It rained the night I stayed in Les Faux. By morning it had stopped, but the sky was still overcast and it was foggy when I started on the trail. The rain had taken the dust down and everything smelled green and fresh.
This day was a short one, at 6.1 km (3.8 miles), and I had one mission on arriving in Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole: to find a laundromat. I did find public laundry facilities, but they weren’t what I expected.
On the far edge of town, where the trail exited, there was a Spar gas station and supermarket. In the back of the parking lot by the gas station, I found the Lavarie Revolution machines. I spent the next hour sitting on the curb, waving at the hikers as they stopped in the store and then continued out on the trail.
The main point of interest in Saint-Alban is the Château de Saint-Alban, which is thought to have originated as a medieval fortress but over the centuries was modified repeatedly due to sieges and various owner preferences, and in the 1700s took on its current Renaissance style.
One fun fact about the château is that the castle was one of the rallying points to hunt the Beast of Gévaudan, an animal or animals that killed dozens of people between 1764 and 1767. There’s a whole museum devoted to it in Saugues, and it’s referenced frequently along the trail in establishment names and art.
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Add Yours →That is definitely a serial killer.. Unless Australian dingos were imported.
There is a theory about that, apparently – the serial killer, not the dingos.