A walk around Le Lac de Vezoles.

Lac de Vezoles. Beautiful day for a walk today, clear, bright and very warm.  The lake is at an altitude of 960m and the dam was built in 1957 to provide hydroelectricity. It makes a lovely spot for summer picnics, local mushroom pickers in the autumn and winter hikes.  We did the variant around the lake 2h, 6.5km. (There is also a longer walk there which takes 3.30h and 10km, but we had a small baby in our party today so only went around the lake). Start the walk by parking in the car park on the right, along the road leading to the dam. Walk down and across the dam and you will see yellow and blue. 

Follow the yellow markers up through the woods on a wide track until you see a left turn, this leads down to a grassy path near the shore, with yellow and yellow/red markers. Soon you will come to a tiny old stone house and a long since lost thatched barn. The path bends to the left and then re-joins a small path on the left for a while before re-joining the main track once again. Soon it will go back to a small path on the left under the trees. 

At the end of the lake you will come to some stone buildings, here you turn left and take the wide track over the stream where you will see another left turn. This side is mostly marked with yellow markers but you may also see red/white (GR7) ones too. Now follow this path through the woods and along the shore until you see a right turn back to the car park. (Note that there has been quite a lot of tree felling operations on this side recently). The lake is very low at the moment, due to repair work on the dam. It's interesting as you can see where the stream runs into the middle of the lake and the stumps of trees felled when the lake was filled.

There were lots of spring flowers in the woods and down by the lake. Wild daffodils and Cyclamen sauvage de montagne. Red squirrel too.