Leaving The Herd Behind On A Family Trip In The Peaceful Southern French Alps

Rugged scenery, an insight into shepherds’ culture, delicious food and remote mountain stays make for a memorable few days hiking in France

High above the Champsaur Valley, in the southern French Alps, the plateau is shrouded in cream-coloured froth. But it’s not clouds I’m surrounded by; it’s sheep. Transhumance – the driving of animals from winter valleys to high summer pastures – is still practised here, and thousands of animals are swirling around me as I stand with the shepherd who will care for them, alone, for the next four months. The size of the flock is dizzying. I step backwards, to steady myself. And hit a wall. Because I’m not really in the high pastures. I’m at Cinémathèque, a slick new museum of mountain film in the town of Gap, and I’m trying out a virtual reality (VR) headset.

Quieter and more traditional than their northern counterparts, the southern French Alps stretch from Grenoble to Provence. Cinémathèque offers a hi-tech introduction to the region’s deep-rooted mountain culture, but the low-fi version beckons. Practising our own, condensed, form of transhumance my family and I are following a tailor-made itinerary with local outdoor specialist Undiscovered Mountains, spending a couple of nights at La Grange des Écrins, a guesthouse in the valley, then head higher to two mountain refuges.