The Étang des Grands Graviers and Puy-Guillaume

Start from the car park at the Dore campsite in Puy-Guillaume.

(S/E) Follow the B-road for about ten metres (take care) before crossing over and taking the path opposite. Continue to the right, following the River Dore, until you reach the Grands Graviers pond.

(1) Walk round the pond along the track suitable for vehicles.

(1) On your return, continue south-east. Follow the departmental road to the right for about a hundred metres and take the road on the left towards Les Peux.

(2) Just before the first houses, turn left onto the track. After a right-angled bend, the track joins the D343. Cross it (take care) and continue straight ahead along Rue de l’Ache.

(3) “See note in Practical Information”. Follow Avenue Édouard Vaillant to the left, staying on the left-hand pavement lined with beautiful trees, and walk past the factory entrance and buildings until you reach the railway line. You’ll arrive at the crossroads in the centre.

(4) Cross the junction and continue slightly to the left along Rue Joseph Claussat. At the roundabout, continue straight ahead to reach the campsite car park (S/E).

Alternative route:
After (1), you can continue along the departmental road to Moulin Curaçon and reach Les Peux at (2) via the hairpin bend to the left.

Note: the signposting for the route gives the following route:
Cross Avenue Édouard Vaillant and carry on straight ahead along Rue Jean Moulin. At the junction, turn left onto Rue Eugène Phelip. Stay on this road to cross the level crossing and reach the junction in the centre.
However, walking alongside the glassworks’ boundary wall all the way along Rue Phelip is not very pleasant.

Off the route: at the ‘3 ’, 300 metres to the right in the middle of the roundabout stands a pyramid whose glass tip symbolises the town’s distinctive feature (photo).

Owing to its location, the town of Puy-Guillaume saw the establishment in 1902 of a very large glass bottle factory intended for the Vichy farming company to bottle the mineral waters of the basin. Indeed, the sand from the Dore and Allier rivers, the limestone from the Limons quarries, and the railway line that brought coal from Brassac to fuel the furnaces and enabled the finished bottles to be shipped out.