Combes, Douch and Héric
France > Languedoc > Southern > Parc Naturel > Uplands of the park > Combes, Douch and Héric

A left fork leads to the hamlet of DOUCH, beneath the summit of Le Caroux – a perfect place where time seems really to have stood still. Half-a-dozen rough stone houses, inhabited by a handful of elderly residents, cluster tightly together for protection against the elements. There's a gîte d'étape (tel 04.67.95.65.76) and a ferme auberge that provides meals in summer (by reservation only tel 04.67.95.21.41). In the meadows below nestles a picturesque church with an ancient cemetery full of graves like iron cots.

The University of Toulouse maintains a research unit here to survey the largest mouflon population in France. If you go out early in the morning or just before dark in the evening, you'll have a good chance of seeing these short-fleeced sheep, and wild boar, too, as they come out to feed. The road provides some good vantage points a little further north round the Col de l'Ourtigas and the Pas de la Lauze.

The best short walk to do from Douch is down the GR7 to the hamlet of HîRIC in the gorge of the same name. The path starts on the left at the end of the road in Douch and follows the telephone line. Once over the col and into the head of the gorge it becomes a beautiful paved mule track looping down through beech and chestnut woods. In the past people lived off the chestnuts, selling them, eating them and making flour from them. It takes about forty minutes to reach the two or three brown-stone houses of Héric, inhabited for several generations by the Clavel family, and 90 minutes to climb back up. They run a gîte d'étape and can provide meals, too, on reservation (tel 04.67.97.77.29). A good longer walk from Douch is the popular three-kilometre ascent of Le Caroux (1040m), south of the village with fine views from the summit along L'Espinouse, south to Béziers, the sea and even the Pyrenees, on a clear day.