Florac and the Cévennes

In 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson walked through Florac with a donkey named Modestine, and the book he made of it, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), remains the canonical literary text of the region. The trail named for him, the GR 70 (opened 1994, 252 km from Le Monastier to Saint-Jean-du-Gard), still passes through town.

Florac itself, now part of the merged commune of Florac-Trois-Rivières, is a village of about 1,900 people in the Lozère department of Occitanie. Three rivers meet here: the Tarnon, the Tarn, the Mimente. So do three landscapes. The Causse Méjean limestone plateau rises to the south and the granite massif of Mont Lozère to the north, while the schist Cévennes proper begins to the east. The village is the administrative seat of the Parc National des Cévennes, France's only national park where people permanently live and farm inside the protected core. Since 2011 the wider Cévennes biosphere reserve has been a UNESCO World Heritage site, inscribed for its "Mediterranean agro-pastoral cultural landscape". No other UNESCO designation in Europe exists specifically for a working livestock landscape.

The town wears its medieval-Protestant history plainly. The medieval castle now houses the park headquarters. Two churches stand on the ruins of their religious-wars predecessors, and stone houses line the Esplanade.

For this platform, the Cévennes is the natural French anchor: rail-reachable via the Cévennes line from Nîmes to Génolhac, a chestnut-and-sheep slow-food economy, serious hiking, no mass tourism, and a serious editorial story.

Come between mid-April and June, or from September into late October. The chestnut and oak forests are green then, the trails dry, the Tarn clear and walkable. May brings lambing season, the high point of the transhumance economy. The French domestic walking trade concentrates in July and August, when the gîtes d'étape along the GR 70 book out (confirm they're still operating); for those months, sort accommodation a month in advance. Late September brings the Fête de la Transhumance in Le Vigan and the descent-of-the-flocks events across the Causse Méjean, the year's pastoral anchors. From November to March the region turns cold and empty. Mont Lozère carries snow above 1,400 m and many gîtes close. Florac itself stays open year-round, and the chestnut harvest runs October-November.

The spine is the SNCF Cévennes line, the Ligne des Cévennes from Nîmes to Clermont-Ferrand. TER regional trains stop at three useful stations: Alès, La Bastide-Saint-Laurent-les-Bains, Génolhac. Regional buses run onward to Florac from each. The main route is Alès-Florac, about 90 minutes, operated by liO, the Occitanie regional bus network; check timetable on lio.laregion.fr. From Paris, the TGV reaches Nîmes in 3h, where you change for the regional Cévennes line. From Marseille or Montpellier, count around 4-5 hours to Florac including the bus leg. Drivers have it shorter: 1h 45m from Montpellier, 2h from Avignon, 6h from Paris on the A75 motorway via the Millau Viaduct. The closest commercial airport is Montpellier. Florac's bus station serves the liO regional network and seasonal Stevenson Trail support shuttles.

Spend the first night in Florac, then move onto the trail or out to the surrounding gîtes. In the village, the Hôtel des Gorges du Tarn (a long-running family hotel on the Esplanade) and the Hôtel Le Rochefort are the central options; the Auberge des Cévennes covers the mid-range. Walkers on the GR 70 use a network of gîtes d'étape spaced one day's walk apart. In July and August, reserving them early via gites-de-france.com or the trail's official portal (chemin-stevenson.org) is essential. Outside town, the gîtes ruraux at Vebron, Cocurès and Ispagnac sit within 15 minutes of Florac and serve walkers and cyclists. The Cévennes National Park accommodation list is the curated reference. Skip hotels in the larger valley towns (Mende, Alès) unless you are only passing through. Florac takes 10 minutes to walk across, and it suits the slow trip better.

Cévennes food is the southern half of the chestnut-and-sheep economy. Ask for Pélardon, the small soft goat cheese from the Cévennes valleys; Roquefort is made an hour to the west on the Larzac. The chestnut (châtaigne) is the year's pantry crop: chestnut flour bread, chestnut soup, chestnut purée. Lamb from the transhumance flocks is the regional meat, Brebis Lacaune above all. For a sit-down evening in Florac, La Source du Pêcher and the bistro at the Hôtel des Gorges du Tarn set the standard (confirm they're still operating). Buy direct from producers at the Saturday morning market in the village centre, which carries cheese, charcuterie, bread, vegetables and honey. The PNR des Grands Causses to the west and the Cévennes biosphere reserve as a whole are designated "Sites Remarquables du Goût", and taste-trail signage runs through the region.

The Robert Louis Stevenson Trail, the GR 70, runs south from Florac to Saint-Jean-du-Gard in 3-4 days, over the Mont Lozère ridge and through the Vallée Borgne. That stretch is the best of the trail's southern half. Before you set off, the Château de Florac, where the national park has its visitor centre, runs free exhibitions on the transhumance, the chestnut economy and the silk-worm history that defined the region's industrial past; the UNESCO site house for the Causses and Cévennes, also in Florac, adds interactive panels explaining why a working livestock landscape carries a World Heritage listing at all. Mont Lozère, the granite summit at 1,699 m above the town, makes a serious day-walk with views across the entire Cévennes.

Immediately south of town, the Causse Méjean limestone plateau is itself UNESCO landscape: walk a circuit from Hyelzas, where a restored Caussenard farmhouse is now an open-air museum, or go underground at the Aven Armand cave. Also on the causse, at the hamlet of Le Villaret at around 1,000 m, the TAKH association keeps a herd of Przewalski's horses in a 400-hectare semi-wild enclosure. There is a self-guided educational garden, and by prior booking you can join guided observation outings and even the researchers' monitoring work; the season runs roughly April to November, so check current arrangements. North-east of Florac, the Cham des Bondons scatters a large field of menhirs across open pasture, with the puechs behind them and Mont Lozère filling the horizon, and makes a straightforward half-day on foot.

The Gorges du Tarn, 20 km west, supply the river-canyon drama; take a canoe, drive the D907bis, or go out with the bateliers who still work flat-bottomed boats under the cliffs, and stop at Sainte-Enimie, the medieval village on the river. Over the ridge in the Gorges de la Jonte, the Maison des Vautours at Saint-Pierre-des-Tripiers tells the story of the vultures' disappearance here and their reintroduction, with telescopes on the terrace and live footage from cameras set in the cliff faces; the building is stepped into the rock and has lift access. Further south, the Climatographe occupies the former Météo-France observatory on the 1,567 m summit of Mont Aigoual, ten themed spaces on climate change inside a building that spent a century recording the weather. September brings the 160 km de Florac endurance ride, the town's own fixture (check dates locally).

• Language: French; Occitan widely understood in the older generation
• Currency: euro
• Plug: European type E (French two-pin with earth)
• Money: ATMs in Florac centre; Cards accepted at hotels and larger restaurants, cash useful at the Saturday market and the smaller gîtes
• Mobile: Mobile coverage is good in the valley, patchy on the Causse and on Mont Lozère above 1,200 m
• Nearest hospital: Mende (45 minutes); Alès (1h 15m) for major care