The World Heritage Site of Causses and Cévennes was not part of the original plan that my friend and I planned to visit during our trip to Pyrenes, the photos that we searched on Google and the reviews were not inspiring for an extra day detour until we found out that the must go of this cultural landscape was the beautiful area of Gorges du Tarn especially the surrounding villages near Sainte Enimie. We entered this World Heritage Site from Ales, we found that the scenery was quite boring with hilly landscape of forest, nothing special except some poor maintenance French villages. The view changed when we reached the town of Florec, from here we started to see the unique landscape that made Causses and Cévennes to be listed by UNESCO, the very large limestone plateau. The deep valley around the plateau was very nice. When we reached the village of Ispagnac, the scenic road was built along the deep canyon of Gorges du Tarn that formed by Tarn River. The canyon was actually very nice and we really surprised to see such geographical phenomenon in France.

The first place that really worth to mention is the village of Castelbouc. The village is located on the opposite side of the river from the main road on the much lower level from the street view. Actually we could easy bypass this village without notice, fortunately that we saw three motorcycles parked on the small viewpoint ramp, so we decided to stop to see why all those bikers stopped there. The view was amazingly beautiful, the river tarn was emerald green and the whole village of Castelbouc together with its castle ruins and few peach tree blossoms, a perfect welcome sight to Gorge du Tarn. We continued to Sainte Enimie, a very lovely village with sacred spring where we had lunch. After that we continued our trip to tiny village of Saint Chely du Tarn. Its small road to the village pass thru small tunnel and bridge was already breathtaking, but when we saw the village, we were astonished by the unbelievable view of small village built on many small waterfalls. Really one of the most beautiful places I have seen in France and truly the highlight of the trip to Gorges du Tarn. After great time in Saint Chely du Tarn, we drove along the river passed many nice villages that hard to believe their existing on earth to the town of Les Vignes. From here the road started to climb to the top of the canyon. The road was extremely hairpin but the views were absolutely great. On the top of Plateau, the landscape change again, now it became beautiful rolling hills of green grass, almost liked Tuscany, I saw many sheep farms, blossoming peach and apple trees, a very lovely place for farming and gardening. Then we used the highway to see another highlight of this region, the really impressive Viaduc de Millau, a great work of engineering on the way to Bezier.

We really enjoyed our day in Causses and Cévennes, its beautiful villages along Gorge du Tarn were really nice places to visit and explore. The limestone plateau and canyon were also quite interesting for its formation, its bizarre shaped rocks were quite OK, if you have not seen those stone forests in Chinese national parks. Although I still not sure what is the outstanding universal value of agro-pastoral landscape, since apart from the canyon, all fertile lands and livestock I saw looked typical for me, nothing special or unique from other French farming areas. However I thought the area deserved to be listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site, but not by the hard to grasp reasons that France currently used. Anyway with carefully planned routes that my friend and I did, I highly recommended to visit this lovely corner of France.