The Livradois-Forez is comprised of protected natural sites featuring rich and diverse flora and fauna. To be better able to appreciate and respect these natural assets, a number of carefully designed trails enable you to discover this outstanding heritage on foot, on horseback or by mountain bike during exciting trips out in the open air.

The local guides will pass on their passion for the region. We suggest that you take a guide with you when you visit the Hautes Chaumes du Forez (Forez high pastures), a listed site situated at an altitude of 1,300 m (4,265 ft). It is in these huge tracts of moorland and grassland that the local Fourme d’Ambert cheese has been manufactured for thousands of years in the jasseries (mountain farms).

Further on, the "glacial" valleys of the Forez are home to an incredibly varied selection of natural heritage features, including hillside bogs, ancient, virtually untouched beech and fir forests and grasslands in the bottom of the valley including specialised varieties of flora and fauna such as the sundew or the alpine newt found in the peat bogs.

From Billom, a mediaeval town famous for its garlic fair and puppet festival, as you make your way between the volcanic hills and farmed grasslands until you reach Ambert, a town well known for its famous circular town hall, we invite you to discover the region's ancestral skills and know-how as a family. This includes cutlery making in Thiers, paper making at the Richard-de-Bas mill, (a reminder of the days when 300 mills supplied the traditional papermakers with the water pressure necessary for paper production).

A holiday in the Livradois-Forez area will bring you into contact with nature, with the history of the area’s churches and castles, and with the local inhabitants who will be happy to pass on their knowledge of this attractive region of the Auvergne.