Mountain bikingModerateBoucle

8 - The Plateau

Start: Le Mazet-Saint-Voy

At 1,000 metres altitude, people have known how to use the resources of this land and work the soil. Here, the buildings were built with rock from the volcanoes. Admire the typical houses with lauze (stone slab) roofs, quarried at the foot of the Lizieux!

Distance: 14.2 km
Elevation gain: +322 m
Elevation loss: -322 m
Duration: 1 h 05 min

Route on the map

Base map © OpenTopoMap (CC-BY-SA): route licensed under ETALAB-2.0 via Données : Comité Départemental Randonnée Pédestre Haute-Loire · FFRandonnée · sportsnature.hauteloire.fr — sous licence ETALAB 2.0.

The feel of the route

Albert Camus (1913-1960): Albert Camus arrived on the Plateau in the summer of 1942 to treat his tuberculosis. He lodged at Le Panelier, in the commune of Le Mazet-Saint-Voy, until the autumn of 1943. There he wrote part of “La Peste” (The Plague) and “Le Malentendu” (The Misunderstanding).

“August 1942: ‘Before sunrise, above the high hills, the firs cannot be told apart from the undulations that support them…Against the barely faded background of the sky, you would think it was an army of feathered savages rising from behind the hill. As the sun climbs and the sky brightens, the firs grow taller and the barbarian army seems to advance... Then, when the sun is high enough, it suddenly lights up the firs that tumble down the mountainsides.’” Carnets II (Notebooks II). After the war, Albert Camus came back regularly with his family to rest at Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the villa “le Platane”, on the Côte de Molle.

The route in detail

This circuit is easy. The main difficulty comes in the first 2 kilometres up to La Détourbe. The rest, as far as Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, stays accessible to most people, with paths that are not very technical, not very steep and downhill. The last 4 kilometres are rideable climbs.