Walking in the Cevennes - southern France - Europe

• Location
• Description
• Contents
• Introduction
• Sample Route
• Maps
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Full introduction to the Cevennes region and the best walking in the area.

• 16 day-walks in the southern Cevennes (based around Le Vignan)
• 15 day-walks in the northern Cevennes (based around Florac)
• Plus the 5-day trek around Mont Lozère

Although just across the River Rhone from Provence, the Cevennes is one of France's wild and unknown regions. Resembling the Scottish Highlands in places (similar in height at a maximum of 1567m, but warmer and with fewer midges), the region includes the 230,000 sq. km Parc National des Cevennes and the upper reaches of the Tarn gorge. First introduced to a wider world by Caesar's crossing and then by the young Robert Louis Stevenson and his Walks with a donkey (1879), the Cevennes still has much that can be freshly explored.

Compared with Provence the landscapes are harsher, more mountainous, less populated. The weather is more extreme: winters are cold, windblown and snowy, summers are dry and hot. The Cevennes attracts the walker and explorer who has a taste for a more rugged and subtler landscape.

This is Janette Norton's third Cicerone guide to France, following on from her Haute Savoie and Provence guides. Based in the north around Florac and in the south around Le Vigan, the guide explores the walking potential of the region in 31 half- to full-day walks and the well-known five-day circuit of Mt Lozère.