David's European Vacation: Walking in Provence

Walking in Provence: The GR 6

In France, there is a large network of maintained walking trails which go just about everywhere. They are called the Grande Randonée (GR), which roughly translates to "great journey". The trails are as varied as they are extensive, on the GR you can: traverse the countryside in central france, walk through big tourist attractions in Paris, and even climb challenging sections of the Pyraneese. Most of the trail we hiked (primarily the GR6) consists of small paths through the open countryside or follows along small roads. See an image of me on a typical section of the trail (52k) to the left. Also, it goes through small towns, up onto hillsides, and along ridges. Interestingly, very few people know of these trails. In our two week trip, we ran across few other trail users and no other long distance hikers. Even those who lived in towns along the trail did not always know about the GR trail network. Above and on the right is a trail blaze along a tree. Sometimes they have the trail name written on them, but normally they just consist of two painted lines, white above red.

Making the plans
To plan the walk through France, Erik had a book about it called France on Foot and also Walking in France, This is a part of the trip that he was really excited about since he had read a popular book called A year in provence. France on foot recommended areas and gave advice about what different stretches of the trail had in the way of scenery and attractions. The first area of our walk is world renouned for it's wines, fresh fruits, and especially le melon. They have an usually warm and dry climate which is very sunny and as we got to the end of our walk we encountered lots of Lavendar, (la Lavande), sunflowers, olives, and grapes. OK so once we knew roughly where we wanted to walk, we wrote down the names of the small and medium sized towns. Because we started the trip in Paris, we were able to go to the central IGN store. (IGN is the French mapping agency: Institut Geographique National. See http://www.ign.fr/) There we were able to get very small scale maps (1:25000), which showed detail such as building shapes, 10 meter countours, trails, garages, town layout and also marked tourist offices, and some places to stay. These are called Top 25 maps. Also avaliable is a map of France and the whole GR trail system. Local area maps can also be found in some local tabacs along the way.

Our Hike: Walking with Civility
Alrighty, well before you start out on a walk through france, you should know a few things... We definitely had a few adventures along the way. First off is that if you would like a civilized hiking trip this one's for you. If don't want to camp out (like in a tent), you don't have to. Almost everyday we walked through a town, and every night we slept in a bed and had a hot meal cooked for us in a reasturaunt or country house. In addition to places in towns, there are also markings on the map of what they call gîte d'éttape (This roughly translates to "rural house of journey"). They are similar to a bed and breakfast, and they are pleasant and friendly, but also inexpensive. They offer a bed or room (sometimes they have rooms which are dormitory style, although even in July, we never had to share), dinner, and breakfast for around $20 a person. Also many of the meals are served family-style so that you can meet the other guests. If your other methods fail, you are almost always in close vicinity to a road which you can use for plan B (to hitch a ride to a larger town).

One more hint that I have for this type of vacation activity is that some backpacking experience is absolutely nessesary. You need to know skills like how to pack a backback, survive in a storm, read a map, deal with an emergency situation and keep your stuff dry in the rain. Other important features that come with experience is having boots that you know are reliable, and feet that are accustomed to long walks with a backpack. It sounds like a lot of things to worry about, but the good news is that these basic things can easily be learned by anyone. Simply find someone that has hiked before and talk them into going somewhere with you. You will pick up the things you need to know after going out a few times. Reminder: Plan to do a Shakedown Hike before the trip.
From Paris we took the TGV (Train of Great Velocity) to Avignon and then after 10 minutes in the station, we were on another regional train to Cavignon. To meet the trail we had to go to Gordes.