In the Piedmont vineyards

This 3-hour loop, starting from the Mas des Manhans winery, takes you on a journey of discovery through the landscapes of the Cévennes Piedmont. A backdrop of gentle limestone hills, dominated by the emblematic twins: the Rouquette and Saint-Chamand mountains, wooded by holm oaks and criss-crossed by numerous streams. An ideal terroir for vines, olives and mulberries. With his passion for nature and heritage, Victor André suggests a number of stops on this 20-30 km walk, which combines roads and tracks with a gentle gradient, to tell the story of this area.

We start with a short pause in front of an old silkworm nursery. This is where Séricyne, a company founded in 2015, has revived silk production in the region thanks to an innovative process: silkworms no longer produce cocoons but deposit their silk on molds. The high-end products supply luxury boutiques. Our guide explains the biology of the "magnan" (Occitan for "the gobbler"), or silkworm, which contributed to the region's economic boom thanks to sericulture, whose golden age was between the early 18th and mid-19th centuries.

A drive through the village of Monoblet, with its 750 inhabitants, reveals its remarkable octagonal temple. Built between 1565 and 1575, it was destroyed in 1684, a year before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, before being rebuilt a century and a half later. A few pedal strokes further on, the village of Fressac, overlooked by the ruins of a 13th-century château. During the Camisard war, it served as a refuge for the local population.

The village is criss-crossed by the Contourby, a deeply incised stream with a sedimentary geology featuring ammonite fossils. On a road bordered on both sides by plane trees, we are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the European Roller, a magnificent migratory blue bird that appreciates the natural cavities in tree trunks. The walk ends with a (well-deserved) tasting of Mas des Manhans wines, stamped Esprit national park.