Back in business!…

Back to the adventure after a short two-week break. We are heading back north to the Massif Central or, more precisely, its foothills since this first stage takes us to the Larzac plateau…

Back on the road after this little two-week break. Marvin has been pampered, cleaned, tidied up, oiled, greased, and he is now ready for the big climb up to the North Cape!…

First step to reach the south of the Massif Central, and more precisely the Grands Causses Natural Park and its famous Larzac plateau. On the way, we took a break at La Couvertoirade (on the recommendation of one of our loyal fans… 😉), a fortified village where several stories intersect: that of the Templars who built the castle in the 12th century, that of the Hospitallers who, in the 15th century, succeeded them and enclosed the city in a crown of ramparts then that of the economic and demographic peak of the village with its beautiful residences of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The great fortune of La Couvertoirade is that the village was abandoned for a long time, which allowed it to remain little or not transformed. It therefore remains an extremely well preserved medieval village, surrounded by its wall 12 m high and 400 m long. The houses of La Couvertoirade are also a concentrate of the traditional architecture of the Causses, where stone is the only material from ground to roof. La Couvertoirade also has the largest lavogne in Larzac, and the only one that is not round, but oval… Lavognes are these small paved basins that are found on the causses. They were built to retain rainwater and serve as a watering trough for the sheep. The Couvertoirade lavogne was initially located on the village square, which had been converted into a bassin and paved to concentrate rainwater in its center. But after two thirds of the village’s population (75 people) succumbed to a typhoid epidemic, the survivors made the wise decision to move it just outside the wall… Another curiosity, the cemetery of La Couvertoirade features circular stone steles engraved with all types of crosses, typical of the Larzac plateau…

For this first step, our destination was the Millau viaduct, one of the three or four large emblematic bridges in France. This one is also the most recent, inaugurated in December 2004. With its almost 2.5 km long and its 343 m high (19 m more than the Eiffel Tower, which seems to delight the locals since it is the information most often found on all the panels about the viaduct…), we owe it to Norman Foster, also famous for having designed the Gherkin Tower, in London (whose suppository shape also inspired Jean Nouvel for the Agbar Tower in Barcelona), the Millennium Bridge, still in London, the Collserola Tower, in Barcelona, the renovation of the Reichtag, in Berlin, or Beijing’s international airport, in China.

Without being experts or particularly lovers of architecture, we must recognize that the building is impressive. The seven conical piles of the bridge seem to soar towards the sky, held only by the stays which connect them to the deck. It would be difficult to say that the bridge is integrated into the landscape, but we must recognize that it does not stand out either, as if the lightness of its lines gave it a sort of fluidity, between two valleys of the Causse… Unlike its colleague in Garabit, a little further north, the Millau Viaduct is not lit at night, but the security flashes at the top of each pile and its white colour are enough to give it a ghostly presence in the moonlight. But the real spectacle comes in the early morning, when the clouds caught in the Millau valley slip between the piles of the bridge. You then have the impression that it is floating on the clouds… If we add to that a small group of vultures resting a few hundred meters from Marvin (which allowed us to try our new telescope), this is definitely not a bad place to wake up in the morning…

Today, we took a short walk on the causse to stock up on local products at the Ferme des Licornes d’Aphrosy, where Marilyn kindly welcomed us and explained all the details of how all the animals on her farm are raised in a way that maximises their well-being (before being transformed into organic products… 😁). This evening, we will spend our second night on Larzac before continuing tomorrow a little further north…

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On the LARZAC PLATEAU, as anywhere else, LEAVE NO TRACE!

– Always travel on public ways and respect the signs.
– Limit noise and interfere as little as possible with wildlife.
– Respect the other users.
– Leave rocks, plants and other natural features as you found them and respect historic sites.
– Take your waste with you and throw it into the appropriate containers, in the nearest village.
– Do not camp inside protected areas and do not make any fires.