I was browsing the International area and came across a conversation about walking in the Auvergne (central France). I couldn't see any trip reports though, so I hope this account of a walk that my wife and I did the autumn before last might be of interest to anyone considering visiting this wonderful area.
My wife's family lives in a small village near Clermont-Ferrand in central France and we were on a week's visit. The area is well known for its volcanoes and the iconic Puy de Dôme is easily the most famous because it dominates the landscape. Close by is the beautifully symmetric Puy Pariou crater and we decided to include both on a single walk.
Despite Puy de Dôme being about 120m higher than Ben Nevis, the ascent from the car park is probably less than 400m and the overall ascent for the whole 12 mile walk was less than 900m. We parked in a car park at the base and headed up the steep zig-zag path. This is the route I recorded - shown in 3D on Google Earth:
Setting off. The path goes up gently through woods for a while, before getting to the steep bit!
A train that's a bit more modern than Snowdon's one winds its way up to the summit like a corkscrew. There were a lot of people on the path and a great many more at the summit.
Once out of the trees, the view opened up and was magnificent! Our starting point is just visible to the right below...
The summit is dominated by a rocket-like mast. It being a volcano, the top has a broad dip and walking around the rim provided fantastic views in all directions. There's also a restaurant, toilets and a shop - and a Roman temple! - and it was all very busy, so we were happy to set off down the other side towards Puy Pariou.
Much of the descent on the Pariou side is on an extremely long wooden staircase, which made it very easy. This is the view back to the Puy de Dôme:
We followed a really nice and very quiet track towards Puy Pariou through woodland and wide open grassy areas. The crater is ahead and the path up is clearly visible from a distance - it turned out to be another long staircase!
The view back from the top of the stairs:
The Pariou crater is huge and incredible. We stopped for lunch and a rest on the rim:
We could see a path spiralling down into the crater so we walked around the rim to it and then headed down to the bottom.
Getting back to the car proved unexpectedly problematic! We didn't have a map, but we didn't want to return the way we came. So we followed a minor path down the far side of the crater and found ourselves in woods, which meant that we couldn't see a Puy de Dôme to head for. And to make life more difficult, there were some smaller volcanoes in our way! Our solution was take paths that took us south (on the whole!) and hope to spot a big volcano with a rocket on top...
...and finally, there it was. We just needed to work our way around the base and find the car park:
Quite some time later we found what we were looking for - as well as a cafe where we stopped for drinks before driving back to our accommodation.