The landscape

Marker 3The panorama looks out over the Herm valley. The hamlets, built on  ledges at the level of the springs, are surrounded by terraces of crop land. They are scattered within the sweet-chestnut orchards, once cultivated to feed both humans and animals. From the end of the 19th century to the mid-1950s, many chestnut trees were cut down for wood or tannin. At the same time, pines were planted to provide wood to shore up galleries in the coal mines in the Alès basin. With the chestnut orchards mostly abandoned today, pine trees are establishing themselves on the ridges, whose shallow soils are not suited to chestnut trees, and are slowly taking over the landscape.