A walk in the Chateauneuf vineyards – la croix de gattigues

On a November 1st holiday, what better idea than to take a stroll through the vineyards. We chose the village of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. This village, known for its wine growing, should also be better known for its landscapes and historical heritage – starting with the château itself, which dominates the village. Built in 1317, the château has an extremely eventful history. Pampered by the Popes during their presence in Avignon, the château was variously sold, abandoned, occupied by the Huguenots during the 16th century wars of religion and then the Germans in the 20th century. It was the latter who, fleeing Provence in 1944, detonated an ammunition depot, leaving the château as it is today (a large standing wall facing south and the exposed interior of the castle keep facing north).

Our tour starts from the parking area at Place de la Renaissance in Châteauneuf (market on Fridays) and winds through the town to the hilltop château. After climbing the steps and circling around the château, we head on along a ridgeline and then downhill through the vineyards to reach the Rhône river plain. Here, after a few kilometers, we arrive at another château, the Château de l’Hers. This château, which could be described as an old “château du Pape”, features a well-constructed keep and a fortress wall still standing on top of a rock right on the banks of the main watercourse of the Rhône. The château was apparently built on an island in the middle of the Rhône but today, its position on the ile de l’Oiselet appears to be right on the left bank of the river. A curious anecdote – the château was an enclave of Languedoc on the left bank of the Rhône in the Middle Ages, but is now well within the Vaucluse departement. The property, now privately owned, was once used to police Rhône river traffic and collect tolls. (How else could one finance oneself in the Middle Ages?)

After a glance over the Rhone embankment – the river is not in flood this day – we walk for a long spell along the left bank of the Rhone’s minor branch, past old lime kilns and then branch off directly to return to our starting point. On this last stretch, there are beautiful views over the village of Châteauneuf, with Mont Ventoux in the background.

If you like wine, you may like it even more after seeing the beautiful vineyard landscapes on this tour, the white limestone soils, the grassy rows of vines, the wild arugula flowering between the rows and all of this under the bluest of blue Provence skies.

Hiking in south central France

This site is about walking, mostly in south central France, specifically the Cévennes “mountain” range, the Grands Causses area with it’s plateaus and canyons, the departments of Gard with the garrigue landscapes, the Vaucluse, the Herault, sometimes the Ardèche, the Avéyron and the Drôme. There are descriptions of interesting walks, but sometimes also the non-interesting ones. There are occasional articles about the hardware and software you might use while hiking and in particular handheld GPS devices and smartphones. There are also references to cartography both in the field and on the computer screen back home. The progress in the area of web mapping in the past several years, with the arrival of services like Google Maps, Nokia Here (now “Here we go”) and the OSM Open source map service, has been spectacular.

However, hiking in this region is more than just walking with eyes focused forward or concentration on the GPS screen. It’s also about observing and understanding the landscapes, villages, farms, ancient ruins and various geological curiosities. Often the subject of interest is not the “what”, but the “why”. Why did people settle here hundreds of years ago? Why did the ancient trade routes pass this spot?

In this region, traces of human activity are everywhere – in the still occupied villages and farms, but also in the undergrowth, on the riverbanks and and on the abandoned hillsides. This site aims to explore these subjects, traveling on foot, at about 3.5 km per hour.

This site is also for people who like maps. There are maps in nearly every article, often with interactive features. Try them out.

For every walk mentioned in an article, the site provides a downloadable gpx file suitable for use on a handheld gps device. The site provides additional access to a database of some 700 circuits also complete with downloadable gpx. It is worth noting however, that a gpx track is a perishable commodity. Over time waymakings change, land owners block walking routes, obstacles appear. For this reason, when available, dates of the most recent passage on the circuits are also provided. Use with care.

Everywhere you go on these hiking routes you are likely to see a field cross. They can be in iron, stone, or wood and can be simple or ornate. These field crosses are supposed to have protected travellers from bandits – as supposedly no bandit would dare attack near a symbol of the all powerful religion.

So the french word “croix” translates to cross and holds the connotation of the cross as a religious symbol. However, in the context of this site, cross means crossroad or intersection. “La Croix de Gattigues” refers to a crossroad in a hamlet in the Gard department at which, no surprise, there is also a fine an iron cross.