Bézuc

6 points of interest

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  History

  Le Pompidou

  Le Pompidou, like Saint-Roman de Tousque, owes its development to its location on the Corniche des Cévennes road. From the 17th century onwards, this former mule track carried substantial trade, with mule cart drivers bringing up salt, wine and dried fish from southern France to the Gévaudan, taking grains and cloth down from the uplands, and exporting the silk and chestnuts of the Cévennes. You can still see two buildings, the former inn (Le Cheval Blanc) and the Chapeau Rouge staging post, where travellers changed carriage horses.

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• Agriculture

  Small buildings

  The small buildings you see dotted here and there are jasses (from jas: place where livestock sleeps), sheepfolds of times gone by. There used to be at least 20 between Tartabissac and Bézuc. From the first warm days to 6 December, livestock would spend the night here, and their owners would come up during the day to watch them. An old saying goes, “No livestock in the chestnut groves before the sixth of December”. 6 December was the date of the fair in Florac when the local chestnuts were sold. Today Bézuc hosts 200 sheep for 8 months of the year.

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  Geology

  Contact

  At the Col de Tartabisac pass, there is a clear limit between the two bedrocks: on the left, the limestone plateau; on the right, a schist slope. The two rocks are in contact at a geological fault. A layer of very wet sandstone sits at the level of the meadows, at the foot of the limestone. This is where the water that has infiltrated via the thick layers of the Can plateau re-emerges. 

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  Geology

  Schist, limestone or granite

  From the track, you can make out the hamlets on the side of the valley at the foot of the Can: Roumassel, Le Crouzet, Le Crémat, Le Masbonnet. The land stretching from the valley floor to the plateau belongs to these hamlets, including chestnut groves, pasture and parcels for growing grains. After Bézuc, the bedrock is partly schist, where broom and heather grow, partly limestone, which is linked to the presence of the carline thistle. In a meadow beyond the beech forest, you can see blocks of granite, which stem from a vein linking Mont Aigoual to Mont Lozère. The ruiniform rocks on the plateau were shaped by water, which infiltrates fractures in the rock and dissolves the dolomite that they are made of.

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  Flora

  Ash trees

  Ash trees, like the ones that border the path, like cool and damp environments. They were planted alongside paths by locals because ash branches, cut towards the end of summer, provided additional fodder for livestock.

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  Water

  Water

  On the plateau, mains water was not installed until 1975. Before that, livestock had to be herded to the lavogne (a natural basin made waterproof using clay) to be watered, even in winter. At Les Crottes, two cisterns under the buildings recovered the rainwater from the roofs using a system of gutters: one is accessible via a sort of well from the house; the other, which holds 2,500 litres, can be accessed from the sheepfold. As you go downhill from Les Crottes, you pass a tapped source whose strong flow was surely a factor in the building of the farm just above.

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