Between Garrigues, Larzac and Cévennes: 3 Ecosystems to Discover

You choose to hike on this land... 3 distinct landscapes offer themselves to you during your stay with our donkeys.

The High Garrigues, where the holm oak reigns supreme, the strawberry tree, the Cade juniper, the boxwood, the Montpellier maple, the hackberry and many other species have colonized the space abandoned by man. This particular vegetation invites itself right into the middle of rocks and scree, reaching the foot of the numerous cliffs. Between old villages and hamlets, agriculture offers to this ungrateful land vineyards, olive trees, truffle oaks with a few small meadows by the stream. Today abandoned, white mulberry trees remind us of silk worm breeding, a time when the pack donkey, rustic, made itself indispensable to the farmers.

The Larzac, a major limestone plateau raised up to 800 m in altitude, offers very varied landscapes. Wooded or reforested parts, sea of boxwood, large steppes as far as the eye can see between hills and sinkholes. Possible glimpse of this enormous thistle growing flush with the ground, emblem of the causses, "the Cardabelle". Rough and isolated lands that the inhabitants have never let go, even in the face of the government and its military "gardarem lou Larzac". The surprising contrast between the summer drought with blizzards and winter frosts leads to extensive pastoralism where sheep, cows and horses graze in semi-liberty. This vast plateau is suspended between deep canyons, notably the Vis gorges and the famous Navacelles cirque. Like an oasis winding in meanders, the water, always fresh and pure, feeds a verdant riparian forest in contrast with the meager pastures encountered higher up. A well-deserved reward during your roaming hike with our donkeys.

The Aigoual Massif, Cévennes National Park, gone is the limestone, making way for schists and granites, culminating at more than 1200 m in altitude. Chestnut forests give way as they rise to beech-fir forests then to alpine lawns. Mountains well watered by rain and snow in winter, thanks to the influence of the three climates, Mediterranean, continental and oceanic. The grass is rich and attracts herds in transhumance in summer. Here again, the donkey always present, transports the shepherds' luggage during hikes towards the mountain. Streams and torrents generate in the valley the cultivation of sweet onions, apple trees, walnut trees, market gardening, and higher up the wild picking of porcini mushrooms, strawberries and raspberries. Also a land of rebellions, here, Protestant facing the dragons of Louis XIV after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

In short, to discover, these three ecosystems with their lands, their natures and their men committed in Occitania.