History of the path

Not so long ago, the inhabitants of Bougès still gathered chestnuts here. “We gathered them in the 60s, those were the last years. I saw my parents gathering them, they carried everything on their backs. It was one hell of a job carrying them back up that path.”More recently, the path was still in use. “That path was the postman's path. He came from Saint-Julien by Mijavols, and then he left this way, jumped across the footbridge and went up the other slope. In the old days, the postman walked 40 kilometres a day, it wasn't a restful job.”The path was used for taking grains from  Bougès down to the mill near the railway track. That made it necessary to carry out major improvements, which you can still see today. A supporting wall keeps the path's foundations in place while shaped rock or a hand-built wall protects it from rock slides. Creating many hairpin bends made it possible to reduce the slope's gradient.