If this works out it is going to be the record of a walk - via a journal I am keeping as we go. In stages over the next few years (in addition to my wife Liz there will be my cousin Desmond and his wife Clare) we are going to walk the old medieval route of the pilgrimage of St James from Le Puy en Velay (Auvergne) across France and into Spain to finish at Santiago de Compostela - sometime. It's about 1,000 miles in all. There is nothing too pilgrimagey about our intentions but it seems a worthwhile thing to do and there has been quite a lot of interest in this particular walk recently. Many hundreds of thousands of people have done it since early medieval times and currently tens of thousands a year do all or part of it.
If I set out the main bones of our trip further details (food, botany, physical decay etc.) can be added by the others according to their special interests. Clare is also keeping a journal and we will be able to cover the same stuff from different points of view. I will add an eclectic selection of our photos but they come out on this a bit small. You can left-click on them to see the finer detail!
This time we are having a 'taster' for a week to see how our inexperienced walkers' feet (and other bits) handle it and we will walk from Le Puy to Nasbinals. We have made our booking arrangements through Worldwalks who act as agents for a wide variety of walking holidays and specifically in this case Nouvel Itinéraire. And this is another useful site which provides, via a sequence of pages, a helpful guide to the route and to the various levels of accommodation available on or near the French part.
So today we were off by car and tunnel for the Auvergne.
Troublefree journey with a break tonight off the Autoroute at St Boil, near Chalon sur Saone. Bit of a problem as (a) the small but well spoken of Cheval Blanc hotel had no trace of our booking, and (b) the chef/owner has just had a heart attack: his 'hearty Burgundian appetite' does feature in the guide book. He had been taken to hospital but seemed to be doing OK and certainly his wife did well singlehandedly in his absence giving us a friendly welcome and a good meal despite her domestic problems. We learned from her that the impressive Chateau in the village - there's not much else - is run by a religious institution as a drugs rehab centre (much graphic miming of syringes).Note: The easiest way to view subsequent pages is to click on 'Newer Post' below.
