Driving the Gorges du Tarn

We woke this morning to a sprinkling of snow! It was a cold night but our two duvets and an extra blanket kept us toasty warm. After breakfast, we emptied our tanks before hitting the road.

We’re heading to the Gorges du Tarn but in order to get there we have to climb up and over the Cevennes mountains. As we climbed, the dusting of snow along the side began to encroach into the road. As we approached the pass at the top we were at nearly 4000ft, the road was white and we were glad for Kiki’s new “all season” tyres. Proceeding slowly and cautiously we made our way down the other side. After a succession of tight downhill hairpins we joined the “official” gorge road at Ispagnac.

We quickly discovered that today’s gorge drive would be very different from the Ardeche - this time the road was at the bottom next to the river! At this point is fairly wide and easy to drive. We found a parking spot with a good view of the high rocky sides of the gorge and stopped for coffee.

A little further on we passed through a short tunnel cut through a rock - it was quite wide and as the height limit was 3.9m we were ok. Shortly afterwards we stopped in a lay-by at the entrance to the “Beau Village” of Sainte Enimie. We put our boots on and went on a short 5km hike into the town, across a bridge and along the river bank. The scenery was great, at this point the gorge has started to narrow and the rocky sides were towering above us. We crossed another bridge and returned to Kiki along the road. The wind at this point was really cold and blowing straight at us so we were glad to get back into the warm. We had lunch and then continued our journey.

The next 30km or so was “interesting” driving as the road became increasingly narrow as it wound its way alongside the river. Fortunately there was very little traffic as we often had to drive on the other side of the road to avoid rocky outcrops. At one point there was a series of rough tunnels cut through the rocks which, although they were “theoretically” high enough, didn’t leave much room for error!

There were quite a few seemingly abandoned villages clinging to the rocky crags on either side of the gorge, one of which had a aerial runway across the river to transport supplies.

We eventually came to the point where the gorge became wider and the driving easier so could relax a little. Soon afterwards we arrived at the Aire de Camping Car at Entraygues-sur-Truyere where we are stopping tonight. We filled our water tank so Emma can have a long, hot, multi rinse and condition shower tomorrow morning and chose a parking place.

After a planning session - we didn’t plan our return route as we didn’t know which way we would be driving back - we had our evening meal and settled down for the evening.