The Truyère gorges, a Natura 2000 site

Downstream of the cottage, the Truyère calms and joins the Lot. Upstream it does the opposite: it cuts into deep, wooded gorges, wild enough to be classified as a Natura 2000 site.

A landscape shaped by water and by people

The Truyère is an engineered river. A succession of dams, Couesques, Cambeyrac, and higher up Sarrans, has flooded the gorges into a chain of dark reservoirs framed by slopes of oak and chestnut. The result is strange and beautiful: a drowned mountain landscape.

Lac de Sarrans, between Aveyron and Cantal, is the largest. It stretches between the Aubrac plateaux and the summits of the Cantal.

What you can do there

The gorges lend themselves to fishing, to swimming in supervised areas, to canoeing and to sailing on the broader stretches of water. The ridge roads offer regular viewpoints, so this is as much a driving route as a walking one.

On foot, the Truyère gorges loop of the Lo Camin d’Olt trail crosses them over 62 km from Entraygues, by way of Couesques, Saint-Hippolyte and Valon.

Worth a stop

The Saut du Chien waterfall, a run of falls tumbling down a rocky chaos, is a short distance away and makes a fine late-afternoon halt.