The Gagères by the Col de la Chau

4 points of interest

• Vassieux-en-Vercors

  Vassieux-en-Vercors is a place of resistance, and remains forever marked by history. Vassieux is one of the 5 towns and villages of France named after the Companions of the Liberation by General de Gaulle. The village paid a heavy tribute to the help brought by its inhabitants to the maquis of the Vercors. In fact, while the maquis were waiting for a parachute of provisions and weapons, it was the Nazis who sprang up in gliders and landed in the plain of Vassieux, on July 21, 1944. The massacre that followed sounded the end Of resistance in the Vercors. In the central square, a commemorative plaque (a martyrologist) honors the names of the inhabitants, 76 women, children and men who lost their lives on the 430 inhabitants of the village. The Memorial of the Resistance invites us to reflection and to remember. But Vassieux also retains the traces of an earlier history: that of prehistoric men, using an important deposit of flint, evoked by the Museum of Prehistory.

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• Forest of Lente

  With its 3000 hectares located between 1100 m and 1600 m of altitude, the forest of Lente is mainly composed of beeches exploited formerly for the coal, as well as softwoods exploited for the construction of mats for the navy. The forest home includes 5 types of ungulates: chamois, roe deer, deer, mouflons and wild boars.

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• Plateau of Font d'Urle

  Property for a small part of the commune of Vassieux en Vercors, for the most part the department of Drôme since 1954, the departmental domain of Font d'Urle is a sensitive natural space. Its vocation is the protection of nature and the reception of the public. Some rules of common sense make it possible to protect this space as well as to cohabit in good understanding with the shepherds and their flocks. Picking flowers that are particularly spectacular in May and June is prohibited. Dogs, even on a leash, are prohibited during the summer season (May to October). In the middle of the mountain pastures, there are herds of horses in semi-freedom. In this vast steppe of altitude, stretch of grass and rocks "with for all border the sky" (Joseph Kessel), one would think oneself in Mongolia.

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• Plateau of Vassieux

  The plateau of Vassieux-en-Vercors is an open landscape characteristic of the karstic plateaus, the surface water is almost non-existent and the soils are not thick. However, dolines, which are depressions where the clay accumulates, thus allowing the cultivation of cereals, alongside these dolines, the stones are heaped up.The ruins of two old windmills are visible in the hamlet of La Mure.

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