Photo : Krzysztof Golik / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Lac de Pareloup
On the Lévézou plateau, between Rodez and Millau, the Lac de Pareloup stretches at an altitude of 805 metres over about 1,300 hectares. It is a man-made reservoir created when EDF built the Pareloup dam in the 1950s; the flooding submerged the Vioulou basin, with its farms and mills. It ranks among the largest reservoirs in France.
Its heavily indented shores, some 130 kilometres long, form many peninsulas and two islands. Set in a gently sloping basin, the lake offers wide sandy beaches. Since the 1980s tourism has grown strongly here: swimming, sailing, boating and fishing draw summer visitors around the villages of Salles-Curan and Arvieu, in the heart of the Lévézou lakes and hills.
