Category: Trails

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Vineyards and Camisards

Hiking distance : 11 km ; Hiking time : 4 hrs

The little town of Castelnau-Valence is surrounded by many hectares of vineyards sometimes seeming to fill the horizon. An autumn walk on a sunny day provides a stunning display of contrasts and colors.

But there is history here too. The castle on a hill at Castelnau – about 1.5 km from the town centre was involved in a famous but tragic episode during Camisard wars of the early 18th century.

In 1685, Louis XIV decided that he’d had enough of the Calvinist Protestants (known as Huguenots). He issued a decree forbidding the practice of the Calvinist religion and providing for the destruction of Calvinist churches and closure of schools. Huguenots caught secretly practicing their religion were subject to persecution, confiscation, imprisonment and execution.

Around 1700, in the Cévennes hills, long a Huguenot stronghold, groups of young men (the so called Camisards) entered into guerrilla style armed resistance, banding together to attack Catholic villages and churches, royal troops and other symbols of the repressive state. Their raids tool place all though the Cévennes including the high plateaus, the foothills and the garrigue areas around Uzès, Aigaliers, Alès, and Castelnau-Valence.

Pierre Laporte was a Camisard, a preacher and a good fighter. Born in Mialet, he was involved in many skirmishes and attacks between 1699 and 1704. But by mid 1704 a number of the Camisard chiefs had decided to give up the fight and leave France in exile. Not Pierre Laporte. He was to fight on until, on a day in August 1704, someone tipped off the royal troops that he was hiding out in the castle at Castelnau. Laporte was able to flee just before the arrival of the troops but, with no lead time on his pursuers, he was caught and killed in a valley nearby. A memorial now stands near the site.

This walk starts at the playground in Valence and passes by a large 19th century windmill, recently renovated. The windmill was built in the 19th century to pump water from a local well and supply fountains in the nearby towns of Saint-Dezery and Valence. Around 1940, wind power was replaced by electrical power and by 1956 the pumps were no longer needed. The windmill remains in good shape due to renovations in the early 21st century.

After the windmill, there are hectares of vineyards until reaching the Pierre Laporte Memorial. After the memorial, south of the Castelnau grounds there is a remarkable tree – a prickly juniper. This species is very common in the Mediterranean region and is usually a shrub or a small tree, The specimen at this way-point is 13 metres tall with a 4-5 metre trunk. The tree is thought to be up to 1000 years old.

Finally reaching a hilltop on the highway there is a closer view of the Castelnau castle (now private), site of the historical incident mentioned above.

The Pierre Laporte Memorial
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Happiness Lost

Hiking distance : 11 km ; Hiking time : 4:00 plus 1:30 to visit the Abîme
The “Perte du Bonheur”

Mount Aigoual, the second highest peak in the Cévennes, is a wet place. Annual rainfall averages around 2 m per year (yes metres – not centimeters). In an a very wet year, the total annual accumulation could reach 4 m. The name Aigoual derives from the root word “aiga” meaning “water” in a number of romance languages and dialects. No surprise there.

Local geology is complex – granite bedrock, karst topographies and schist. Several rivers arise on and around the peak. One of them is called “Le Bonheur” (Happiness) ”.

The Bonheur meanders across a flat granite plateau and filters through various bogs. At a point near the town of Camprieu, the river flows off the granite bedrock into an area of karst limestone. Soon after, the river enters a sizable cave and about 100 metres into the cave, the river disappears underground. This disappearance point is known as “la Perte” – the loss. In the picture, we see the entrance to the cave, and in the distance a sun-lit area resulting from a partial roof collapse deep in the cave.

Around 500 m away, at the bottom of an imposing limestone cliff a river emerges at the base of a huge vertical diaclase*. Same river ? The answer is yes. This was proven by some of the earliest french cave divers in the late 19th century by traversing the underground river bed from end to end.

Where the river emerges from the cliff face it is now called the “Bramabiau”, meaning the “braying of bulls” named for the noise of the surging waterfalls.

So happiness became a raging bull… It seems like the river, entering a zone of karst with its numerous underground cavities ended up by finding or creating a way through to the base of the cliff where it emerges at an altitude around 70 metres lower. The section between the perte and the emergence of the river will eventually become a ravine as the cavities grow and surface structures collapse.

The re-emergence of the river

This hike starts from the small town of Camprieu and heads steadily downhill into the Aigoual forest, following ancient cobbled paths through a humid valley. Eventually the path emerges near an old stone farmstead – imposing but nevertheless abandoned. A few paces further along you reach the remote and also abandoned village of Saint Sauveur. The village consists of a substantial church, a set of fortified farm buildings and a cemetery. The whole impression is strange : why such a church and village in the middle of nowhere ? The answer, it seems is that the surrounding land was very fertile, and subsistence living from agriculture was feasible.

