AUVERGNE
On the land of the Gallic Arvernes, volcanoes strut between hollows and bumps
with jagged craters,
On these high basaltic plateaus between the biting north wind and the autan
by the insinuating south,
Auvergne looks like a natural Eldorado where the wild Loire is born
close to the thickets of Gévaudan,
In this council of molehills takes shape the land of the buronniers of yesteryear
with unique cheese-making know-how.
Warhead-shaped head and mantle of stone scales, under the huge block
monolithic Mont Gerbier de Jonc,
The Loire begins its long journey which will lead it from villages to castles
to the ocean of sailors,
In this country garden, the chain of Puys offers us in land of fire,
a nice walk,
Where with his hole at the top of his head like a pothole, a fontanel
badly closed, Como parade.
On this former land of fire, the paths on the side of volcanoes reveal
the Auvergne nature of yesteryear,
Where the Chaîne des Puys, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, stretches out
over 32 km in 80 volcanoes,
Including the Puy Pariou attracting 80,000 hikers per year,
he who played the leading role in an advertisement for Volvic,
But it is the Puy de Dôme which holds the star thanks to its cogwheel train
over 350 m of geological elevation.
Often hidden by cumulus clouds, its summit at 1,465 m is marked by the TDF relay
TV antenna,
There since the 2nd century, Mercury has his temple built in trachyte on a terrace,
a quadrilateral of 60 m side,
Behind them a string of rounded mountains carpeted with forests at the foot
Puys Chopine or the Cow,
And at the edge of the trees the alpine chalets of the shepherds, the sheep at the top
and below the cows.
In these landscapes similar to the Kyrgyz steppes, Salers cows graze,
auroch horns and mahogany dress,
As the wind sweeps the short grass between the stunted junipers
where you can smell the smell of gentian everywhere,
A feeling of tonic and bitter, a severity that could get drunk
the peregrin on a providential run,
Auvergne looks like an initiatory journey in contact with wild nature
where the puys touch the sky
On the Bolster, hooked nose, pale fleece, head and legs speckled with black,
the Rava plays the star in the heather,
Faithful gardeners, these sheep graze on volcanoes whose fragile soils
do not support cattle,
Lower down, the cows graze on a grass with thyme, wild thyme and gentian,
giving its inimitable taste to St Nectaire,
Exclusively produced in the heart of the Sancy and Cézallier massifs,
its creamy and supple paste has no equal epicurean.
On the way to the craters, this set shaped by the violence of the fire
composes a fascinating landscape,
Of the hundred volcanoes, eight are domes, ten maars
and eighty cones,
Mercury the god of travelers and commerce has his nearby temple
from the Observatory, on the Puy de Dôme,
As for Vulcania, its huge cone announces a journey to the center of the earth,
in a deafening setting.
In this splendid panorama of the volcanoes of Auvergne, the Sancy culminating
at 1,886 m is the highest,
The Cézallier with blunt reliefs presents high plateaus with pastures
green areas punctuated by lakes and burons,
The Cantal mountains are distinguished by rugged ridges,
except the lead in the shape of a pommel,
Puy Mary and its star-shaped glacial valleys make up
one of the most striking landscapes of the mountains.
In the north of the Puys chain, the Gour de Tazenat, a maar with a perfect circle
and wooded banks,
Crater lake filled with clear water 66 m deep,
dormant for 40,000 years,
Further east, an open-air volcano, streaked with a dozen operating levels
was a career of yesteryear,
The Lemptéguy shows its vertical lava veins and provides pozzolana
for the manufacture of cements.
Emblematic of Auvergne, it reigns over its high plateaus
speckling the summer pastures with yellow,
The great gentian is extracted from the ground by the "gençanaïres"
using the devil's pitchfork with 2 arrows,
Its macerated or distilled roots produce drinks
with marked bitterness, aperitif or digestive,
This yellow fairy, once a miracle cure, is an luminary
herbal medicine in the form of dry roots.
With the Puy de Dôme in the background, Clermont-Ferrand and its narrow streets
give off a medieval atmosphere,
Announced from afar by the spiers of the black cathedral piercing the sky of the city,
sort of vertical totem,
On the Clermont hill, it was Viollet le Duc who restored the famous
needles of N.D. of the Assumption,
On the Place de Jaude, Bartholdi recalls Gergovie with Vercingétorix
on his levitating horse
that was before phylloxera,
The transformation of a small family factory will change
the economic fabric of the city of Auvergnats,
Michelin, the firm at the famous Bibendum has developed since 1898
tire endurance tests,
Its industrial cathedral symbolized by the 2 brick towers
engrave a century dedicated to the automobile, ingenious.
