People arrive expecting the fast train, because most of France has one. The Auvergne does not. The service from Paris to Clermont-Ferrand covers 260 miles on ordinary track in about three and a half hours, and for years it has been the line French travellers complain about most, with late arrivals common enough that this office leaves the first afternoon empty on purpose. What you get in exchange starts about forty minutes past the city limits, where the traffic simply stops. On the small roads west of Clermont-Ferrand you can drive for twenty minutes in the middle of a Tuesday and meet four cars.
The second thing the photographs do not carry is that the volcanoes are green. Eighty of them stand in a north to south line, cones and craters and one flat topped dome, and every one is under grass, gorse or beech. Puy de Dôme, the tallest, reaches 4,806 feet and has been worn smooth. Lac Pavin, forty minutes south, sits in a crater that blew about 6,900 years ago and counts as the youngest volcanic event on mainland France. Nothing is smoking. It is a range of soft green hills that happen to have the wrong shape.
The third thing is that the churches are black. The stone is andesite cut from the volcanoes just north of the city, and it does not weather to gold the way limestone does further west. Five village churches within thirty miles of each other share one plan, a barrel vaulted nave and a raised choir over a crypt, with carved capitals at eye level once you climb the steps beside the altar. Four of them can be walked into on a weekday morning with nobody else inside.
- What the week is
- Nine nights in three family run hotels, three nights in each, one under the Chaîne des Puys, one in a spa town below Puy de Sancy and one in the Cantal, with a van carrying the bags between them.
- What sets it apart
- Clermont-Ferrand sits 260 miles south of Paris and no high speed line reaches it, so the train takes about three and a half hours on ordinary track. The city airport handles a handful of flights and is not worth planning around. The ground is pasture over old lava, steep in short bursts rather than long ones. Beds are family run hotels of eight to thirty rooms, two of them built for the spa trade. The week runs mid March to mid November, from $3,190 per person.
- What the figure covers
- Nine nights in three hotels with private bathrooms; breakfast every morning; five dinners, two of them at farmhouses that make their own cheese; second class rail seats from Paris and back; a driver and van on six days, with the bags carried in the van and never by you; two long walks with a qualified mountain leader; arranged entry at four Romanesque village churches, including the two that are kept locked; the rack railway to the summit of Puy de Dôme; and a route book giving every walk at three lengths.
- What it leaves to you
- Transatlantic flights, which run $760 to $1,340 from Rochester by way of a European hub; the Paris night that an evening arrival usually makes unavoidable, $180 to $260 for a double room near the station; the single supplement of $690; lunches, $14 to $26 a head in a village and more in the city; four dinners; wine at dinner; thermal pool sessions at $22 to $34; anything bought at the two cheese farms; and travel insurance, which this office does not sell and does not advise on.
- Who this one is wrong for
- Do not book this if nobody in the party will sit through a flight of about eight hours and then a train of three and a half on the same day. Do not book it for two wheelchairs. One hotel has a lift, the other two hold a single ground floor room each, the churches have shallow steps at the doorway, and the farm tracks are rutted. The long days run seven to nine hours on foot with 2,600 feet of climb on loose grit, and the Sancy ridge is exposed to wind that often runs 40 miles an hour.
Rain stops at the ridge, and so does the traffic
Clermont-Ferrand is one of the driest cities in France, about 23 inches of rain in a year, because the Chaîne des Puys stands between it and the weather coming off the Atlantic. Twenty five miles southwest, on Puy de Sancy, the figure is over 70 inches, and snow lies in the north facing gullies into the first week of May. The two halves of this week want different clothing, and most people pack for one of them.
A day splits the party twice. The van leaves after breakfast, drops the walkers at a pass and carries everyone else on to a village, a lake or a market, and the two halves meet again in the late afternoon wherever there is a terrace. Nobody waits for anybody and nobody is counted. On the two long days a mountain leader walks with the fast group, and that is the only part of the week where a pace is imposed on anyone, because the Sancy ridge is not a place to spread out in cloud.
