An introductory guidebook to the best walking in the Cevennes region of southern France, describing 16 day-walks in the southern Cevennes (based around Le Vignan), 15 day-walks in the northern Cevennes (based around Florac) and a 5-day trek around Mont Lozere. 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 Mont Lozere.

Author Biography

Janette Norton has lived with her physicist husband, Alan, in the Geneva region for over 30 years, raising four children and working in the marketing field. Her love of mountain walking dates from the time she was a guide in her twenties, and the proximity to her home of the Alps and the Jura has enabled her to continue her passion. Now her family has grown up, she has branched out to walk in other areas of France such as Provence, the Cevennes and the Dordogne. This is Book 1 of the two-volume second edition of her first book, Walking in the Haute Savoie.