Prades, Auvergne, Haute Loire, Rhône Alpes: Tour de Notre Dame D'Estours

This is a magnificent walk. It is unbelievable that from a lovely and picturesque village like Prades, romantically situated on the river the Seuge, you can make such a challenging walk.


Challenging for the first part, though, when you go up from 550 to 800 metres to the Notre Dame D'Estours along a narrow and sometimes very steep track with an enormous steep ravine to the right of you. It is nowhere really difficult but you have to pay attention sometimes.


What a beautiful moment when you get the first glimpse of Notre Dame D'Estours!
The way it is perched on the rocks a few hundred metres in front of you, with the chasms around it. Astounding and imposing.

From this place you will still have to pay attention to the track and also use your hands a few times to steady yourself before you get to the field in front of the church.

Enough to explore and to climb there.

The next part of the walk is easy. The track down towards the river is very nice and from the bridge (passarelle) you will have a good view of the church again.

Then you will have to go up from 750 to 950 metres but the track is wide and goes up gradually.

Shortly before you reach Cubelles there should be a viewpoint towards the church but we couldn't find it.

When you start to go down again the yellow markings are sometimes missing and that caused us to choose a wrong track, but if you look at what we did it should be easy for you to avoid this.

The last part of the descent from 800m. back to Prades at 550m. is along a steep wide track with many bigger and smaller stones.

Keep rolling:)

A fantastic walk.