laredac – Page 11 – la croix de gattigues

February 17, 2017February 19, 2017

GPS trackers and altitude

All hikes start from the iron cross of Gattigues

Any attempt to get a good fix on cumulative climbing using GPS devices (handhelds, or smartphones) is fraught with error. Anyone who has used these GPS tracking devices knows that, while longitude and latitude are quite accurate, the altitude measurements at any given point vary from accurate to completely off the mark. GPS chip quality, embedded software and various external factors affect these readings. Walking at the base of a steep limestone cliff will cut out half of the sky and half of the satellite readings. Walking through a wet forest under wet leafy trees degrades the signals too. And there might be times when military services move the geopositioned satellites to serve a military purpose thereby degrading consumer level accuracy. So in this article, I compare a couple different apps to the Garmin GPSMap 64s to see if there are any conclusions. Continue reading

February 16, 2017October 31, 2021

Crossing the Nesque gorge

Hiking distance : 13 km ; Hiking time : 05:00

good spot for lunch, Rocher du Cire and snowy Mount Ventoux

Over the past 3 years, I drove the Nesque Gorge highway a couple times. It’s a spectacular route about 2/3 of the way up the canyon wall sometimes perched on a ledge and sometimes passing through cliff wall tunnels. With few places to stop, there is little chance to appreciate the scenery while driving. Continue reading “Crossing the Nesque gorge”

February 16, 2017July 18, 2017

Hiking in Lozere

I came across this little book while in Mende in the summer of 2016. The bookstore owner told me he knows one of the authors, who has apparently lived all his life in the Lozere and spent lots of time on the hiking trails. These authors provide their selection of the prettiest one day hikes in the Lozere department.

So with our hiking club we decided to try a few of them out. There are several hikes in the Florac area, on Mount Lozere, and in the Tarn Gorges. These hikes are close enough to the iron cross in Gattigues that we could get there and back in a day including hiking time. The hike from St Enimie along the Tarn Gorges to a spot above St-Chely-du-Tarn is spectacular, as was the hike to the top of the Puecheral, described elsewhere on this site. The hike around the Eschino d’Aze and the 2 Bondon hillocks (as pictured on the cover of the book to the left) is also outstanding. Continue reading “Hiking in Lozere”

February 16, 2017February 19, 2017

The Garmin GPSMap 64s

For 10 years I used the Garmin GPSmap60CSX. I used it with Garmin maps that had no altitude model and then migrated to the new altitude based maps. In south-central France, these maps were pretty accurate. The device was sturdy too, but I finally gave up on it when the clip holding the map chip in place broke and it was no longer easy to keep the chip in place under the batteries. A small piece of cardboard folded into an accordeon shape usually worked, but every time I changed the batteries, the chip came loose. It came loose if bumped while hiking too. This became a non starter after a while.

So I switched to a newer version – the 64s. What’s new with this one ? A new menu system that took time to get used to. A new desktop software package – Basecamp – that also took some time after giving up on Mapsource. The maps no longer transfer to the desktop, unless the device is tethered. There is a new compass that needs less calibration. The device seems to be more accurate and gets a faster fix on position possibly due to the use of both GPS and Glonass satellite clusters. There are new maps with a different rendering style in Basecamp – not better – just different.
Continue reading “The Garmin GPSMap 64s”

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.