Dr Jekill and Mister Hyde's father, RL Stevenson went through these parts of Ardèche. He wrote a non-fiction book about his roamings there : Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes ....

But this was a long time ago, and nobody cares any longer. Now, what is very funny is that this mountain pass is the only place where some kind of pigeon-like birds take to migrate to God knows where. And of course, the hunters from all Ardèche come there to shoot them. The funny part, next : People from Greenpeace and other ecological protect-the-animals sects also gather in this place to try to protect the said birds. So what happens ? They fight against one another, and some of them, from both side, regularly end up in hospital.

While the nicey birdies shit on everyone, protectors or aggressors.

Then, fed up with the place, in which nothing happened because the migrating season had already passed, we went right to this nice little village, called Vals-les-Bains.

There is a casino in this nice little city, and I tried to rob it, so I also tried to escape the cops that were after me. JUst look at how eager I was to jump in the local river... until I noticed that there was no water in it... Or so little that even a paper boat could not have stayed afloat for farther than two meters. They finally cornered me and tied me to the biggest tree they could find, as they were afraid I had any unconspicuous superpower :

I finally managed to get away from that dangerous place, and we headed to yet another nice town, full of one castle and a very strange house with gargoyles on top of it : Aubenas.

Just check that castle :

This was just a teaser. Now look at it in its full splendour. The locals are not so stupid than they look and have decided to make it their town hall :

Another view :

Now, the house with the gargoyles on top of it. These are local gargoyles, in fact. They just took the ugliest people in town, which was really hard, because everybody is so ugly that even bats could be mistaken with top models. They had a hard time selecting the most promising gargoyle people. Then, they killed them, mummified the result and dropped in a special bath, made of rust iron and a bit of copper, to try to make them shine a bit. That failed. So, here is the result :

After looking at them, don't come to me complaining you can't sleep any longer, because I don't care.

Here are the other photos taken in Aubenas and Vals-les-Bains :