The roads are the constraint, not the distances. Le Mont-Dore is 30 miles from Clermont-Ferrand and takes fifty minutes. Salers is 55 miles further and takes an hour and forty five minutes, because the road bends around every valley head instead of crossing it. The Pas de Peyrol, at 5,240 feet the highest road pass in the Massif Central, is gated whenever snow sits on it, which can mean any week from November to April and occasionally a morning in May. When it is gated the van goes round, and that adds an hour.
Who this week was actually built around
It was built for a party that does not walk at one speed. The rack railway does the climb up Puy de Dôme in about fifteen minutes and puts a person who cannot manage a hill on the same summit, in the same wind, looking at the same eighty craters. The spa town has two miles of level path along the river and benches every few hundred yards. The churches stand at road level. Meanwhile the other half of the party gets the Sancy traverse, seven to nine hours, and comes back to the same dinner table with something to argue about.
It suits people who have not done this before and do not want to be the one holding the map. Every night is booked before departure. The driver is the same person all week and knows which farm track the van will not survive. The route book gives each walk at three lengths, short, half and full, marked from the same starting point, so the decision can be made at the pass and changed at lunch. There is no morning where the party has to negotiate something in a language it does not have.
Six cells, one for each obstacle, filled where this trip answers. Read the words below rather than the strip; the strip is a shorthand.
- The dates are fixed and short
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
- Somebody will not fly, or not far
- does not. There is no way to reach central France from Rochester without a transatlantic flight of about eight hours, and no rail or sea alternative exists at any price. What does
- The party moves at two speeds
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
- Nobody has done this before
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
- The free weeks are out of season
- answers it. Everything else that answers it
- One person travelling
- does not. The single supplement is $690 and cannot be waived, because two of the three hotels hold no single rooms at all and the third holds two. What does
What each stretch of the year takes from you
- Mid March to late April
- Snowmelt. Passes above 4,500 feet still gate without warning, the thermal buildings reopen one by one through April, and the farm cheeses made on summer pasture do not exist yet. Runs at $3,190.
- Last week of May
- The cattle walk up to the high pasture with bells on. Roads close for an hour at a time while they pass and the villages along the route are full. Add $240 and ask six months ahead.
- June
- The strongest month for grass and the weakest for certainty. Thunderstorms build over Sancy most afternoons after two, so the long walks start at seven and are off the ridge by four. $3,190.
- July and August
- Upper eighties in the city and the mountain villages fill with French families. Hotel rates rise, so the week runs $3,610, and the two farmhouse dinners have to be held nine months out.
- September to mid October
- Firm ground, cold mornings, clear ridges, and the cattle coming down through the third week of September. Requests for these dates arrive earliest, so a written figure can take the full four working days. $3,420.
- Late October to mid November
- The thermal season closes, roughly half the village kitchens shut for the year, and the light is gone by half past five. The week runs $3,190 and both long walks move to lower ground.
- Mid November to early March
- This office does not run the week at all. The Cantal is cut off by snow for days at a time and the farms are not receiving. Ask instead about the four night version based in the spa town.
The part people mention once they are home
Two things come back. The first is the food, which is not the France anyone was sold. It is potato beaten into cheese until it ropes, pork, lentils, dark bread, and a hard cheese at the end of every meal whether or not there was cheese in the middle of it. At nine in the evening it is heavy, and a person who does not eat dairy will have a narrow week here. This office tells the hotels in advance and the kitchens do try, but in a village of three hundred people there is one kitchen and it has one set of pans. The second thing is that English is not much spoken outside the hotels, and the driver's English is functional rather than comfortable.
The thermal establishments need saying plainly. They are medical facilities inside the French health system, and most of the people you see going in are there on a doctor's referral for three weeks. This office does not arrange courses of treatment and does not advise on anything medical. What it can book is the ordinary public pool, $22 to $34 a session, warm water outdoors at about 93 degrees with the mountain standing over it, and nothing beyond that. The other awkward number is the single supplement. It is $690, it cannot be waived, and it exists because two of these three hotels were built with no single rooms in them at all.
The request form runs 24/7 and never closes. Whatever arrives is read by a person before the end of that working day, and a figure priced against your particular dates takes two to four working days, because it means asking three hotels and a driver what those dates cost. No card number is asked for at any stage. This office takes no payment from travellers; the company that operates each part of the week bills you directly once the booking is placed.