In the footsteps of the blacksmiths of Renage

Park in the car park at Renage church.

(S/E) Head towards the cemetery and walk past the church on your right. Turn right and pass between the church apse and the cemetery. Then turn left and cross the town hall car park. Turn right and cross the community hall car park. You will come out onto Boulevard Docteur Valois; follow it to the left. Go straight on, cross Rue Michel Créminési, then turn left onto Impasse La Charrière.

(1) When the boulevard turns right, leave it and continue straight on along Chemin Montessuy. At the next junction, take a path on the left and head downhill. At the end, cross a road and take the Pont de la Guillonnière. Continue along the road which turns right, then take a staircase on the left which cuts across a hairpin bend.

(2) Cross the road and head diagonally right onto the Sentier de la Roche. At a Fork in the road, take the left-hand path (leaving the Chemin du Crocodile on your right). You’ll reach the Route de Renage à Criel; follow it to the right. Then turn left onto the Chemin du Champ Blat (tarmac). When this road turns left, turn right onto the Chemin des Bouleaux.

(3) At the end, turn right onto Chemin de la Sure. Take the first left, Chemin des Écureuils. After a house, at a junction, turn right and you will immediately reach a crossroads with two circular concrete structures.

(4) Turn sharply left and head down towards the Fure. Cross the river, with the intake for the Revex hydroelectric power station on your left, at the foot of Château d’Allivet and the remains of the 12th-century lower furnace. Pass under the arch of the blast furnace, join the Descente d’Allivet and head up it to the right. After a sharp right-hand bend, turn left onto a gently ascending path. At the end, follow the Route de Rives to the left on its left-hand pavement.

(5) Take the first left onto the Route des Lacets. Walk down between the gardens, passing tennis courts and a rugby stadium on your right. Shortly afterwards, turn right onto the Sentier des Jardins (formerly used by blacksmiths). This leads onto Rue Michel Créminési; follow it to the left. Take the second right, Rue de la Maigre, and continue straight on. Just before Rue de République, turn left and you will immediately come to the church car park (S/E).

At the start of the La Roche trail, a tufa formation may make a small section of the path slippery.
Hiking on our trails is an outdoor activity and involves certain risks: you may slip and fall, or find yourself in the path of a mountain bike or a falling branch… Please be careful. Warning: global warming is affecting the vegetation. Trees are weakened and may uproot unexpectedly: Do not venture into the undergrowth in windy or stormy weather. Walking with poles is recommended. Keep an eye on your children and stay on the path. Enjoy your walk.

At the end of Boulevard du Dr Valois, take the Montessuy path and head down towards the Fure through the woodland.
After crossing the Fure at the Guillonnière bridge, take the Chemin de La Roche, historically used by the people of Criel to reach the factories in the Val de Fure or by schoolchildren on their way to the village, before the creation of the school in Criel (1931) (now disused). On the Criel plateau, there are views of the Chartreuse and the Vercors.
On the return journey, the path passes beneath the arch of a blast furnace (12th century) where steel was produced before being worked under the ‘martinets’ (pilon hammers) of the forges.
Knowledge of heat treatment in the 13th century gave rise to the ‘taillanderie’ (hardening and tempering), a process used to produce steel that was hard on the surface but resilient at the core, used for weapons (swords) or agricultural tools.