With its four massive corner towers crowning a sugar loaf
overlooking the Truyère gorges,
The castle of Alleuze in the 13th century. sheltered a soldier of great cruelty,
the evil hunchback reigned there without menstrual bands,
But this site forming a peninsula between St Flour and the Grandval dam
served as a film set for scrambles,
This fortress knew the truck loaded with pumpkins chased
by the German sidecar in the Grande Vadrouille.
On its rocky pedestal overlooking the valley, St Flour and its walls
will be in the Middle Ages, impregnable,
Its high houses springing from the rock make up a picture punctuated
of the two square towers of the cathedral,
In the climb of St Roch, the hand of St Flour bears witness to the legend
of Bishop Florus, prelate of the territory,
The monumental Gothic St Pierre cathedral, looking like a fortress,
houses the Romanesque crucifix of the Black Christ.
In these mountains of Cantal the ice has sculpted in the planèze
a trough valley, authentic and wild,
On high plateaus with the air of Mongolia is born the valley of Brezons,
the land of waterfalls for landscape,
The lava flows have erected obstacles, erecting stairs
which force the water to leap at the Saut de la truite,
In Margeride, the Truyère gorges offer the Vezou belvedere
a sight of constructed dizziness.
To cross these gorges of the Truyère, a grandiose work of art
keeps an eye on the A75 to motorists,
A monumental arch of red lace will allow the railway viaduct
from Garabit to connect Paris to Béziers,
Built in 1884 by Gustave Eiffel, 565 m long to 122 m high
it was the highest considered viaduct in the world,
You can admire it from every angle by going up the river in a kayak
on pedals between the banks cut in the schist.
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To the south of the gorges begin the high volcanic plateaus of Aubrac,
between Cantal, Aveyron and Lozère,
These vast expanses planed by the glaciers were separated into plots
with dry stone walls,
Just like these fences, the streams lace the plateau
of silver ribbons under the light,
Here the farmhouses include a main room with its enclosed chestnut bed,
a inglenook fireplace and a sour granite sink.
Perched on their volcanic peaks, the chapel and the statue of the Virgin
watch over the ponote city,
Le Puy en Velay lurking in its basin dotted with lava needles sees
since the 5th century. pilgrims in search of meals,
It is on the stone of fevers, a large dark slab of phondite
that the virgin would have appeared, magisterial,
The black Madonna offered by St Louis on his return from Egypt
sits in the center of the altar of the cathedral.
In this "country of the beast", in the heart of the wild gorges,
several sculpted totems encourage pilgrims,
In Gévaudan, in this region of Saugues, a mysterious beast
in the summer of 1764 caused panic,
Forcing the Intendant of Languedoc to send his dragons to mischief
equally undesirable and naughty,
Enthroned above the village, sculpted in an 8 m tree, it recalls
the atrocities of the fantastic beast.
In the heart of the town of Brioude, the St Julien basilica,
dazzled by the polychromy of its equipment,
The columns of the pillars of the nave and their mosaics of pink and yellow sandstone,
surmounted by capitals decorated with enamel,
Make the mixed colors of dark basalt red scoria dance
from surrounding quarries,
Even the ground is paved with light and dark pebbles from the Allier where
the footsteps of pilgrims, troubadours.
In the Alagnon valley, a large defensive tower emerging
of an ocean of ancient tiled roofs,
Ad Blesle, where every street corner bears witness to its medieval past
half-timbered houses,
Along the Allier, on the banks of the river, a slate bell tower stands out
in a peaceful green setting,
The chapel of Ste Marie des Chazes is the quintessence of the bucolic church
at the foot of basalt cliffs.
On a rocky mound above the green valley of the Sénouire,
arises the village of Lavaudieu,
A cluster of stone houses, topped with coral tiles where stands
the hexagonal bell tower of St André Abbey,
Around a bend, a huge fortress church appears above
fields, once through the forest,
The austere bastion of spirituality opens the treasures of history
fascinating chair of the Chaise-Dieu.
Direction the north of Auvergne, in the bocage of Allier,
to the old medieval duchy of the Bourbons,
From Henri IV to Louis-Philippe, eight Bourbons have risen to the throne of France
through the interplay of matrimonial alliances,
Placed in the middle of the agricultural plain of Besson, the 15th century castle. by Fourchaud
emerged from its branchial gangue,
With its 22 roofs with numerous pinnacles, the Château du Vieux Bostz
will become the Bourbon museum.
In the Allier prefecture, the Ducal Palace of Moulins houses the museum
Anne de Beaujeu in her Renaissance wing,
This illustrious house of the Bourbons has its necropolis in Souvigny
St Peter and St Paul in the imposing priory,
In Chapeau, the Château de la Cour surprises with its polychromy
in herringbone red and black bricks without shine,
The opulent feudalism of the Bourbons built a network of seigneurial properties,
representative of the Bourbonnais heritage.
Guy Pujol said the l’ARIÉ…..JOIE