Volcano Circuit in Freedom - Aiguilhe

Depart from the town of Aiguilhe, latitude 45.0503500 (N 45° 3’ 1”), longitude 3.8837600 (E 3° 53’ 2”)

• A feat of balance

• Very long called dyke, this imposing rock is now called neck which means neck in English.
• A local writer, Mr. Mazoyer, admiring this vision, wrote this in 1842: "But what deserves the curiosity of the stranger most is the rock of Saint Michael, in the shape of sugar loaf, whose height is excessive, and at the top of which is built a church with a bell tower that commands admiration by the boldness of its structure and whose ordinance is particularly distinguished by the happy accord of the lines, perfectly in harmony with the severity of the church style."
• It was a real architectural feat to build the chapel there. More than 1000 years ago, it took digging a path to reach the summit, setting up a platform and using the stone available on site. A construction site in height and on a small space.

• Remains of volcanic chimney

• St. Michael's Rock and Corneille Rock are pieces of chimneys from two ancient volcanoes that have now disappeared.
• These two chimneys were rooted in the clay subsoil while the volcanoes extended overhead, in the form of small craters.
• It was the excavation of the Borne Valley, located below, that made them appear, leaving only part of the two chimneys.
• Each chimney consists of thick oblique layers for St. Michael's Rock and close to the vertical for the Cornelius rock.
• Weather and plant erosion continues to weaken both rocks. The interior had to be cleaned in order to install many equipment to solidify them (safety nets, nails, etc.).

• The Crow Rock: a quarry rock

• It's hard to imagine that The Crow Rock was a great open-air quarry. The evidence is around you in the walls of the Department's buildings. The visible greenish-brown stone found there was pulled from the rock to build what was once the General Hospital.
• The quarry's operation stopped before 1850 as blocks fell in the courtyard of the hospice. It was not until 1860 that the project to install a monumental statue dedicated to Notre-Dame de France was launched.
• Before you leave, take a look at the volcanic tif that will allow you to spot the fragments of black basalt drowned in a greenish-brown cement. It is a rock that formed under water when lava reached the surface, well above the current rock. It must be said that this was just over 2 million years ago.

• Seguret Gate

• In front of you, stands one of the entrance gates to the medieval village of Aiguilhe.
• To see them, look carefully at some of the stones for the marks left by the stonemasons.
• Come closer. Look at the small geometric patterns. These are signs engraved by the taskers employed by the local authority. They worked on the paid job every day. And to get paid, they signed their job.
• The small chapel of Saint Clair, in the village of Aiguilhe, also has comparable brands. Just look for them in the stones of the chapel: a very easy game.

• Entanglements in the rock

• Looking up you will see that the rock is made up of a multitude of sloping layers that are heading towards the current road. On the other side of the road, other layers also came to this place. In fact, you are in the center of the old chimney whose near part of the river has completely disappeared.
• La Borne has dug its valley by gradually sinking for nearly 900,000 years. The soft clay rocks that surrounded the old chimney were washed away by this erosion, which even took on the softer parts of the volcanic rock to leave only a tiny remnant.
• At the base of the rock, you will spot a grey rock that sneaks into the brown rock. It's the last lava that went up the chimney.