Florac sits where several small rivers and several landscapes meet, at the foot of the great limestone plateaus of the Causses and the schist ridges of the Cévennes. A small town of nearly two thousand people, it is the headquarters of the Cévennes National Park, which occupies the old château, and it has a cheerful, unfussy air, with plane trees along the main street and a spring that gushes out of the rock just above town. The Tarnon river runs through, and the Tarn, a little way north, starts its journey toward the famous gorges.
This is Protestant country with a hard history. In the early eighteenth century, the Camisards, Calvinist peasants of the Cévennes, rose against the king's attempt to suppress their religion and fought a guerrilla war in these hills for years, and the memory of that resistance is part of local identity. The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson walked through Florac in 1878 with a donkey called Modestine, and his account of the journey, Travels with a Donkey, made the area known to the English-speaking world. The hillsides are covered with sweet chestnut trees, once the staple food of the region, and the landscape is a quilt of terraces and old stone farms.
For a rider, Florac is a very good place to start the Corniche des Cévennes, a high road that runs along a ridge for miles with views over a sea of wooded hills, and it is considered one of the finest drives in southern France. The road climbs from town in a series of tight bends, then follows the crest with gentler curves, though the surface can be patchy and the road is narrow, with steep drops on one side. Mist can fill the valleys in the morning, and the weather changes quickly. Florac has fuel, but supplies are limited, so it is wise to top up before leaving, and the larger town of Mende, about twenty-three kilometres away, is the next sure stop.
The best months are May, June and September, when the days are warm and the roads quiet. Summer brings crowds to the Tarn gorges, but the ridge roads stay peaceful. Buy a chestnut cake or a jar of chestnut cream in town, and keep it for the evening.