Barrage de Rabodanges

The dam’s history begins in 1919. Over a 4km stretch, between entering and exiting the St Aubert gorges, the Orne river bed runs steeply downhill, descending by about 40 metres. Taking advantage of the narrow valley at the entrance to the gorge, and the natural reservoir upstream, engineers were able to design an ambitious dam with substantial water retention. The reservoir stores up to six million cubic metres of water over an area of 95 hectares, held back by a 160 metre-long and 17 metre-high dam. The entire project, located in Plessis, can be viewed from the belvedere accessible via a footpath to the left of the site entrance.