Sunday, 28th April – this had been a cloud upon our horizon for a number of days. Hikers and locals alike were keen to remind us that the French meteorological office had been predicting 45mm of precipitation in our area during the twenty-four hours of 28.04.2024.
We awoke to a very grey day and desultory drizzle. The folk at the Refuge du Maure had laid on a breakfast designed to dispel pessimism and foreboding. As the forecast was so abysmal, we planned our route carefully. As we left Cheylard-l’Évêque, instead of following the GR 70, which looped through woodland starting in a southerly direction, we crossed the bridge heading directly east on a narrow tarmac road. By cutting out the loop, we would probably save little more than a kilometre. But in atrocious weather, small margins count!
Our little lane was quite a pull uphill for a kilometre or so before descending through the Ravin de Chabadurès. On this quiet stretch, I heard what I thought was a choir singing a plaintiff lament. I wondered briefly whether this is what one would experience during the final moments. But I remained conscious and alert, so I quickened my pace and caught up with Julia. She was sure that my plaintiff lament emanated from hunting dogs. Today being Sunday, and the season still being in full swing, the woods will have been alive with hunters and their dogs.
At a bridge over a stream (the Rebaudes), we re-joined the official GR 70. The tarmac road veered north towards the hamlet of Les Espradels. A hare crossed our path; we took this to be a good omen. The rain was still no more than a drizzle, but little rivulets were forming on the road.
From Les Espradels, we again turned east, off the road onto a woodland track which would take us to the village of Luc. We found shelter in a wooden hut raised on stilts by Lac Louradou, a beauty spot with scattered picnic tables, and had coffee from our Thermos. Approaching Luc, the path dropped steeply crossing a road several times as it haïr-pinned on its descent. At the eerie Chateau Luc, we were still dry….but then conditions rapidly deteriorated.
The rain suddenly fell more heavily! No force; no stair-rods. Just huge volumes of water falling from the sky. By the village of Luc, no more than 500 metres south of its castle, we were drenched! Luckily, the church was unlocked, so we sneaked inside for some respite, dripping discreetly.
We had already made the decision to head south from Luc in a line as straight as possible to our next stopover in La Bastide Puylaurent. This meant foregoing the GR 70’s detour south-east to L’Église de L’Abbaye Notre-Dame-des-Neiges. We followed a main road – the quiet D906 – for a few hundred metres before branching off to the villages of Pranlac (where a bridge took us over the Allier), Laveyrune, and Rogleton. At the latter, we found a garage door open, and sneaked inside for shelter – it was still bucketing down.
At Rogleton, we chatted with a French hiker who was taking the main road – the D906 – all the way to La Bastide because of the terrible weather. But we stuck to our straight, southerly trajectory, striking off on a sodden trail which followed a narrow corridor between the Allier river to our left (east) and the Cévennol railway line to our right (west). We couldn’t go wrong could we?
Only a couple of kilometres from La Bastide Puylaurent, we came upon a swollen stream with apparently no way across. We met another couple aiming for La Bastide who concurred. There was a way marker showing La Bastide – 2.2km by crossing this stream, and La Bastide 2.9km – via a path which passed through a tunnel in the railway embankment! To me the deal seemed to be: 0.7 extra kilometres was the price for keeping your feet and footwear dry! Despite the fact that our feet were already well and truly sodden, we found ourselves, tous les quatres, following the path under the railway and climbing west towards a farmstead. As we approached the farm, we turned south on a barely perceptible trail which was squelchy in the extreme and ended at the banks of the Ruisseau du Fraisse. The stream was a torrent – impossible to cross! There was no alternative but to retrace our steps. I had visions of us having to return to the main road at Rogleton and trudge up the D906. But having passed through the railway embankment and returned to our initial impasse, we saw five young men whom we had already met – they were locals from Puy-en-Velay. They had discovered a way across the stream using their walking poles and guided us to do likewise. A few metres beyond was the much larger, effervescent Ruisseau du Fraisse! But there was a modern wooden bridge to take us across.
On entering La Bastide, there were barriers preventing access to the railway level crossing because of “travaux”. But this was a Sunday afternoon with very heavy rain falling – there wasn’t a railway worker in sight! Picking a way through the barrier and over the railway track was straightforward – we had negotiated enough deviation for one day.
And so, onto the Hotel La Grand’Halte. Despite our adventures, it was still only 1420. We had been aware that access to the rooms was from 1600 onwards, but on seeing our bedraggled state, le patron gave us our key. The establishment boasted a drying room, but it was a tawdry affair with a tiny, non-functioning radiator. We spent the rest of the afternoon wafting wet clothes with a hairdryer and rotating articles for a stint close to the radiator in our room (which was working).
On the other hand, the evening meal was great – spinach soup followed by lasagne and finished off with fromage frais and chestnut purée. As we climbed upstairs at bedtime, we were still concerned about our wet gear. The forecast for the days ahead was dominated by rain. If we couldn’t get dry, we couldn’t really carry on!