How to Spend a Week in Ardèche and Drôme
You cannot, cannot miss a visit to Le Palais Idèal of Facteur Cheval. Hauterives, Drôme, France. August 15, 2025.
With an eye to exploring an area of France we hadn’t explored before, we decided to spend a summer-vacation week in the French regions of Ardèche and Drôme. When you don’t know much of anything about an area, you truly start from scratch with your planning.
Can’t say I mind that, but it does require a good deal of extra elbow grease.
Though a week might seem a long while to risk in an area you don’t know if you’ll like, we figured we'd at least have a good story. And we do: One with a very happy ending. We loved our visit.
Finding a base of stay from which to radiate around the region felt like throwing a dart at a map, we had so little idea of which towns would have the amenities we like for a trip like this. Ultimately, we decided to stay in Thonon-sur-Bains, which didn’t wow us upon our arrival but grew on us the more we explored it. If you decide to base this your base of stay as well or just plan to stop into the town while you’re in the area to see what it has to offer, I’ll soon post about what to expect in Thonon-sur-Bains—including where to eat and what to do in and near town.
An important note: While many of our regional visits around France haven’t required access to a car, this one does. If you don’t have one, rent one. (But always mind the rules of the French road, which may not be the same as they are in your home country!)
L’Aven d’Ornac
I’ll start by confessing that, on different road trips in my country of origin, the United States, I’ve stopped or even made detours to see plenty of underground natural caverns with impressive formations, including Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.
And all the caverns I’ve seen so far have paled in comparison to l’Aven d’Ornac.
My photos and videos don’t do it any kind of justice, but I’ll include one so you have some modicum of an idea.
Only a few of the incredible calcium deposits still in formation at l’Aven d’Ornac. Ardèche, France. August 11, 2025.
Hard not to feel insignificant in the universe—in an awe-inspired way—when you encounters formations developed across millions of years, long before humans even existed. These formations are still in development, too, so they’ll continue to evolve long after we’re gone.
In l’Aven d’Ornac, you don’t have to walk far through underground pathways to see the incredible calcium formations in an incredible variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. The site does an excellent job of lighting and the guide we had did an excellent job of explaining, too.
Bring a jacket, no matter the season: The cold and damp down there is real. Also, though you won’t have to walk far once you descend via elevator into the caverns, you do need to climb up and down several staircases. Keep that in mind if you have mobility challenges in your group.
On your visit, don’t neglect to spend time in the adjacent museum, la Cité de la Prehistoire. We had to rush through it, as we had timed tickets to see the next site on this list and didn’t want to miss it, and I wish we’d had more time. The extremely well done displays we did see opened our eyes to a time period in human history that I very rarely see addressed. The museum also often has demonstrations of how our prehistoric ancestors lived. The museum will blow apart your preconceived notions in the best of ways.
Note: If you’re looking for a lunch spot in the general area and you’re visiting in the summer season, we absolutely loved La Finca. The seasonal restaurant offers a shaded back patio in an arid landscape and delicious fresh food and welcoming service. Another place I would have lingered longer, if only we’d had time!
Grotte Chauvet
The breadth of this region’s access to and its preservation of prehistoric sites and artefacts is absolutely astounding.
The cave paintings in Lascaux in the Périgord Noir region have more renown than the ones at Grotte Chauvet, but I think that has to be only because they were discovered first and made a big international splash when they were found. Honestly, as someone who has seen both, I though the paintings discovered and on display here at Grotte Chauvet far more moving. You can see handprints from the painters and can observe how the artists used the tricks of the lamplights on the cave walls to create motion in the images they painstakingly realized over the course of years on these walls.
If you’re in the area, you cannot miss scheduling a visit.
And here’s another site you’ll want to ensure you have enough time to see. We didn’t realize how rich in information we’d find Grotte Chauvet and l’Aven d’Ornac when we scheduled out visits, and we felt like we had to see the two at too rapid a pace. More time to linger through the experiences, see the sites, and read up on the background of each place would have been more edifying and more relaxing.
However, if you do need to see both sites on one day, book the times for your visits to give yourself plenty of time in each, even if that means getting up far earlier than you’d like or eating a quick sandwich you’ve packed for lunch instead of stopping somewhere for a meal.
Crussol Castle
Want an easy hike on a beautiful day? Visit Crussol, where you can follow a path from a welcome center up to some of the most peaceful and majestic ruins of a medieval castle I’ve visited.
The stunning landscape and peaceful ruins of Castle Crussol. Crussol, Ardèche, France. August 13, 2025.
The views are incredible.
Don’t skip stopping into the welcome center on your way in or out, if you have the time. The artifacts they’ve found on the site and the information they have about the history of the region, of the castle, and of medieval fortress construction and defense exceeded my expectations.
Le Palais Idèal de Facteur Cheval
We decided to visit le Palais Idèal de Facteur Cheval on our last day of the trip, when we had nothing else planned. My spouse wasn’t too keen on it, but the more I read about the site in our guidebooks and heard about it around the area as we wandered, the more I wanted to drop in.
Le Facteur Cheval, a postman with the last name Cheval, walked dozens of miles each day across the territory to deliver mail at a time when postcards began to come into fashion and magazines published more and more photography. Entranced by the images he pulled from his sack and placed into post boxes day after day, he had a vision for an immense architectural marvel based on what he’d seen and learned.
Though he had no formal training in art, history, culture, or engineering, he sketched out and perfected his plans on paper before he began its construction. Crafting it piece by piece out of rocks he found along his route and from concrete and other found and built objects.
His neighbors laughed at his audacity.
He didn’t care.
Some thirty-three years later, when the Facteur Cheval called his project complete, he had single handedly created an immense work of folk art that continues to draw visitors from all over the world even today.
Velorail or Tourist Train
Everyone we encountered during our travels in Ardèche and Drôme raved about the steam train tours and the velorail experience, but we dragged our feet about booking either one or the other and ended up missing out on both.
All this to say: Book in advance and don’t miss the experience like we did.
I worried it would be boring, but the people we met who had done it said the tours are relaxing and fun and that these options are the only ways you can get views over certain parts of the region.
Don’t Dismiss Arcèche and Drôme
When we decided we’d spend a good portion of our summer vacation in this part of France, I admit I didn’t leap with excitement.
Ardèche and Drôme don’t get the same wow-level publicity or have the same renown as other parts of France. Sure, I was open to seeing somewhere new, but I had no idea what to expect.
What I found in our week in the area taught me anew not to let marketing alone drive my decisions about where to travel. Yes, it takes a little more work to plan travel into a completely unknown region, but I’ve found incredible treasures and created beautiful memories each time I have.