly disproved by her husband.

There were warnings of fog beforehand, though, and a few days earlier it looked like we would be in for a thunderstorm. I had even fully informed myself about what to do and what not to do if you suddenly found yourself in a thunder and lightning spectacle on an open plain. But everything was and fortunately remained bright, radiant and blue enough that the colour palette of yellows, greens, reds and purples on the ground stood out even more.

After turning right and climbing a good 500 metres, we were on the roof of GR 70 and Mont Lozère, with vistas. We could see our already covered route and the places still to come. What an open sensation after the covered, sheltered and sometimes claustrophobic passages through the forests that had been so numerous in the previous days. The only problem was that even with visual explanatory panels, it was not clear to me what was where. It’s a kind of Where’s Wally I’m clearly not good at.

Death by saucisson

Of course, after so much ascent comes a pack of descents. This happens first through the same beautiful moorland landscape and gradually with more and more trees, until the path is again completely surrounded by greenery and the section passes pointy rocks. We chose to continue until the village of Finièls.

The path got wider and wider and the sun began to burn brighter, while locusts once again enthusiastically jumped against our legs. The heat really became palpable when we left the forest and entered a dry, uncovered landscape with mountains in front, beside and behind us. Finièls is a small village in the middle of the Cévennes Natural Park.

There, a good soul has pieced together a fantastic bench and the public toilet is managed by the modest number of residents. Someone has even made his or her front porch available for weary walkers, with shade, a table and some chairs. It’s something different from houses with fences and hedges for a change.

During this break, we enjoyed saucisson de Lozère for the first time, a dry sausage that stands up to the heat perfectly. It was tasty but not without risk. Just when a stoat jumped out of the bushes, I almost choked on a piece of sausage. In my coughing, the poor beast ran away faster than its shadow. Fortunately, I was able to chew out the almost fatal lump.

Through the chaos to the bridge

After the virtuous interlude, we still had 5.4 kilometres to cover to Le-Pont-de-Montvert, the day’s final destination. That first proceeded along a wide path among the chaos, granite boulders that veer between huge and gigantic. It’s an impressive sight, with the mountains in the background too.

Every time you took the time to pause and look around, the feeling of not being there increased. After passing by a house with a warning sign for bees, it was another good two kilometres, along a narrow path that soon became a narrow and treacherous downhill trail, a real challenge, given the hits the fatigue.

The war of the camisards

Not much later we arrived in Le Pont-de-Montvert, once the village where the revolt of the camisards began. After Protestants lost their protected status in France, a real persecution began. A lot of them left the country. In the Cevennes too, the persecution of the Protestants was a given, even to the extent that they had to hold their celebrations in the mountains and caves.

But at one point, in 1702, they decided that enough was enough and turned against the sadistic Abbé du Chayla at Le-Pont-de-Montvert. He was killed by 52 men and, it seems, as many stabbings. It was the beginning of the war of the camisards. This history was also a major reason why the Protestant Scot Robert Louis Stevenson had migrated to these areas.

Today it is mainly a cosy place where the houses are built along three streams of water, the Tarn, the Rieumalet and the Martinet. After an uplifting drink, admiring the alleys and the famous little bridge, with tower, we sat down at the waterfront for a while to enjoy, write and draw, while the people around us enjoyed the sun and the refreshing water.

(Un)fun crowd

Then we headed to our accommodation for the night, the Auberge des Cévennes. After showering and before dinner, we wandered around this village with its many streets and level differences. Two things stood out. First, there was a harmonious blending of the two religions that once literally clashed. Although each at one end of the village, there is a Catholic église and a Protestant temple. One was austere, the other even more austere, rebuilt after the original church was destroyed in revenge for the murder of Abbé du Chayla.

What was more startling was the chaotic traffic situation. The main street, where we also enjoyed our uplifting soft drinks, was the battleground between cars of all sizes trying to make their way along both sides while pedestrians occasionally had to jump aside. On the famous bridge, it was even worse if possible. One wonders if the sense unique is an unheard-of concept in the Cévennes.

Dinner

Dinner was convivial. For the first time, there were children. Le Pont-de-Montvert clearly has an attraction beyond the Chemin de Stevenson. Also for the first time, there were fries. Homemade and fried in duck fat. Delicious! The menu consisted of soup, roast beef with fries, cheese and chocolate mousse

The accommodation

An annex to the auberge itself. Decent room. The toilet is admittedly a very cramped space. One cannot always hope for a La Remise, but there was certainly nothing to complain about.

Day 7: Chasseradès – Le Bleymard

Stalking insects and stubborn donkeys

102 km to go – 29,690 steps taken (23 km, including 18 km on GR 70) 

537 m up, 638 m down

Chasseradès (1165 m) – Goulet (1415 m) – Les Alpiers (1186 m ) – Le Bleymard (1069 m)

The villages become more and more French-sounding and on this stage the landscapes really begin to hint at the impending mountains. For now, however, it is still mostly peeking through the trees, until almost the end. Nevertheless, we would break another altitude record on the 7th day on the GR, this time to 1415 metres. It could have been even higher, but more on that below.

