Travelogue - Florac

Travelogue - We came across Florac - a Tarn River town

By good luck we came to Florac, a pretty little town on the Tarn River in the heart of the Cevennes. Florac is an ancient livestock centre built at the meeting place of the flocks as they moved up to the high pastures and then down again at the end of summer. Now, there are very few livestock and the main industries are tourism and recreation. Florac has the headquarters of the Cevennes Parc National and is a walking, climbing and water sport base for people from all over France. The streets are full of young people - walkers, climbers, cyclists - a one time rural centre now given over to other means of enjoying and utilising the outdoors - primarily recreational uses, but there are also co-operative shops selling produce and craft from the small lifestyle farms such as cheese, honey, timber and chestnut products etc. Perhaps it is a town that has made somewhat of a transition from an agricultural to a mixed base but still built around appreciation and utilisation of the outdoors and the natural resources. It still appears to be an authentic place - we have our aperitifs in a cafe full of locals drinking pastis, cars stopping in the street while the occupants have conversations with a group of men at a sidewalk table - lots of handshaking and cheek kissing - perhaps the local mayor- certainly an important person in the community.

The town has a clear mountain stream meandering happily through the middle, tumbling over mossy stone walls, crossed by small, incredibly picturesque stone bridges and full of trout - large and small that have either escaped or been released from the fish farm above the town. It is situated in a steep valley dominated by the limestone cliffs of the Mejean Plateau to the west and to the east and north by the Chestnut and Pine clad slopes of the Cevennes. Our hotel room is on the third floor with wide windows overlooking the shadey avenue through the centre of town - tables and chairs set up under the plane trees and over the roofs, views of the tree clad hills. During the day sounds of conversations rise from the street and the tables and pass our window on their way into the blue, blue sky and the sounds of clinking glasses and late night discussions follow the same path into the night.

One day, after walking all afternoon through the mountains in the steps of Robert Louis Stevenson we strolled back into Florac to find the town gripped by the drama of the annual cycle race. The streets were all blocked to cars and the main promenade lined with people talking excitedly and listening to progress over the loudspeakers. Every now and then we hear a loud whistle and a motorbike appears, the rider wearing a flourescent jacket and followed closely by a frenzied peleton of cyclists flying around the streets at high speed. We change quickly and head up to one of the village squares - all through the town wherever there is a major intersection there is a person stationed with a whistle and when he sees a peleton appearing he blows the whistle loudly - a signal to get off the street or to flatten yourself against a wall as a peleton rounds a corner and speeds past. By now the race consists of a number of groups and the speed with which they fly through the streets and around corners is to us, astounding. There is one spectacular crash as a cyclist fails to take a corner and ends up piling at high speed into the announcer's podium - he rises to his feet and pulls his damaged bicycle off the street while the rest speed by. With a certain amount of good luck we reach the little square, find a table, order beers and a pineapple juice and settle in for a sublime French moment. We sit in an open square with a bubbling fountain in the middle, the setting sun striking the mountains above the town, an African band doing sound checks as they set up to play in the square, a group of backpackers cruises through the square - dreadlocks, a guitar slung over a young shoulder- every few minutes a loud whistle and a peleton flies frantically past and - through all this, every half hour the church bells toll the time.

Village square, tables, beer and wine, a mossy fountain, cyclists flying past, mountains over slate tiled roofs, long twilight with clear skies, blue then indigo then black, church bells and a band playing.

The band consists of a lead black african guy in a cut off t shirt and a peaked cap, a large black guy in a fish net shirt, a very black drummer wearing a red bandana and a white bloke christened - "the Australian" - by Ash as he appeared to be doing nothing much but looking cool and very relaxed. The band have set up outside the Mairie (town hall) which is a big old stone building with very modern large glass windows and doors with roses climbing up the walls. They eventually play some very cool Afro/French music as the night moves slowly in.