The Gorges du Blavet are a canyon of red rhyolite cut by the Blavet stream south of Bagnols-en-Forêt, on the edge of the Estérel. A marked path drops to the canyon floor and loops back out, with sections on metal ladders and a cave along the way. Shaded for much of the day, they are the outing for a heatwave afternoon.
The Blavet is a small river running down from the hills of Bagnols towards the Argens. Over two kilometres it has cut a corridor into the volcanic rock, vertical-walled and deep red, punctuated by umbrella pines and holm oaks growing out of the fissures. It is the same rock and the same colours as the Estérel, compressed into a space you can walk in two hours.
Climbers have been opening routes here since the 1970s, and walking on the floor of the canyon you often hear the click of carabiners somewhere above you. The site is one of the main climbing areas in the Var, which gives it a little life even midweek.
From the car park, beside the Bagnols road, the marked path drops quickly to the level of the stream. You then follow it downstream between the boulders, with several places where metal ladders and rungs help you over the steps. Nothing vertiginous, but you need your hands free and decent shoes.
Halfway along, the Muéron cave opens in the rock face: a large cavity to explore with a head torch, cool even in August, where you understand why the place was inhabited from prehistoric times. You come out on the far bank and climb back over the plateau, looking down into the canyon you have just walked. Allow two hours for the loop, a little more with the cave.
The Blavet holds water for much of the year. On the canyon floor it forms clear pools between the rocks, and most people take a dip on the way back, once the heat has risen. The flow drops noticeably in late summer and the site is unsupervised: this is a walker's swim, feet in shaded water, not a beach.
The walls are high and the canyon narrow: the sun reaches the floor for only a few hours a day. When the beach is unbearable and the Rocher de Roquebrune is a furnace, the Gorges du Blavet are still walkable at three in the afternoon. That is what sets them apart in a Provençal summer.
Avoid the day after a heavy storm, though, when the Blavet swells and the lower sections become impassable.
The village, five minutes away, is worth a stop: a shaded square, a baroque church, and a view that carries all the way to the sea. It is also the way up to Mont Vinaigre by the Estérel road.
This guide is part of the address book of a private estate in Puget-sur-Argens, 20 minutes away, available for weddings and family stays. It is not open to visitors.
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