Hiking reports: April 13 Pradelles to Le Cheylard-l'Évêque (19 km, 310 m)

The bridge in Langogne where a little girl asked RLS where he came from. The question was of great interest to the family.

Pradelles

We stocked up on fruit in the supermarket in Pradelles and wandered down through what is obviously a very old village. It strikes us as ironic that high trained town planners spend months if not years at the computer workstation designing new city centres without being able to achieve the atmosphere of a village like Pradelles. This has just grown together and new buildings canabalised from older ones.
We left the village to follow muddy paths to Langogne where there is an excellent market on Saturday mornings. There is a Carrefour supermarket, as well and the bridge where Robert Louis was questioned by a young lass looking after a flock of sheep as to where he came from. Langogne does have a number of shops. This was the last chance for any retail therapy or necessary purchases until you reach maybe Florac or St Jean du Gard. We did not stock up on ham shanks a la RLS, but followed our instructions and the red and white stripes over the river to climb out on a minor road. We turned off the road onto a forest track by Brugeyrolles to walk through through woods and mixed open fields to St Flour de Mercoire.
Our detailed instructions told us to beware of a marshy stretch of path in the woods where one has to walk on a raft after wet weather after the village. The marshy bit has now disappeared. It has not been drained but the route has been realigned. This strikes us on of the disadvantages of following very detailed instructions. If the route is altered then it can take some time before this information is incorporated into the notes whereas it takes only a few minutes to paint red and white stripes on trees or stones. We sauntered through lovely forests after Fouzillac.
Our hotel the Refuge de Moures in Cheylard was excellent. The hotel not only had WIFI (WLAN), but also a laptop to use to check eMails etc. The beds were comfortable and there was much to read in English and in French The hotel offered packboxes to post gear home if it was all getting too much to carry and a wide range of local jams, honeys and pickles to spice up the picnic baskets. Dinner was charcuterie, lasagne, cheese and rhubarb tart. We ate with the young French woman we had met in Landos. She was walking the route and just following the red and white signs. We had noticed that we were following the signs as we read through our detailed instructions, so decided to depend on the stripes in future, rather than referring to the notes every few minutes.

Pradelles

Memorial plaque to a local heroine, Jeanne de Verdette who threw what looks like a paving stone at the leader of the protestant troops besieging the village during the Hundred Years War. She killed him and saved the village.