발시에주 최고의 워킹 & 하이킹 경로

View of Mende from the urban path V.

Small village, few opportunities

The village of Barjac is surrounded by small volcanoes called Les Sucs. There is another Barjac located in the neighboring department of Gard. France has many villages with similar names. It is sometimes easy to get the wrong destination due to these similarities.

On the Causse de Mende, above the town, there are two villages which were sold to the State by their last inhabitants in 1905: Gerbal and La Chaumette. At this date, there remains an inhabitant in Gerbal and a family in La Chaumette. We are far from the fifteen families who lived here at the beginning of the 19th century. These villages lived off the breeding of sheep and the cultivation of wheat. But from the 16th century, the demand for wool exploded in Europe. The herds are growing, which leads to the deforestation of more and more areas and the exhaustion of land. It is therefore depleted and leached land which is ceded to the State, which establishes the current forest there. Of these villages there remain the ruins of the dwellings, with the exception of a Chaumette complex restored by the ONF in the 1960s. These houses, entirely in limestone, are models of the Caussenard habitat. The main building has two levels, ground floor housing and the floor dedicated to storage, is accompanied by a sheepfold surmounted by its barn. All of these constructions are made of stone, there is no wood of sufficient quality and size or at too high a cost. There were only two villages because there are only two sources of water, which had to supplement several cisterns and lavognes (artificial pond to water the cattle).