The Ochre Trail at Roussillon

Roussillon sits on top of one of the largest ochre deposits ever worked in Europe, and the quarries that supplied the pigment trade are cut into the ground on the edge of the village. The marked trail runs through them on two loops, roughly thirty and fifty minutes, between faces and pillars of coloured sand that shift from pale yellow through orange to something close to blood red depending on the light and the seam. The industry ran until synthetic pigments killed it in the middle of the twentieth century, and the quarries were left to erode into shapes that look geological rather than industrial. The village above is rendered in the same colours.

What you actually see

• The quarry faces - walls of ochre sand in yellow, orange and deep red.
• The eroded pillars - columns left standing between the old cuts and now weathering.
• The village walls - houses rendered in the pigments dug from below them.
• The pine fringe - green pine against orange sand, the contrast the painters came for.

When to go

Spring and autumn. Midsummer is hot with almost no shade, and midday sun flattens the colour that the whole visit depends on; late afternoon is much better. The trail closes in strong wind and after heavy rain, since the sand faces are unstable. A small fee is charged and the circuit runs one way only.

Honest expectations

It is short, fifty minutes at the outside, and you pay for it. Ochre dust gets into shoes and light clothing and does not wash out. There is no shade at all on the circuit. The village above is heavily touristed with parking that fills by ten in the morning. Anyone expecting canyons on an American scale will find this small.

Nearby

Rustrel's larger ochre workings and the hill villages of the Luberon are within half an hour.