Travel: How Robert Louis Stevenson visited the Cévennes but missed all the best bits

In late September 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson set off on a 12-day hike through south-central France, starting in Le Monastier-sur-Gazeille in the Haute-Loire and ending up in Saint-Jean-du-Gard, about 200km to the south. His travelling companion was a donkey called Modestine who, it’s fair to say, didn’t always make life easy for him. The journal he kept eventually became his 1879 book Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes – not his most famous work by any means, but as a piece of writing about the outdoors, many years ahead of its time.

Hiking trail near La Bourgarie in the Cévennes | Roger Cox / The Scotsman

For a start, Stevenson’s preference for sleeping under the stars in a custom-made “sleeping sack” marked him out as something of a pioneer. Not only were sleeping bags not yet really a thing in the late 1870s, his penchant for rough sleeping was met with horror by some of the locals he encountered, who feared he could be attacked by wolves. Of course, Stevenson wasn’t the only person writing about getting back to nature in the mid-19th century – the literary push-back against the Industrial Revolution didn’t take long to get going – but even some of the most outdoors-obsessed of his contemporaries still enjoyed their home comforts while supposedly roughing it. When Henry David Thoreau spent two-and-a-bit years living a “simple life” in a cabin in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, for example – the experience that formed the basis for his 1854 classic Walden – he did at least have a roof over his head, a bed to sleep in and his mum, Cynthia, living nearby and regularly doing his laundry for him.

Stevenson was also surprisingly contemporary in terms of his attitudes to outdoor recreation – in fact, the philosophy underpinning Travels with a Donkey anticipates that of his fellow Scot Nan Shepherd, writing almost a century later which, in turn, has had a major influence on many of today’s most successful nature writers. Just as Shepherd wrote of the joys of walking “into” mountains rather than up them, with the ticking off of summits less of a priority than simply appreciating the mountain environment, so in Travels with a Donkey Stevenson writes “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake.”

Visiting the Cévennes today, nearly a century-and-a-half after Stevenson and Modestine completed their epic yomp, it’s surprising to find that the author is at least as celebrated in this part of France as he is in his homeland. Gift shops at tourist hotspots in the area all seem to have multiple versions of Travels with a Donkey for sale (including a beautiful band dessinée version of the story by Alexandre Cot and Marlène Merveilleux) and a hiking trail following the route Stevenson took, the GR70 or “Chemin de Stevenson”, is a major tourist attraction in its own right. Those wishing to follow in the writer’s footsteps can hire donkeys for some or all of the journey, and accommodation providers along the route will often advertise themselves as “donkey friendly”, so 21st century Modestines need never miss a meal.

The River Tarn near La Malène, Cévennes | Roger Cox / The Scotsman

One thing you can’t help noticing, though, as you travel around the Cévennes, is that, while Stevenson The Brand may be everywhere, when the man himself was on his big walk he managed to miss out on a lot of the things that make the region special. In fact, scratch that: Stevenson somehow contrived to miss out almost all of the good stuff. There were some agonizing near-misses, too. For example, while Stevenson and Modestine did indeed visit the achingly beautiful medieval town of Florac beside the River Tarn (now also home to an excellent pizza restaurant called La Dolce, with its own idyllic courtyard) they then tacked south-east and made for their final destination. Had they continued for a few more miles to the west, however, following the Tarn, they would have reached first Castelbouc, an ancient, otherworldly settlement carved into limestone cliffs which is more or less Rivendell minus the elves, and then, a little further on, drop-dead gorgeous Sainte-Énimie, one of the 176 Plus Beaux Villages de France and, if the organisation dishing out these designations were ever to countenance something as divisive as a ranking system, surely a contender for a spot in the top ten.

The village of Sainte-Énimie | Roger Cox / The Scotsman

A few miles further to the south-west, depending on how sure-footed Modestine was feeling, Stevenson could also have visited the airy hiking trail that runs south from La Bourgarie along spectacular limestone cliffs, with the River Tarn a thin ribbon of blue far below and vultures circling overhead. And, while he would probably have had to leave Modestine tied up for a few hours, he might even have found someone prepared to take him on a boat down the river itself, an experience so popular these days that the Cévennes seems to have almost as many kayak hire businesses as people.

The stalagmite forest in Aven Armand | Roger Cox / The Scotsman

Stevenson’s biggest miss, however, was Aven Armand, a stadium-sized limestone cave situated 20km south of Sainte-Énimie containing a jaw-dropping forest of more than 400 gigantic stalagmites. The cave wasn’t discovered until 1897 though, so the only way Stevenson and Modestine could have found it would have been by accidentally falling in through the tiny hole at the top. Probably best for all concerned, then, that they took that left turn when they got to Florac.

For more on the Cévennes, visit www.cevennes-tourisme.fr