Part 2, day 4 : Serviès to St.Gervais-sur-Mare

According to one source, Serviès had 636 inhabitants in 2016, up from a low of 365 in 1982, roughly the same number as in the beginning of the 19th century. I found this statistic amazing because I would have guessed less that 100, so they must have been tucked away where I couldn't see them. The tiny hamlet where I stayed had no services whatsoever, including no cell reception, and the only other public building I saw other than the gîte was l' Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste which was closed. On the other hand, there must have been an area I didn't see because there is a thermal spa in nearby Avène. This was once an area dominated by coal mining as well, possibly until the mid-twentieth century, but there was little evidence of that left to my untrained eyes.

Here is the dining/living area of the gîte

 I was also glad I had taken the demi-pension.  I ate it by myself, though as it as it was left in the refrigerator, just waiting for my arrival!
The walk itself was long and quite difficult--much more so than the previous route I had walked--Le Puy-en-Velay. The region is part of the Haut-Languedoc, an area just south of the Massif-Central between the Departments of Tarn and the Hérault.

There was some serious rock scrambling this day and there were particularly bad descents into Meclè and St. Gervais-sur-Mare. I distinctly remember being too terrified to attempt a photo approaching St. Gervais after scaling a rock far above the town with a gorgeous view of the valley below...  

 

 

I had been lucky in Serviès as there was a man in my gîte, Clément, with a Samsung phone who lent me his charger, so I was good for another day for photos and alarm clock, if nothing else. That evening in St. Gervais I shared a lovely modern gîte communal with Hervé, a retired professor from Nice, and Bernard, a Pied-Noir, actually born in Tunisia, now retired from the French diplomatic service and living in New Caledonia.  They also had a Samsung charger !

The gîte in St. Gervais-sur-Mare