France
Gorges du Tarn
Emerald water snaking between limestone walls hundreds of metres high while vultures circle overhead.
The water is emerald and the walls are hundreds of metres of vertical limestone, and somewhere overhead a griffon vulture is circling on a thermal without moving its wings. The Gorges du Tarn, in southern France, are one of the deepest canyons in Europe — a river corridor cut through the causses where the paddler's world narrows to water, rock and the strip of sky directly above.
The Tarn rises on Mont Lozère and plunges into its gorges for fifty-three kilometres between Ispagnac and Le Rozier, the cliffs climbing to five hundred metres where the river has sawn down through the Grands Causses, the vast limestone tablelands between sky and cliff. Griffon vultures, brought back to the causses in the 1980s after they had gone, breed on the ledges now in their hundreds. The road follows the river for much of the way, but the best of the gorge is from the water: the canoe descent from Sainte-Enimie to Le Rozier is a full day of calm stretches and easy rapids past hamlets that can only be reached by boat or footpath — a few houses, a chapel, an auberge — and through the Pas de Souci, where a rockfall has choked the river with boulders and the water slips under them. Trout come out of the river onto the auberge tables.
Couple
The canoe descent puts you at water level with hundreds of metres of rock on each side — the scale builds slowly and the silence between strokes is profound. Overnight at a riverside auberge, trout for dinner, the canyon walls darkening above.
Friends
The full-day paddle from Sainte-Enimie, with swimming stops, the Pas de Souci boulders and vultures overhead, is a shared adventure that swings between calm and adrenaline. The riverside auberges serve the kind of meals that taste better after a canyon.
- Emerald water snakes between limestone walls up to five hundred metres high — the canoe descent is a full day of near-silent paddling.
- Griffon vultures circle overhead — brought back to the causses in the 1980s, they now breed on the canyon ledges.
- Hamlets reached only by boat or footpath dot the canyon — some are a chapel, an auberge and nothing else.
- The Pas de Souci narrows to a boulder-choked defile where the river slips under the rockfall and re-emerges downstream.
Trout from the Tarn, pan-fried with butter, lemon and almonds at a riverside auberge.
Fouace — the soft, orange-scented crown loaf of the causses — torn apart at breakfast or with aligot at night.
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