Les Grands Goulets ( French language: ''The Great Bottlenecks'') is a gorge in the western part of the

Vercors Massif The Vercors Massif is a range in France consisting of rugged plateaus and mountains straddling the ''départements'' of Isère and Drôme in the French Prealps. It lies west of the Dauphiné Alps, from which it is separated by the rivers Drac ...

, located in the department of

Drôme Drôme (; Occitan: ''Droma''; Arpitan: ''Drôma'') is the southernmost department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of Southeastern France. Named after the river Drôme, it had a population of 516,762 as of 2019.

in Southeastern

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. The gorge forms the head of the Vernaison Valley. Between 1844 and 1851, the Grands-Goulets Road (''

Route Départementale Route or routes may refer to: * Route (gridiron football), a path run by a wide receiver * route (command), a program used to configure the routing table * Route, County Antrim, an area in Northern Ireland * ''The Route'', a 2013 Ugandan film * Ro ...

'' RD 518) was constructed, a "balcony road" built into the sheer

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

cliffs of the gorge to link the

Pont-en-Royans Pont-en-Royans () is a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France. Geography The town is located near the Isère valley at the gates of the Vercors Regional Natural Park. It lies at the meeting of the rivers Bourne (which rises ...

area to the Vercors plateau at Échevis. The

single-track road A single-track road or one-lane road is a road that permits two-way travel but is not wide enough in most places to allow vehicles to pass one another (although sometimes two compact cars can pass). This kind of road is common in rural areas ...

has numerous tunnels and few passing-places and was formerly popular with tourists. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, the plateau became a stronghold of a

French Resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...

group called the ''

Maquis du Vercors The Battle of Vercors in July and August 1944 was between a rural group of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) maquis''] and the armed forces of Nazi Germany which had occupied France since 1940 in the Second World War. The maquis used the pro ...

''. On 22 January 1944, a column of 300 German troops arrived at the Grands Goulets on a punitive expedition. A small force of ''Maquisards'' attempted to block their progress but were either outgunned or outflanked by ''

Gebirgsjäger ''Gebirgsjäger'' () are the light infantry part of the alpine or mountain troops (''Gebirgstruppe'') of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The word '' Jäger'' (meaning "hunter" or "huntsman") is a characteristic term used for light infantry in ...

'' Alpine troops at each blocking position that they established. When the coloumn reached Échevis, they burned the village in retaliation for the ambush of a German staff car a few days earlier. A plaque at La Chapelle-en-Vercors commemorates the twenty ''Maquisards'' who were killed in the fighting. The damaged road was later repaired and reopened in September 1945. Tunnel des Grands-Goulets à Les Barraques-en-Vercors -1

Tunnel des Grands-Goulets à Les Barraques-en-Vercors -1

After

rockfall A rockfall or rock-fallWhittow, John (1984). ''Dictionary of Physical Geography''. London: Penguin, 1984. . is a quantity/sheets of rock that has fallen freely from a cliff face. The term is also used for collapse of rock from roof or walls of mi ...

s in 2000 and 2005, the road was permanently closed to vehicles and pedestrians. A replacement

road tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

, 1,710 metres long and 7 metres wide was constructed, costing €50 million; it opened in 2008. A scheme to reopen the top 200 metres of the road to pedestrians as a tourist attraction was proposed by local authorities in 2016. The Grands Goulets are classified as a ZNIEFF or ''

Zone naturelle d'intérêt écologique, faunistique et floristique A Zone naturelle d'intérêt écologique, faunistique et floristique (Natural zone of ecological interest, fauna and flora), abbreviated as ZNIEFF, is a type of natural environment recognized by France. The inventory of a ZNIEFF area is an invent ...

'' (Natural zone of ecological interest, fauna and flora).

Gallery

References

45.046593, 5.352170 Canyons and gorges of Metropolitan France Landforms of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes {{Drôme-geo-stub