The Cévennes in 5 days

The 1,565-metre roof of the Gard, topped by a late 19th-century granite weather observatory, with views on clear days from the Mediterranean to the Alps.

The Bonheur river vanishes underground and roars out of a 40-metre fissure; Édouard-Alfred Martel first crossed its underground course in 1888.

A ridge road of about 50 km between Florac and Saint-Jean-du-Gard, built in the early 18th century for Louis XIV's troops hunting the Camisards.

The GR 70 follows Robert Louis Stevenson's 1878 walk with his donkey Modestine, its Cévennes stretch crossing schist ridges, chestnut groves and hamlets.

The birthplace of Camisard leader Rolland at Mas Soubeyran, a museum of Protestant memory since 1911, with a hiding place, portable pulpits and galley registers.

Giant bamboo planted in 1856 by Eugène Mazel, now a forest of 20-metre stems, with a Laotian village, a Dragon Valley garden and his sequoias.

A steam locomotive pulling open carriages for 13 km between Anduze and Saint-Jean-du-Gard, through tunnels and over viaducts above the Gardon valley.

A bare granite ridge of boulders and heather peaking at 1,699 metres, crossed by old drove roads marked with standing stones for foggy days.