Le Ravin secret de Champernal

2 points of interest

• Agriculture

  Bancels (crop terraces)

  “They used to have their gardens over there, in Cessenade, they planted tomatoes, beans… because the village wasn’t hooked up to the water mains yet. The bancels were walled in to keep back the soil, with an opening just large enough for one man and his load of manure, they carried everything on their backs, even a mule couldn’t get there… Back then, there was so much to do that on evenings when the moon was full, they would repair the low walls, and there were people, this is really long ago, who took on a labourer to help them and they paid him with two or three basketfuls of soil that he would take back to his own bancels.”

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• Agriculture

  The béal (irrigation channel)

  On large slabs of stone, the path straddles the béal which irrigates the crop terraces, and whose starting-point is 1.5km upstream.
  “I know that several people had a right to the béal, and they each had their day to use the water. Where I lived there were at least 3 kilometres of béal, and to maintain them, we’d work in March and autumn. Nowadays you can water the parcels with a hose but it doesn’t distribute the water like a béal. When there were channels everywhere, everything was green, now it’s all dry”.

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