This village, about 4 km from Camprieu and in a difficult to reach spot, was the original centre of town, but was progressively abandoned in the late 19th to early 20th century in favour of Camprieu – easier to reach by road and location of a new church. The abandoned village was eventually purchased by the French forest management authority (the ONF) and is now at the centre of a fine arboretum. From Saint Sauveur, the trail runs uphill back towards Camprieu and very close to the diaclase and the raging bull. We decided to visit. Tickets are purchased near the highway and the guide takes you down to the base of the cliff, into the diaclase and through a labyrinth of galleries, mini-canyons, waterfalls and caverns created by raging waters. Of course – visits only available when the water is not raging and this means guided tours only – no free roaming. This site – the Abîme de Bramabiau – is open to visitors from spring to autumn but closed in winter (too much water and anyway no visitors).

After the guided tour (taking about 90 minutes) the route takes us back to Camprieu passing close to the Perte du Bonheur. We make a short detour to see where the river disappears underground. The site is almost as impressive as the Diaclase.

This hike, in summary, offers the special ingredients sought by many hikers : walking, history, nature and surprises…

  • Diaclase : A joint or a fault line in bedrock, usually understood to be geologically inactive.
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Orchids in June

Hiking distance : 7 km ; Hiking time : 02:30

The Clos Gaillard, near the French administrative town of Nimes has a story to tell. As early as the third millenium before the Christian era, the area was occupied – perhaps by hunter-gatherers, perhaps by farmers. Traces of human occupation remain from most subsequent periods of history. Fast forward to circa AD 1400 and the area, all 240 hectares of it, was ceded by the local village of La Calmette to the town of Nimes in exchange for a livestock market. The limestone landscape could not support intensive farming but there are fertile depressions among the limestone outcrops allowing for orchards and cereal production. Stone cabins in dome shapes attest to human occupation.

lizard orchid

Modern farming developments and related population shifts to urban areas left the area mostly abandoned to scrub forest by the mid 20th century. Then came the fires – here and there – intermittent. After a major fire in 1974 the municipality of Nimes decided to reforest the area. This might have been a mistake because in 1989 a huge fire destroyed about half of the Clos Gaillard forest and many, many hectares beyond (over 600 in total).

This time the reconstruction of the area required a rethink and the result is a modern landscape park, less prone to fire, with more open spaces and many ethnobotanical features. The area contains rehabilitated stone cabins (known as capitelles), several waymarked walking routes, mini arboretums including a substantial collection of almonds and oak varieties, lookout points, educational exhibits etc. Much has been done to keep the site open with firebreaks and thereby favour the return of natural endemic flora (ex corn cockles, wild snapdragon, plantain etc) to an open milieu.

(The above notes about the history of the site are excerpted from this reference).

On this day in June, we were not expecting to see much novelty. It was just a stroll to take advantage of a beautiful spring day. We usually walked these routes in winter, but this was the first time in June. We were surprised, primarily by the numerous stations along the route where magnificent lizard orchids stood up to 80 cm tall. The rest of the flora sparkled as well (all pictures taken in Clos Gaillard, June 2021).

molene

Here are the route details and some observation spots.

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The pond at La Capelle

Hiking distance : 8 km ; Hiking time : 2:00
château, La Capelle

Contrary to places like Canada or Sweden, there are very few natural lakes in the Gard department. The number wavers between zero and very few. However, there are many other hydrological phenomenon just as interesting as natural lakes. For example, there are numerous springs (called “fonts” or “resurgences”) where substantial rivers emerge from under the ground and “pertes” where these same rivers disappear underground. All of this is due to the prevailing karstic limestone bedrock that favours the formation of grottos, caverns, avens and underground rivers.

Another less frequent phenomenon is the natural pond, usually quite small. Near the village of La Capelle however, there is a natural pond that swells to considerable size (up to 60 hectares) in the rainy season and ebbs back to a bed of reeds in dry seasons. The pond is in a low lying natural depression or “impluvium” with several obvious inflows from the surrounding hills and no surface outflow.

This curious situation results from geological movements that allowed the formation of a basin on hard limestone bedrock backfilled with semi-impermeable clay. Water flowing into the basin never leaves except by seepage into the water table. Experts believe that this pond supplies water for a number of “resurgences” in the area. Whatever the theories, this pond is an exceptional site and a rarity in the surrounding garrigues terrain.

La Capelle pond in January 2015 after heavy autumn rains

Over time it has also taken some vigorous action by local people to safeguard the site. Among development projects was the idea to build a drainage canal and convert 40 or 50 hectares of pond into arable land – fertility guaranteed of course. It didn’t happen and now the pond is a protected Natura 2000 site.

This walk takes us from a starting point next to La Capelle castle directly to the pond where there are signposted pathways and several information panels. After the pond, the track circles back through numerous apricot orchards and vinyards to Masmolene. The final section traverses the villages, first Masmolene and then La Capelle. At the top of the hill in Masmolene, the chapel of St Pierre is worth a look. And to finish, the track from the chapel to La Capelle runs through and area of rocky outcrops (known in french as a “chaos rocheux”).