Summer in France: Morvan

At this point, we made a major pivot from our original plan. When we first thought about doing a summer trip to France, we knew we wanted to spend most of the time on the southwestern coast, near Capbreton. But nature had other plans in mind.

This summer was one of the worst that France has experienced for heat waves and wildfires. There were major wildfires along the coast and close to Bordeaux around the exact same time that we were planning to stop in Bordeaux and continue our drive out to the coast.

It was hard to tell from the news websites exactly where the wildfires were located and how bad they were, but we knew that the air would be smoky and roads would be closed. We decided not to take our chances and made the last-minute decision to head east instead.

That’s how we ended up in Morvan.

This was the most remote and immersed-in-nature feeling of our trip. Morvan was full of beautiful, lush, green forests. We spent our time hiking the trails behind our guest house (Les 4 Saisons en Morvan), having picnics by the lake, and whitewater rafting.

We learned that Morvan is also an excellent place for whitewater rafting. National rafting teams from France and Europe actually come there to train and compete. We went with AN Rafting Morvan and had a great time. The class III and IV rapids were more intense than I was expecting. It was the perfect amount of thrills plus some milder sections that were fun and relaxing in between.

And I can’t write about Morvan without mentioning the cuisine. It’s part of the burgundy region, so we got to try amazing wine and food, like burgundy-style escargot, the usual charcuterie, and a delicious fresh trout lunch at Moulin Tala. On our last night we stumbled upon a really nice and really good wood-fired pizza placed called Pizza des Champs. We spent three days and nights in Morvan and enjoyed good food the entire time.