A high bridge and a high summit

Before we could start our steady climb (and descent) towards the Goulet, another highlight of the GR 70 awaited us. Earlier we saw a railway viaduct in Arquejol, but this one at Mirandol was really impressive. Just a few hundred metres after we left Chasseradès, we saw the impressive structure emerge. Over 120 metres long and 30 metres high, it traverses the small village with its winding, descending streets.

The GR first gives a top view and then, as we descend towards Mirandol, you walk below it. Only then do you experience the height and especially the intertwining of viaduct and village. What man can do can sometimes be as impressive as what nature can do. And man literally bridging nature is very special in this case.

The railway line would continue alongside us for a while, until we quietly left the open landscape and headed towards the forest. There, a considerable climb awaited us, fortunately with plenty of shade. Once we arrived on the plateau of the Goulet, a minor anti-climax followed. The GR de pays towards the summit must have eluded us, and so we were left with the open space that seemed to partly function as a car park.

A ghost village and stalkers in the forest

On this day, after breakfast, there was virtually nobody to be seen, except for one villager. Only on our arrival in Les Alpiers and Le Bleymard did we see fellow human beings again. This was also the case in the forest we had to cross in the next passage. In fact, it was so calm there that we visited a literal ghost village. Serreméjan was once a small hamlet, but changing economic activity had doomed this kind of remote, rudimentary collection of houses. Depopulation in this region is indeed a problem, but I have a small suspicion that Serreméjan’s former and last inhabitants had a point.

Because although we did not encounter a human being, we did have company. Only it was rather unwelcome. In the passage after the ghost village, and especially when descending after an instagram-worthy pile of tree trunks, we were chased by a swarm of flies. We had about 40 each around us that gave a buzzing concert around our heads. And once out of the forest, and onto the open road, there were locusts jumping manically in all directions, with their red-, blue- or grey-coloured wings. Occasionally, one also jumped in our direction, against body and legs. But it was preferable to the stalkerish behaviour of the flies.

The forest had one last surprise. As the landscape began to reveal itself more and more, there was a little side trip to the source of the Lot. The Lot flows for 489 km, before flowing into the Garonne at Aiguillon. Here, however, it is a small puddle, which will be crossed a little more extensively later, at Les Alpiers. The young Lot accompanied us on our way to the village of the same name, while the mountains of the Lozère got closer and closer.

View of the mountains

So before we reach our final destination, we first arrive in Les Alpiers, just under 2 kilometres from Le Bleymard. This hamlet has a whole bunch of holiday homes. We were welcomed by a couple of chickens and the aforementioned locusts. We decided to have a frangipane here, near an old and eroded cross. And then followed a final descent.

During that descent, we sadly see that man and nature go together in variable ways, walking gloomily through the cleared forest that must once have adorned the slope. Le Bleymard itself is a pleasant village and its Carrefour Express is a Valhalla after the often overpriced local shops of the past few days.

On the picnic bench located a few metres from the entrance, I made small talk with a fellow hiker from Dijon, who was clearly not a fan of sunscreen. Where the young women in Cheylard still thought Sara and I were Germans, this man thought I was Canadian. My French was clearly not yet accent-free, but I was making progress. His stage would take him even further into the Lozère, however. On the other side of the bench, an Italian woman in cycling outfit sat sighing over her map, thoughtfully eating from a dry sausage. At least she inspired us to swap the melting goat’s cheese for the famous local saussicon the next day.

We continued on to the cosy village centre for a while, where at the little church we made a drawing together of the local town hall. Shortly before, we had met a few people who still wanted to hike to Mont Lozère. It was a bizarre German couple with a donkey. She spoke persistent German to Sara, even though she made it clear several times that she did not know the language. And he ignored my correct directions to get to the Lozère via the GR.

The accommodation

After the brief exploration of the village and a break at the Carrefour, we headed towards La Remise, where our hotel room almost made us explode with pleasure. La Grande Halte was clearly several stopovers away and La Remise seemed like it might be the perfect stop. This was only confirmed by the wonderful shower and, later, the amazing restaurant experience.

The food

A salad with some sort of cheese sandwich. Stew with rice. The obligatory cheese platter. And to finish, a pear chocolate crumble. The food was delicious and we drank a wine from the Cévennes. It was admittedly a special treat, given our unfortunate experience the day before, that two people near us ordered quail. The first, a woman in her fifties, also seemed to know very little about it. But the second, a boy of around10 (?)(!) was clearly a pro. Learned young is done old.

Day 6: La Bastide-Puylaurent – Chasseradès

Monasteries and log cabins

120 km to go – 27,430 steps taken (21 km, including 11 km on GR 70) 

381 m up, 235 m down

La Bastide-Puylaurent (1016 m) – La Mourade (1308 m) – Chasseradès (1165 m)

Notre Dame des Neiges

La Grande Halte scored points at breakfast. Besides the usual suspects (hard white bread, 1 croissant, a little yoghurt, coffee, jam and fruit juice), there was also ham and cheese. Under normal circumstances, this would be no more than obvious toppings, but the past few days taught me that breakfast was not a given here. And so I enjoyed the cured ham, knowing that it would probably prove to be the exception to the rule.

