France's Cevennes one of Europe's last wilderness regions

By Ulrike Koltermann Jul 19, 2011, 4:06 GMT

Florac, France - Like silver dollars, the round-shaped shale stones are glittering in the sunshine.

The water of the Gardon River is cool, the smooth granite boulders have indentations giving them the resemblance of some comfortable designer-chair. One's glance sweeps over to a girl who is playing in the water with her dog, to a couple on a patch of sandy shore and then upwards to the high bridge with its graceful support arches.

We had just passed over the bridge, and captured by the setting of bathers in the river far below, spontaneously decided to stop here.

This is what's so wonderful about the Cevennes region, one of the last corners of wilderness in Europe. It offers a beautiful natural setting and is anything but overrun with people.

The southern-central French region in the hinterlands north of the Mediterranean coast city of Montpellier is characterized by wooded hills, a windy high plateau and deep gorges through which rivers wind their way. Part of the Cevennes is protected as a National Park.

In Florac, the main town in the park, life proceeds at a leisurely pace. Plane trees form a green shade-providing ceiling above the cafes. In one of the shops you can buy chestnut honey, one of the region's specialties.

Along the Tarn River there are campsites. Beyond Florac there rises up the massive cliff wall of the Causse Mejean high plateau, which has been declared a World Cultural Heritage site by UNESCO.

'Three completely different landscapes and types of stone meet up here,' says a young woman in a National Park house.

The high plateau consists of limestone, the area east of Florac is dominated by granite, and shale is predominant in the forested hills further south. The woman recommends taking a hike in the high plateau, along one of the park's many signposted trails.

With a backpack filled with fresh baguettes and pélardon - a round-shaped goat cheese from the region - we take off. Soon we are leaving the town's stone houses with their shale stone rooftops behind us and are hiking through a grove of chestnut trees. Lizards are racing through the rustling dry leaves and butterflies flutter around.

Soon, the trail is winding through a forest and up a steep slope. There's a pleasant scent of pine tar in the air. Once at the top we drop wearily into the grass and enjoy the view, to the musical accompaniment of that sound which puts every northern European into a vacation mood - the chirping of crickets. Below us lies the Tarn Gorge, behind us, the grassy plain of the high plateau.

Mother-of-pearl coloured angels' hair, a species of grass with delicate, fuzzy curls, is drifting along in the breeze. There, where a steep path leads back down towards Florac, stalagmite-like rocks have split away from the cliff wall.

In Saint-Jean-du-Gard we find out what all the fuss is about regarding the many chestnut trees. Edible chestnuts were for a long time the most important food item in the rocky Cevenne region, since grain cultivation was scarcely possible.

The maronis were eaten fresh, cooked or grilled. Or they were dried and then ground into meal. No wonder the chestnut tree is also called the 'bread tree.'

A particularly severe winter in the early 18th Century destroyed a great portion of the trees. Cevenne region inhabitants then planted mulberry trees in their place in order to start up large-scale silkworm production.

By the middle of the century, there were already some 400,000 mulberry trees in the region. In order for silkworms to grow to a size of 4 to 8 centimetres, they can consume more than 700 kilograms of mulberry leaves a week.

To assist them, so-called 'manganeries' or feeding facilities, were set up in the stone houses, some of which still exist.

The silkworms rarely lived to experience their transformation into butterflies, since barely had they spun their silk cocoon, about the thickness of a person's thumb, then they were thrown into a vat of boiling water.

Young women would then spin the fine silk threads measuring up to one and one-half kilometres long into braids which were then used by the silk manufacturers in Lyon and Nimes.

Driving through the Cervennes region, one does not travel very fast. This is due not only to the curving, serpentine roads, but also to the scenic small villages which invite you to stop and spend some time there.

Often they consist of only a handful of sturdy, shale stone-topped stone houses. The air smells of lavender, whose purple-coloured blossoms are circled by brimstone butterflies.

Often one comes across tiny cemeteries with gravestones which have long ago been eroded away by the elements. They are testimonials to a time when the Huguenots, as the Protestants were then called in France, were being persecuted by the vassals of King Louis XIV.