Corniche des Cévennes

About this drive

The D9 Corniche des Cévennes runs along the ridge crest between Saint-Jean-du-Gard and Florac in the Cévennes National Park — roughly 50 kilometres of high, open road above the deep valleys of the Gardon and Tarnon rivers. Robert Louis Stevenson crossed this country on a donkey in 1878, writing up the journey as "Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes." The road has improved slightly in the intervening 150 years, but the landscape — chestnut forest, granite ridges, isolated farmsteads — is recognisably the same. The Cévennes was a Huguenot stronghold through the Wars of Religion and the Camisard revolt of the early eighteenth century; the region's Protestant identity shaped its character in ways still visible in the stone churches and village layouts. The landscape is severe in the way that upland France tends to be severe — the valleys are deep, the ridges are exposed, the distances between settlements are meaningful. The drive is best in October when the chestnut canopy colours, or in spring when the broom and rock roses are out on the open ridge sections. Florac, at the northern end, sits at the junction of three river valleys and makes a good base for exploring the upper Cévennes and the limestone Causses to the north.