A holiday in the Queyras

In the summer of 2026, after a first week in the Cantal, we continued our holiday in the Hautes-Alpes with Victor, then six, and Glasgow, our young beagle.

Our base for the week was Ceillac, in the Mélézet valley, in the Queyras.

Part of Ceillac’s charm is that you don’t really pass through it by accident.

The road ends in the valley. There is no mountain pass taking you onwards to somewhere else.

But once you’re there, you can almost forget about the car.

There are hiking trails in every direction, a few restaurants, a bakery, a small grocery shop, activities for children and, throughout the day, paragliders landing in the fields near the church.

Walking from Ceillac to Lac Miroir and Lac Sainte-Anne

The route shown on this map is probably the classic Ceillac hike: starting in the village, climbing to Lac Miroir, continuing towards Lac Sainte-Anne and then descending back into the valley.

But there’s one important detail.

We didn’t complete the whole loop together in a single day.

We discovered it in two stages.

On the Monday, the three of us set off towards Lac Miroir.

Glasgow stayed at the apartment on this occasion. She was young and very playful, and taking her onto a narrow and potentially busy mountain trail didn’t seem like the best idea.

The climb immediately gives you a good idea of hiking in the Queyras: roughly three kilometres for around 550 metres of ascent.

With Victor and a few breaks along the way, it took about two hours.

Lac Miroir sits at 2,214 metres, surrounded by larch trees.

For a high-altitude lake, the landscape still feels surprisingly green and gentle.

We found some shade, dropped the backpacks and had our picnic in the grass.

To continue to Lac Sainte-Anne would have meant another 200 metres or so of climbing.

For Victor, that would have been too much for one day, so the three of us headed back down towards Ceillac.

Lac Sainte-Anne from Fond de Chaurionde

A few days later, I went alone to explore the second half of the route.

This time, the walk began at Fond de Chaurionde.

From there, the official time to Lac Sainte-Anne is around two hours and twenty minutes, with just under 500 metres of ascent.

Walking alone and stopping very little, I reached the lake in about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Although it is only around two hundred metres higher than Lac Miroir, the scenery is completely different.

Lac Sainte-Anne lies at 2,414 metres beneath the Font Sancte.

The larch forest has disappeared.

Here, everything feels much more mineral: rock, high mountains and a striking turquoise lake.

I followed part of the shoreline towards the small chapel above the water.

After stepping slightly away from the path to take photographs, I almost walked straight into a marmot that hadn’t heard me coming.

It stared at me for a few seconds before quietly disappearing among the rocks.

If you combine those two hikes, you get the full route shown on the map: Ceillac, Lac Miroir, Lac Sainte-Anne and back down into the valley.

In total, it’s around 12.6 kilometres with more than 700 metres of ascent.

It was simply a little too ambitious for Victor that year.

Family hikes around Ceillac

The rest of the week gave all four of us plenty of other opportunities to explore Ceillac.

We walked towards the Cascade de la Pisse and followed the Mélézet stream, where Victor put his feet in the water while Glasgow did the same with four paws.

We also attempted the Balcons du Cristillan several times without ever completing the whole route, because thunderstorms seemed to arrive almost every afternoon.

Glasgow also discovered another attraction in the mountains: wild raspberries.

By the end of the week, she had learned to find them without any help.

And then there were the nights.

We were in Ceillac on August the 12th, around the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.

The evening began with a partial eclipse of the sun. Clouds then spoiled part of the night, but after midnight the village streetlights were switched off and the valley became almost completely dark.

I could watch the shooting stars and photograph the Milky Way above the village.

So Ceillac became a perfect mixture for us: proper mountain hikes, almost daily thunderstorms, two very different alpine lakes and a small village where it was also perfectly possible to slow down between walks.