(Largentière, France)

The Domaine Les Ranchisses resort is in its own little world. After being there for about a week,, and getting a few games under my belt, I decided to walk to the nearby village of Largentière for a change of scenery. The resort map showed a “2km pedestrian path” to the village. I thought this would be a nice, easy way to end my day.

It started innocently enough. The path started as a road, and gradually narrowed from there. I passed by a bucolic ancient farmhouse, with various roosters and chickens loitering about. But the path kept going higher and higher. And got lonelier and lonelier.

Soon, I was at an alarming elevation. Not to mention completely isolated from the rest of humanity. The path was a loose, rocky mess. Vegetation often encroached as if I were in a jungle. It occurred to me that I was very vulnerable – who would be able to help if something went wrong? And was this path going to disappear into nothingness as darkness fell?

Right about then, I found an explanation for the rather rugged “pedestrian path.” A slightly worn sign informed me that this was actually a “mule trail”. That would explain the steepness (and that few people have likely walked it in the last century). I decided to press on for 5 more minutes.

My patience and persistence paid off. The mule trail began to descend rapidly. Soon, I saw the Château de Largentière in the distance. I realized that the outbound leg of my journey was going to be completed successfully.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was not very far from the hilltop village of Chassiers. This was where we would enjoy a most memorable meal the next night at Le Ver O Tof. My earlier post had some dramatic evening photographs of this charming restaurant.

Chassiers was not very big, but it clearly had been a very important place at one time. My next post will share my impressions of the medieval town of Largentière, which I discovered had also been a very important place!