Provence Trip 2024 - Part 6 St Veran

St Veran sits at an altitude of 2,042m which is the highest year round inhabited village in France, and third highest in western Europe. It's a village full of alpine style houses dating from the C17th and C18th. Once these mountain villages relied on agriculture to survive whereas now summer tourism and winter sports are also ways to make a living.

The diagram shows how the majority of houses were built. They had a stone ground floor, then wooden floors above made from whole tree trunks. A smaller stone building was attached to the main building called a 'caset'. In this were a kitchen and store rooms. The families lived in the main, largest room with the animals for warmth and the upper wooden floors called 'fustes', which allowed air to circulate, were where they dried and stored fodder for their animals for the long winter. The houses were built mainly of larch and had large larch shingles or flat stone shingles for their roofs. They face south west to take advantage of the sun.

A Rowan tree below showing its lovely orange berries.

The village is long and built mainly around one street and was historically divided into 5 hamlets. This was to do with fighting fires in the wooden buildings and hence where the water fountains were located.

There are five of these fountains/troughs in the village and the water comes from mountain springs. The round bit was for the animals to drink from and the lower rectangular part for washing clothes.

There was a large photo showing the village at the beginning of the C20th, but the buildings haven't changed a lot on the outside, although they have of course been adapted for C20th and C21st century living. That's an Crag Martin flying in the picture.

The scenery around was amazing. We could feel the cool air up here and by the state of the geraniums in planters there had been a recent frost. We had lunch sitting out on the terrace above the village here and it was really a stunning place to sit and eat. The food was extremely filling too, I had a beef stew with gnocchi which was an odd mix and I could only get through about half of it!

Here we can see a number of different roofing styles, and another fountain.

A building that is different from the rest!

We then came down from the village to the valley below and had a walk along beside the stream.

Autumn Crocus (Colchicum autumnale). I've seen them growing in the mountain areas at this time of year both in the Pyrenees and the Southern Alps, but they are widespread throughout much of Europe. There were hundreds of them in the grassy area above.

L'Aigue-Blanche stream, looking in the direction of Italy which was close by.

Looking back in the other direction.

The map shows our journey from Guillestre to St Veran.