Travels with a Donkey: Through the Cévennes

Stevenson spent "about a month of fine days" in Le Monastier, a highland village fifteen miles from Le Puy, before setting out. Here he took on his pack animal, a donkey he "instantly baptized" Modestine. The village is now the official start of the Robert Louis Stevenson Trail (GR 70): a plaque on Place de la Poste marks where walkers, some leading donkeys of their own, set off to retrace his steps.

Para el visitante: Place de la Poste, in the centre of the village, is the marked start of the GR 70 trail.

Pradelles stands on a hillside high above the Allier, and Stevenson barely stopped. Over a hurried lunch his landlady urged him to visit Our Lady of Pradelles, "who performed many miracles, although she was of wood". He declined, and within three-quarters of an hour he was goading Modestine down the steep descent towards Langogne. The GR 70 still runs through the town, so walkers can linger where he did not.

Para el visitante: The GR 70 trail passes through the town, so walkers can join Stevenson's route here.

Night fell in wind and rain as Stevenson tried to reach Cheylard. At Fouzilhic, "three houses on a hillside, near a wood of birches", a kind old man walked a little way with him to put him on the right road. It did not last: lost in the dark, he came on red windows again, but this was Fouzilhac, a neighbouring hamlet "worlds away in the spirit of its inhabitants". Next morning, at a corner, there was Fouzilhic once more, and the same old gentleman running out of his house.

Precisión del lugar: The book names two small hamlets but gives no position; the text does not let us fix them on a modern map, so this stop is left unpinned.

Stevenson sought shelter at the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Snows. Modestine was led off to the stables by a layman, while he and his pack were received into the house. The abbey was founded in 1850 by Trappist brothers and stands at 1,100 metres in the Ardèche mountains, just north of the Cévennes.

Para el visitante: The abbey is a working religious community; check its own visiting rules first.

Pont de Montvert felt different to Stevenson, and one of the first things he met there was the Protestant temple. He wrote that the village was "memorable in the story of the Camisards": it was here that their war broke out. The village is named for its hump-backed bridge over the Tarn, still the heart of the place.

Stevenson reached Saint-Jean-du-Gard on 3 October 1878, and here his walk ended. After "a desperate engagement" at the market he sold Modestine, saddle and all, parting with the donkey who had carried his pack the whole way. The Robert Louis Stevenson Trail (GR 70), which follows his approximate route, finishes in the town at a fountain built to commemorate his arrival, so hikers can end where he did.