Les Vans
Bois de Paiolive
Gorges de l'Ardeche
In our first hike, we discovered the small, typical medieval villages (villages a charactere) close to les Vans and the Serre de Barre Mountain. The major attractions among the medieval villages are Naves and la Coste.
Hiking on small paths from medieval village to medieval village gives you a strange feeling: It is almost like traveling back in time. You follow the old trails that people used for thousands of years. You image people traveling on this paths going to a market in another village. You notice how far a few kilometers can be.
Close to the starting point, there is the beautiful medieval village of Naves. The village is really cute with its old, original stone houses, and the small roads inside the village (some hardly 2m wide).
After naves, we reached les Alauzas, which is mainly an old farm. A word to future visitors: Beware of the dogs! They are happy about any visitor. The white one (a Berger des Pyrenees) likes to jump at you ;-)
From les Alauzas, we continued with the ascend to the Serre de Barre. The summit itself is not really beautiful (pylon!). However, the view on the area around is quite nice because it is one of the highest points of the area.
With our hike, we followed the directions from http://randonnee.cevenole.free.fr/Serre_de_Barre.html. The description from the web page was very good, except for the end: After the village above les Vans, there should be some trail at an intersection leading from this village directly to the vineyards below Naves.
The next morning, we first visited Thines by car because the chief of the campground told us that it is a "must". Thines is a medieval village, which is situated on a mountain high above the valley. On the way to Thines, the road became smaller and smaller and finally, we had to park the car and walk the remaining 500-800m to the village.
The major attraction in Thines is its church that was built using stones of two different colors. The most impressive view of the village Thines is actually from the valley. When you have seen Naves and la Coste before, the village itself will not impress you very much and does not really reward the small road.
Driving though the Gorges from Vallon Pont d'Arc to St Martin, the first attraction is the famous Pont d'Arc. Before flowing through the ridge with its "pont", the river flowed around the ridge in a U shape. In an unimaginable number of years, the river carved the "pont" out of the ridge.
Shortly after the Pont, the road climbs above the Gorges and goes along the cliffs.
