COMBRAILLES

Combrailles and the valley of Sioule
« All the country of Combrailles tilted to Sioule. I believed not to approach it. It took off in tight throats. In the Flat - it is the country of the two " lunatics ", she will tell you-, I held it. Sioule! Sioule! Nobody knows what its name wants to say and that, already, that attracted me. I walkedin its meadows .
She says that she was born in the outlet of the lake Servières, there where the Monts Dore finish and theMonts Dôme start . So, in the morning of Combrailles, it is volcanic Auvergne that gets up, the crests of Sancy and the bumps of Puys, mallows of the budding of beech groves.from Volcanoes, she will go downhill until the vineyards of the Saint - Pourcinois, to meet Allier.
little Sioule, she goes out of the wood, enlarges by Sioulet and by Miouze and swings on high trays without hillside, cuts her road in Côme's cheire whichi, towards Banières, hides holes of ice. At night, I say that it trembles on these moors of Saint-Pierre-le-Chastel, where the devil who torments cheires unchains fantastic hunting. But she passes, turbulent and joyful, playing with the passion of the fisherman, with the fario huntresses of pearls and of short-lived. She crosses Pontgibaud then, towards the aval , cashes in a wooded ravine, without people, corseted in throats, under the laces of the road, until Montfermy whom she locks into an almost perfect buckle. She meander as waves, indistinct, in its Combrailles's earth in the borders of Auvergne, Bourbonnais and Marche. And cuts the crystalline tray which above, towards 800 or 900m, spreads to its edge of moors with brooms and near bocagers, immovable under the wing of the falcon kestrel, swarming of the life hidden in hedges. She tells me histories of borders, how the ambitions of the counts of Auvergne rubbed themselves in those of dukes of Bourbon, how the long silent forests hid from the salt-tax collectors the false - sauniers of XVII-th century. She knows, westward, the vague country of the ponds where the calm water does not look like its water, but mirrors the beard of clouds and of hermits.
Is it by thinking of the hundred ponds of Combrailles - Chancelade, the biggest of Auvergne where the waterfowl finds pleasure, the others populated of frogs and silvery backs - that Sioule widens downstream to Montfermy? No, tired of splashing kayaks, she takes Sioulet and calms down in stretch of water behind the dam of the Flat - Besserve, deep, vast and quiet for all the enjoyments of the water. Here, smooth under veils, she changes the trouts in carps that wish pikes. She licks her three beaches and disturbs me, you know, by saying that formerly, in the Flat, she was crossed in ford, with always something to lose in her water. There is, overcoat the road of the dam, the run-up of a viaduct of granite and steel. At the beginning of century, it connects by the rail Combrailles isolated with their rich neighbour, Limagne. Below, it is of the blue; at the top, it is of the sky.Between the two,lays the forest. Since wolves got lost there, she falls without roaring in the ravines. But I saw her in autumn,thick as a tail of fox , winding around Port-Sainte-Marie's chartreuse or catching fire, buckled in the peninsula of Queuille's meander that one sees as the Paradise!
It is the most beautiful meander of my Sioule. Beyond, she becomes again common but makes another buckle for Châteauneuf's neck where rises, by 22 points, a water of the profound of the earth, tepid, gas, carbonised, mineralized.
Oh, the water of Combrailles, serpentines brooks , craters of maars, waters leaving peat bogs, thermal water , of real false lakes, of unreal ponds!
between Châteauneuf and Ebreuil, she rolls about in magnificent throats.
Only the old Roman bridge of Menat curved on her its hogback.
didin't i told you , dominated by the ruins of Château - Rocher and Chouvigny's castle! Countries-borders defend themselves: Combrailles have feudal fortresses which lock the strategic points, abandoned or eased of bays and of tapestries, hard teeth or precious boxes for an exhibition, a festival. The serene countries, with here a mere nothing of austere, there of the savage in the throat fabricating all the range of mysteries. . One tells fairies' histories and rural chapels are planted where one prays, for the harvest of rye, sculpted virgins in grief. Crosses are raised in crossroads, but the country already is a crossroads and crosses have all the drawings. The monks, austere Benedictines, Carthusian monk whose temporal power extended beyond the Valley of Sioule, learned hermits of Menat, look for God's mystery on a peaceful and distant earth, but earth of influences which carries their collegiate churches, their rich abbeys, churches in the painted walls.
During all these times, my Sioule turns its mills, sprays villages with little places and bell towers, where the artisans know the ancient gestures and new tastes. It is of one of these villages, where life is good, that I write to you.
By finishing my miengouré … what is it? I shall tell you when you will come to taste the Valley of Sioule. "