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squiz Member Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 3072 |
2nd October 2016 Hiking - Walking: Sidobre Chaos Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: cloudy with sun later Max Speed: Distance Covered: Sunday 2nd October – 3 walks ***** Sidobre Chaos – cloudy with sun later It rained in the night and was cloudy this morning so we stayed in bed reading for quite a while. Left our spot in Lautrec and headed out cross country towards Lacaune where we fancy doing another Voie Verte tomorrow. The route took us through the Sidobre area and it was very different from where we started off. Very hilly and forested along both banks of the River Agout which we saw when we went to Castres yesterday. We stopped at Lacrouzette for a few bits and pieces in the shop and shortly afterwards were distracted by a sign up to Roches de Sidobre. It was one of our usual roads straight up and densely wooded and when we got to the top there was a dead end to a few houses but lots of walk signs and a small place to park. We decided to head up to a rock which was signposted 500m away. We had no idea what we were looking for but followed the path through the weirdest landscape of huge lumps of rounded rock at funny angles in between the trees. We had a couple of false starts in various directions but eventually found a signpost to a ‘Chaos’ and we can never resist a chaos having visited some crackers over the years. This one didn’t disappoint and some of the rocks had been given names. Little did we know at the time that this was to be the theme of the day! We met a Grandma and Granddad out with the grandchildren on a similar path who looked very happy. There was a sign to Les Trois Fromage which we thought meant one of the farms at the parking spot sold cheese but all became clear very soon! We left there after about an hour and made our way back down the windy road and carried on a bit further before seeing another inviting sign saying a tour of the rocks so we headed up there looking for somewhere to have lunch. We really hit the Chaos jackpot this time! This was the Plateau de Cremaussel – a walk containing numerous huge rocks with names! Including…… Les trois fromages – nothing to do with selling cheese at all but three huge rocks sandwiched together with lots of sticks on the top because it is the tradition for children on the walk to try to throw a stick up and get it to stay up there :) It is a fantastic place for kids and we saw several families having fun walking round and kids scrambling on the rocks. Including the family we saw at the last chaos who had walked up!! The famous one in this section was called Le Roc de l’Oie – the Goose rock – for obvious reasons - It looks like a Goose! The names got more obscure as we went round with the translations being roughly the elephant, the billiard ball and table and the wall of death!! There were more but it would take all day. The circuit took around an hour and a half and by that time we were really starving so had our lunch in the car park. Back on the road thinking that would be it but no – I had seen a walk sign at the top to Lac Merle, an hour’s walk away but then saw a road sign to it so decided to go and have a look. Well it took some finding and we ended up nearly back where we started but we found it and also a huge tourist information about the Sidobre rocks and area. The lake was unusual with all the weird rounded rocks in it and they are in every residents garden too. We finished off our day of rocks by visiting the Chaos de Balme which had a strange entrance through a granite works with huge slabs of granite waiting to be finished off ready to become worktops, sinks, tombstones etc.. We walked down the scramble path to ‘Chapeau Napoleon’ – Napoleons Hat! On the way back to the car park (which was a strange route!) we saw a baby donkey! We did finally get on the road to our Voie Verte destination. We didn’t get to Gijounet until 6.45 but we found it and it is a nice place to park too :) Another exhausting but fun day. Photo Gallery here |
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