France
Vallon-Pont-d'Arc
Gateway town to the Ardèche canyon, its stone arch and 36,000-year-old cave paintings.
The natural arch frames the river like a threshold — cross beneath it and the gorge begins, a canyon of more than thirty kilometres with 36,000-year-old paintings hidden in the cliffs above. Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, southern France's gateway to the gorge, is the town at the top of it all, the place where the canoes are hired, the campsites fill and the ancient and the wild meet at the same bend in the river.
Vallon is the base for the Ardèche: a market town in the vines a few kilometres above the Pont d'Arc, where the river has cut its limestone arch and the canyon starts. The canoe hirers line the road down to the water, and the descents leave from here — a half-day to the arch and back, one day or two right through the gorge, with the bivouac areas inside it for the night. In 1994 three cavers found the Chauvet cave in the cliffs nearby, painted more than 36,000 years ago and sealed since a rockfall in prehistory; the original is closed to protect it, and Grotte Chauvet 2, the replica above the town, reproduces the panels of lions, horses, rhinoceros and bears in their own darkness with an exactness that stops conversation.
Couple
The Chauvet replica in the morning — thirty-six millennia of art in the dark — then the river by canoe in the afternoon, paddling beneath the arch that framed the same water for the painters. Deep time and present pleasure in one day.
Family
Children respond to the cave paintings — animals they recognise, drawn by people they cannot imagine. The canoe trip adds adventure, the campsites add the outdoors, and the arch provides the defining photograph.
Friends
A two-day gorge descent with a night at a bivouac — the arch at the start, the canyon closing round you, the stars over the beach. The Chauvet replica adds a cultural anchor to the physical adventure.
- The Pont d'Arc — a natural limestone arch some sixty metres wide — frames the entrance to more than thirty kilometres of gorge.
- Grotte Chauvet 2 reproduces the paintings of the cave found here in 1994 — more than 36,000 years old and among the earliest known anywhere.
- Canoe hire in the town puts you on the river within minutes — the canyon unfolds in a full day's paddle downstream.
- Bivouac areas inside the gorge let you sleep under the stars with the canyon walls above — book them before you go.
Crème de châtaigne — Ardèche chestnut cream — spread on a crêpe or a slice of bread at the market.
Picodon — the small, sharp goat's cheese of the Ardèche hills, aged until firm — alongside a glass of local red.
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