The Gorges de Pennafort are a short red-rock canyon carved by the Rioufreid stream at Callas, on the D25 between Le Muy and Draguignan. You walk them in an hour, from pool to pool, up to a waterfall, and swim there from May to September. The flow is strongest in spring, the water warmest in summer.
Let's say first what they are not: the Gorges de Pennafort are not the Verdon. Four hundred metres long, forty or so deep, and a stream you can step across. That is precisely what makes them worth the detour. You drop down from the road in two minutes and find yourself between two walls of red rhyolite, the same rock as the Estérel, under pines that filter the light. Coming straight from the vineyards of the plain, the contrast is immediate.
The valley carries a medieval name. Pennafort was a community in its own right before it was absorbed into Callas, and the chapel above the gorges was built in 1855 on the remains of an eleventh-century tower.
You will read almost everywhere that the gorges run dry in summer. That is not what you find on the ground: the Rioufreid drops in July and August, the waterfall becomes discreet, but the larger pools keep their water, cool and clear, and that is exactly the season people come to bathe. The canyon is deep and shaded for much of the day, which makes it a refuge on a scorching afternoon.
Spring shows you the other face of the place: after the rains the stream runs hard and the waterfall gains volume. Late March to June is the season for photographs; July to September the season for swimming. Only after heavy rain, rarely, does the floor of the gorge become impassable.
Come midweek. From late spring onwards, the car park fills before ten on a Saturday.
The pools are the point. The first, wide and shallow, come a few minutes past the bridge; the finest take a little more scrambling, further up among the boulders, with enough depth for a few strokes and flat rocks to dry off on. The site is unsupervised and an old municipal by-law formally discourages bathing: people swim here as they always have, knowingly, keeping an eye on the children and staying away in the days after a big storm, when the current picks up.
For supervised swimming with sand underfoot, Lac de Saint-Cassien is twenty minutes away. For wilder pools and a proper walk, the Gorges du Blavet.
From the car park a path drops to the level of the bridge. Turn left and follow the bed of the stream. There is no made-up trail: you cross from bank to bank over the rocks, get your feet wet, haul yourself over the odd boulder. Nothing difficult for anyone used to it, but shoes that can be soaked are essential, and children under five or six will struggle on the second half.
The first large pools come quickly. The waterfall, at the end, is the natural turning point. Allow three quarters of an hour there and back at a stroll, less if you press on.
Two additions turn the walk into half a day.
From the car park, a second path climbs to the chapel of Notre-Dame de Pennafort, set on its spur where two valleys meet. The nineteenth-century building, neo-Greek then reworked in the Italian manner, can be seen from outside only. You climb it for the view as much as for the chapel.
A little further along the D25 towards Callas, a roadside viewpoint looks straight down into the gorges. This is the postcard angle, and the only place from which you really grasp how deep they are.
Just before the car park, the Hostellerie Les Gorges de Pennafort has faced the canyon since 1995. A gastronomic table, long Michelin-starred under Philippe Da Silva, it has carried on since his death in 2021, with a shaded terrace looking at the rocks. This is a celebration lunch, not a quick bite: a set market menu midweek, booking essential, and a weekly closing day to check.
For something simpler, the village of Callas is ten minutes away, with cafés on the square.
This guide is part of the address book of a private estate in Puget-sur-Argens, 18 minutes away, available for weddings and family stays. It is not open to visitors.
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