Introduction
Although the Massif de la Chartreuse (location map) was a "must-visit" destination for the 18th century Grand Tourists and had its virtues acclaimed by such luminaries as Thomas Gray, William Beckford, William Wordsworth, J.M.W. Turner and John Ruskin, it is now somewhat neglected by the British, despite being one of the finest walking areas in France. It does tend to be better known to cavers as it is also one of the finest caving areas in France with several hundred kilometres of caves explored in its 700 sq. kilometres, with three systems exceeding 50 km in length.
It has lost little of its charm in the last 250 years, and in 1995 it was made a Regional Nature Park in recognition of its scenic beauty and its cultural heritage, a status which was renewed in 2008.
The purpose of these web pages is to provide a source of information about the area in general, and the walking in particular. Currently, some 50 walks are described.
Note that the site has been designed to allow rapid down-loading, and so in the main photographs and maps are made available on separate pages, although photograph galleries are available
This site has been developed using HTML5 and Cascading Style Sheets, and may not display as intended on older browsers. The pages are designed to be printer friendly, and only the main content part of the page will be printed - without the title bar and the menu bar. The pages are also mobile friendly.
A PDF file (16 Mb) containing the print version of the website but without maps or photographs, is available for download.
Do feel free to e-mail me with any questions or comments, and also to share your views on this site, or on Chartreuse itself, in the Guest Book.