THINES is a dozen twisting kilometres up the Chassezac from Les Vans, past isolated farms, abandoned terracing and numerous tumbling streams, then a further 5km or so up a side valley. The lane that leads to it is no wider than a car, and nature encroaches on either side. Traces remain of the old mule road, and in the torrent bed stand the stumps of packhorse bridges long since carried away. Among the scrubby oaks are beehives made from old tree trunks.The village itself is at the end of the road high on a spur, looking back down the valley: just a handful of squat, grey-stone houses tightly grouped around a very lovely twelfth-century church, decorated with bands of red and white stone, the faces of its sculptures smashed during the Wars of Religion. At the top of the village, where the GR4 and the local GRP enter from the scrubby heights behind, there is a strange rock-cut relief commemorating Resistance people killed here in August 1943. There's also a gîte d'étape (Mme Bacconnier; tel 04.75.36.94.33) and ferme auberge (Mme Archambault; tel 04.75.36.94.47; closed mid-Nov to Easter). If your car is reasonably robust, you can get up onto the D4 on the 1000m ridge above Thines by a track that starts just above the bridge over the stream below the village. This is the so-called Corniche du Vivarais Cévenol, which you would otherwise have to make a long detour to reach. SABLIÈRES, another desolate Cévennes village, lies in the valley of the Drobie down to your right. The landscape changes completely up here. The Mediterranean influence is left behind; it's windswept moorland, with natural beechwoods and mountain ash around the few bleak farms and plantations of conifers on the tops. The land rises steadily to over 1400m above the Col de Meyrand, itself at 1370m, from where it's possible to head back down to the main road and train line at LUC, which is 18km to the west.
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