As soon as it was known, “the project to extend the Larzac military camp (…) aroused particularly strong reactions”, we can read in Le Monde of February 24, 1971. Quickly, the one hundred and three peasants threatened with expropriation entered into resistance . The movement will last until 1981, when President François Mitterrand, just elected, gives up the project.
Journalist Sophie Jovillard takes us to meet the heirs of this founding struggle, fulfilled between sheep and Buddha. Surprise, for those who do not know the region: except on its limestone plateau, the Larzac is green. Mossy even, along the impressive Canalettes faults, quickly crossed to reach the Tarn, initially tumultuous and wild, then calmed down when the Millau viaduct (Aveyron) appears.
This record-breaking work of art, inaugurated by Jacques Chirac on December 14, 2004, has become the pride of the region and its inhabitants. This is followed by the unavoidable ascent of a pillar (number 7) in the footsteps of Franck Lemouton-Mazières, technician, and the less predictable meeting with Solveig Letort, hiking guide so happy to be one of the twenty- six inhabitants of the village of La Couvertoirade, built by the Templars and restored by some sixty-eighters.
Many meetings
Sophie Jovillard does not hesitate to give of herself, whether to follow trail running champion Virginie Govignon and her dog, storming the Roc Nantes, or to play the merchant behind the tomes and pérail stall. from the cheese maker Julien Bernard, on the Millau market. He is one of the five associates of the Truels farm, organized as a joint farming group in buildings erected illegally in 1974 by the community of L’Arche.
The heritage has, here, borne fruit and proves to be a pioneering circular economy model, articulated around Camille Dal Pra and Florine Hamelin in the management of the herd, Claire Barré in the cheeses and the baker Thierry Castelbou.
The meetings follow one another, numerous. Too many, perhaps. An entire subject could thus have been devoted to the Vieilledent family, which has practiced free flight from father to son for three generations. Or even to the Arnal family, from the equestrian domain of Gailla – already crossed in “Ô la belle vie”, Sunday magazine also presented by Sophie Jovillard at noon on France 3 Occitanie.
Impossible, suddenly, to mention the shepherds, the practitioners of highline, rail bike, gravel (a kind of mountain bike), double bass… Nor the wwoofers who maintain this benevolent communitarianism, while they are the ones who keep the famous causse. “Gardarem lo Larzac”!