Because of the short stage, a good 12 kilometres, we opted to walk at a comfortable pace to Notre Dame des Neiges. This monastery occupies a prominent place in Walking with a Donkey in the Cévennes. Stevenson, a staunch Protestant, was initially reluctant to head towards this monastery, but was warmly welcomed there. Nevertheless, he went with a heavy heart:

I have rarely approached anything with more unaffected terror than the monastery of our Lady of the Snows… fear took hold of me from head to foot.

He was met on arrival by Brother Apollinaris, and although the Trappist monastery was normally shrouded in silence, the brothers were allowed by circumstance to converse during dinner. In addition, he was given another tour by Irish dean Michael O’Callaghan, among others.

Much has changed since Robert Louis Stevenson’s visit. The monastery burned down in 1912 and was completely rebuilt. In addition, the way of life, and perhaps the pure spirit, within the monastery has also changed. The monks are no longer bound to silence. And there is not much of a warm welcome anymore either, although our original attitude was undoubtedly more positive as Stevenson’s.

There was not much sign of hospitality. There was a vague film and, above all, a lot of focus on the boutique, where products such as wine, beer and books could be found at not too competitive prices. But it wasn’t all bad either. The barrels in which the local wine is kept were impressive and the local artwork, where an artist had collected sand from the banks of the Loire, including its tributaries, was also quite fascinating. And of course, what we came for, the scenery was beautiful. And that would only improve.

To the first summit

From the monastery, we returned to La Bastide, where we enjoyed the good weather and a sour apple on a bench for a while. Today the trek would take a good three hours and the weather conditions were also a lot more favourable. Today we would do a small climb that would take us to the highest point yet, La Mourade. The white, sandy path led us through a beautiful, rolling landscape of green hills, where the views were ever increasing. It was the ideal spot for a picnic, with tasty but rapidly melting goat’s cheese due to the sun.

Unfortunately, the first summit worthy of the name was a bit of an anticlimax. For our GPS situated it in a place to which we had no access partly because of the trees and partly because of technological advances. Indeed, a resembling of windmills had been built here, so access was closed with prohibition signs and fences. So we had no choice but to let our first summit pass us by and enjoy the (batting) shade.

Yesterday it was the crackle of high voltage that accompanied us Twin Peaks-wise, today it was the hum of windmills, like a huge buzzing sound above our heads. The wanderer might worry about having his or her nature experience ruined, but Stevenson also witnessed the extension of the railway network across the landscape. In terms of aesthetics, the winged giants had something, for a while admittedly.

Descending to Chasseradès

From there it was just downhill through wooded terrain with occasional views of the equally wooded hills in the distance. We descended to Chabalîer, a small hamlet where we were met by the effigies of a wooden Modestine and a strange-looking scarecrow showing us the way. That road leads to the young Allier, a river that at that point is still little more than a self-sufficient stream.

Not much later, we arrived in Chasseradès. The first impression was North American, with conifers and big log cabins. Then followed for a kilometre the big nothing. We followed a lane, but came across little to no people and certainly no houses. Eventually we saw our hotel, where the benches were occupied by some families and cyclists. So we walked on to the 12th-century church, where it was a lovely rest after a quiet, pleasant day of walking.

Farewell and quail torture

This little church was a good opportunity to bring out the better (and not so good) drawing. Here we also said goodbye to the couple from Provence, whom we had met at the ill-fated first table commune and got to know better at the second group meal. After that, we had spoken a few more times along the way. Chasseradès was their final stop. It was nice that our paths had crossed. And again, I was happy that I did get to do the whole walk. The shorter stage meant that we might not see certain familiar faces again and discover other companions. The hiking company was as changeable as the landscape.

But the shorter leg also allowed us to take time to rest and enjoy ourselves. We did so with a book and appropriate drinks. I opted for La Stevenson, a local blonde beer. Today was also literally a transition stage. We were between the green forests of the Gévaudan and the peaks of the Lozère, the roof of our journey. Today we went up to 1,300 metres. Tomorrow we would go to 1,400. And the day after that followed the mother mountain, the Pic de Finiels. But that was for later. Now it was mainly enjoying the local beer, the sun and the view of the green hills.

Probably the biggest adventure took place during dinner. We actually got 5 courses instead of the usual 4. First a delicious cream soup, then a pâté and then… quail. Neither Sara nor I had ever eaten quail before. Consequently, we were unsure how to tackle the poultry. I opted to carefully scrape everything off, Sara chopped up the beast. Turns out you have to break these things down, nibble and suck. Fortunately, the beast couldn’t die twice.

This was followed by the usual platter of cheese and red fruits with ice cream. The question then arose whether we had not been given the wrong menu, as most people around us were given a pasta dish. It was therefore tense whether we were not literally presented with the bill the next day.

The accommodation

Hotel de Sources is well located, cosy and neat. A nice stay without too many frills.

The food

See above.