CIRQUE DE NAVACELLES

A number of people recommended that we visit the Cirque de Navacelles, a round trip to the biggest gorge in Europe. On the map the road has that treacherous look of many sharp twists so it seemed a good idea to do the excursion on a good day. Tuesday was a stunning day and we set off armed with our picnic lunch along the Arre River (yes Le Vigan is on the Arre - as opposed to Bern on the Aare!) in a verdant, thickly  treed valley through little villages where the road blends with the buildings. It's a slow incline and suddenly the typography changes and we arrived on a plateau with stunted oak trees - and then abruptly the escarpment gives way and there is the spectacular gorge with Navacelles in the bend of an extinct oxbow of the River Vis far below. The road zig-zaggs down to the bottom and fortunately being the end of the holiday season, there wasn't much traffic because we had to stop to manouvre our way past oncoming cars as we made our way through 3 million years of erosion. The limestone cuttings on the side of the road are fascinating - the horizontal layers of rock have vertical intrusions and the rock face looks like carefully laid bricks. 

Navacelles at the base of the Gorges de Vis

Navacelles is a quaint little town and we had lunch close to the waterfall where the Vis suddenly emerges again - I still have to find out where the course of the river is, because the gorge looks as if it ends in a blind valley and although there is an aqueduct somehow it wasn't apparent where the source rises. Our little toy car strained up the steep pass with Conal warning that we'd have to descend again - and indeed we no sooner reached the top of the escarpment than the road dipped - this time fortunately a slow decline eventually driving along yet another beautiful valley whizzing past XIthC churches and Roman bridges - I would have loved to stop but once behind the wheel, Conal has the habit of only stopping when once he has reached his destination.  On our trip we drove along three different rivers, the Arre, Vis and finally the Herault River.

The village of Navacelles

Although the gorge is not as vast as the canyon we saw in Utah, it is spectacular in it's own way and of course being able to drive to the base of the gorge and being dwarfed by the height of the mountains gave us another perspective. Certainly worth the journey - although I would hesitate to take anyone who suffers from car sickness along the route. 

Conal says this is one of the descendants of Modestine - the name of the donkey in Robert Louis Stephenson's book we're reading - grazing in the field next to our house in Espigarie