The Best Day, The Worst Day
I’ve had a bit of a problem for a few days, no guide book, I’d left it at the very nice guest house last week. From a navigation perspective this wasn’t a problem, I’d down loaded all the route maps onto my phone and the path itself is exceptionally well marked and sign posted.
What I didn’t have was anything to give context to the individual days walking and background information. After a few days I solved the problem by picking up a free booklet in a campsite reception; it’s produced annually by the Robert Louis Stevenson Path Association and It’s primarily aim is to promote the path to visitors, provide mutual support for the villages and collate all the accommodation and other services that make a living from the trail. It also has good maps and a lot of details about distances, elevation and the relationships between places.
In this respect it’s a lot better than my English guide, this split the route into 12 stages, it gave the distance between the start and finish points for that stage but nothing in between, it therefore made planning different days rather tricky, which was annoying. The French leaflet on the other hand includes details of the distances between all the villages, offering greater scope for flexibility.
The guide also includes much better information about the elevation of the route and split it into four sections, corresponding to the local Canton/Commune; Velay, Gevaudan, Mont Lozere and Cevennes.
The Stevenson Trail wends its way for about 275km across the Massif Central and although I’ve visited different parts of the Massif at different times I’d never thought about it as a whole. It is huge, Wikipedia states it covers some 15% of France and the part I was walking through was some of the consistently highest land in France.
Le Puy-en-Velay at the start and Florac, my current location are both about 500 meters above sea level; however, between these points the average altitude is somewhere between 900-1100 meters. This means is cooler than you would expect, between five and seven degrees depending on the exact altitude. Which explains why it has been substantially colder at night than I’d expected.
My new guide made it very clear that the next two days, between La Blaymard and Florac were going to be the most challenging of the trip, something my old guide had barely mentioned. I’d thought that after La Bleymard I’d be in limestone country, all high plateau and fine walking, like an exaggerated version of the Yorkshire Dales. The guide indicated otherwise.
Between La Barnard and Florac was the “Traverser Le Mont Lozere et ses chaos granititiques.” Mont Lozere is a huge granite massif, probably as big as Dartmoor. The obvious plan was to split the journey into two days; day one was a steep climb up to the peak of Finiels, 1699 meters (5,574 ft) before dropping down to Pont de Montvert. Day two was going to be a long walk of 30km with two steep climbs, followed by a very long but gentle decent down to Florac.
I was, with some trepidation, looking forward to the challenges; some of the early walking had been rather pastoral, long farm tracks through pretty countryside, but these were going to be real mountain days and I do like a good mountain.
Mount Finels in the distance.
The first day, La Blaymard to Pont-de-Montvert was a real mountain, hard and challenging but with great views and the undeniable feeling of being high on a big hill. It was also undeniably a granite hill.
As I’ve said before the underlying geology determines the character of the walk and walking on granite produces a landscape of big rolling hills dotted with outcrops of bare rock and limited vegetation. Heather and rough grass are the main ground cover and they are pretty stunted on the poor soils, it was a lot like Dartmoor.
The summit of Mt Finiels, cold, windy and no place to hang around.
The descent from the summit was initially over open ground but the path soon entered woodland, initially natural or near natural pines which were stunted by the harsh conditions and were twisted into fantastic shapes and shrouded in moss. In open areas there were a few dwarf daffodils coming into flower, the altitude (about 1600m) means spring is late and the summer short.
Below the old pines were forest plantations and the path went quickly down through them on well graded and thankfully unspoiled tracks.
Finally I emerged from the forest and into the lower valley and Into farmland. There was a change in agriculture to match the change in geology, previously most of the farming had been arable, here, on poorer soils and steep hills it was beef production. An hour or so of farm tracks brought me to Pont-de-Montvert.
Pont-de-Montvert is a lovely village, situated at the bottom of a deep valley, the point in question being a lovely 17th century granite affair crossing the young River Tarn.
That was one of the two big days done, a very enjoyable tramp over a good big hill. I wasn’t looking forward to the next day’s walk, not for the distance but because rain was forecast.
Since leaving Pradelles a week ago I’d enjoyed very good weather, France Meteo said that was about to change.
There had been a few showers overnight and I packed up a wet tent under dark skies that brooked no good.
At first all went well, I managed to get over the first climb under lowering skies with, a strong cold winds pushing a few blustery showers at me. Then at about 10:00 the rain started, proper mountain rain, thick and heavy, wind blown and mixing with hill fog, or the base of the clouds from time to time.
Once that started there isn’t much that can be done, there was no point finding shelter and sitting it out; all that could be done was to plod on through the rain until either it stopped or I got to the end.
One thing that can be done is to work through options and scenarios and decide the best course of action. Here I was lucky, I’d spent a few days on a very nice campsite about 5k outside of Florac, at a hamlet called Bedoues and the path went right past it. Furthermore, I knew it had at least two small hobbit hut style cabins, which they allowed walkers to use.
So the plan became, ‘head down, push on through the rain to Bedoues, then rent a hut for the night. As the hours and miles mounted up and the rain soaked me to the skin, I added a second night to the plan, giving me a rest day and time to dry out and relax.
In the end the huts were all booked, but the warden did offer me “une petit caravan”. I took it, and it’s great. The caravan is quite small, but would sleep 4, it has a toilet, heating and a fully fitted kitchen in a permanent lean to, it’s warm, dry and there’s room to stand up. Total luxury.
The kitchen, added to the static to give more room, great for drying gear.
So snug, warm and dry.
Just the place to relax after a horrible day.
My refuge, this morning after it finally stopped raining.
The rain finally petered out about 24 hours after it stated so I’ve spent my rest day washing clothes and drying all my kit.
Looking ahead, I’m on the last section of the walk with about 50-60 miles to the end, four or five days walking through what should be the limestone plateaus of the Cevennes.