The Néouvielle Nature Reserve: Lakes Among the Mountain Pines

Required Activities

• Walk right round the Lac d'Aumar, the largest natural lake in the reserve at 25 hectares, then work out from the shorelines which of its neighbours are natural and which are dammed — Aubert, Orédon and Cap-de-Long were all raised for hydroelectricity from 1882 onwards

• Walk from Aubert down to the lower laquette of Orédon, find the panel that asks walkers to photograph a marked zone to record the water level, take the photograph and send it in — then look in the shallows for the subulaire aquatique, which grows nowhere else in France

• In the scattered bosquets above the lakes, pick a cone off a pin à crochets and find the hook on its scales that gives the tree its name, then climb high enough to see the same pine still growing above you — in this reserve it reaches 2,600 m, a European altitude record

• At the Lac d'Orédon find the biological station on its shore, built in 1922, thirteen years before Bressou and Chouard got the reserve created — one of the first nature reserves in France

• On the grassland between Aumar and the hourquette d'Aubert, find marmots, then scan the ridges and name whichever of the golden eagle, griffon vulture, Egyptian vulture and bearded vulture you can pick out — and at a tarn listen for the midwife toad, which breeds here up to 2,400 m