In spite of the video appearances this was a somewhat difficult and stressful
trip for us. Our seventh walk on a pilgrimage trail, we were looking at it as
more of a vacation adventure, than as a serious trek. Our plan was 20 to 25k
per day and to use B&Bs and hotels when possible, not using scarce pilgrim
gite space, leaving that for the pilgrims bound for Santiago de Compostella.
I'll give you an overview of the day to day, some planning tips, and then why
it wasn't so fine for us, but could be for you.
Trip Notes:
1. From Toulouse, got taxi to Gare Routiere got bus to in Revel, the closest
point to Dourgne. From there got a taxi to Dourgne. Toulouse bus schedules at
www.haute-garonne.fr and the bus
lines that go to Revel are 56 and 57.
Walked from Dourgne to St. Felix. Stayed at Le Cocagne - no star room, but
food and ambiance good. In the main square. The fancier hotel is away from
square.
Walked La Rigole & stayed at gite Moulin de Naurouze where GR653 hits
Canal du Midi - very welcoming and pilgrim friendly - lots of pilgrim info.
Canal du Midi info www.canal-et-voie-verte.com/
From there walked Canal du Midi. Choice is canal with shade, water, but paved
path or GR653 with villages, no shade, and few facilities. Stayed at
La Masquière in Écluse en Laval.
Nice but pricey. Nothing else available and this wasn't far enough for the
next day to work.
Took taxi to Ramonville, walked from there into Toulouse. Stayed at Hotel des
Arts a one star but centrally located and pilgrim friendly. Takes some
adjusting to get used to the toilet being visible from every part of the room.
Don't miss Augustin Museum.
From Toulouse, took bus to Colomiers at outskirts of town, then walked to
pilgrim gite in Leguevin. Found out that next day's route had just been
changed, too many trees down in forest, and temporary route setup - not
waymarked.
From Leguevin walked to just short of L'Isle-Jourdain at Chateau de Guerre -
hard to get to from new route - had to ask and walk thru someone's fields to
get there.
Next day on to Gimont at Hotel Le Coin du Feu - supermarket in town, but it
closed just before we got to it, 15 minutes before closing hours. After that
we paid attention. Closing hours in southern France mean when the last
employee locks the door and leaves. They might close the door to incoming
customers much earlier, also, if store is empty near closing, they sometimes
lock up and leave.
Next day was one of our favorite stays - the gite at La Croisee de St. Cricq,
just short of Auch. Very nice couple running it. We were only ones there and
shared their meal.
Then a short day into Auch, the birthplace of D'Artagnan, at Hotel de France
From Auch, on to L'Isle de Noe - a town on a small island between two rivers.
We stayed at Edna's Chambres d'Hotes - Mme Moody. A unique stay. She saw an ad
in an English paper about 3 years ago, and bought it sight unseen, never
having been to France, and not speaking a word of French.
From there walked to Monlezun and stayed with Mme Seailles - she had no
English, and we little French, but it worked out.
The next day we walked direct to Maubourguet, bypassing Marciac and following
an alternate route in the CFSJ. Only problem was that distances and details in
CFSJ weren't quite right, but map and compass got us there. Stayed at Hotel de
France.
General note on prices. Bed, dinner and breakfast at a gite or CdH for two was
about 70 euros, at a hotel in a small town, about 90 euros.
From Maubourguet, there are no accommodations within our walking range on the
GR653, so we took the alternate route thru Lembeye. The CFSJ description of
the alternate did not match the trail at all - possibly it has been rerouted
since guide was made. Anyway, we soon realized we had missed the alternate,
due to our map and compass checking, and made our way by small roads to our
stay in Lembeye. Hotel Pelerin was not open - apparently on owner's whim,
opens and closes, but stayed with Mme Price and her daughter about 1 km past
town. Nice meal and company.
From Lembeye, back to the GR653 at Anoye and on to Morlaas, again at Hotel de
France don't think they are a chain - no similarities.
The next day we pass the outskirts of Pau on the way to Lescar. One of the
highlights of the trip was walking into the cathedral, tired and pack laden
and hearing the sound of the huge organ as the organist practiced. The pipes
filled the end of the cathedral, and the sounds penetrated to the bone. Stayed
at La Terrasse - wonderful gaspacho. Another pilgrim told us that the gite was
excellent, but we had already booked the hotel.
Next day to Estialescq - CdH Maison Naha - we highly recommend, due to
hostess, food and accommodation.
Waymarking varied. Some new, some old and faded, never any comfort waymarks -
i.e. on a 5k straight stretch, one mark at each end. One in the middle would
be a comfort mark, to reassure that you are still on the trail. In some areas
there were red and white plastic flags, from extremely faded to new, that
seemed to mark the trail.
On to Oloron St. Marie - stayed at Hotel Alysson - too far from main section
of town and pricey, restricting food choices - suggest Hotel de la Paix as
better option.
Train back to Toulouse with a couple hour layover in Pau - went up the nearby
funicular to center of Pau - views, castle, people, restaurants, then on to
Toulouse and Hotel des Arts again. Next day fly home.
Suggestions, Hints
Some of the difficulties were unique to our trip, others you may encounter.
Starting from Toulouse would be better than starting from Dourgne.
Accommodations are infrequent and quickly filled in the area around Toulouse.
This is a fine bicycle route, as you can adapt to filled accommodations, and
just go on to the next.
For walkers it is a different matter. As a walker, you need to reserve your
accommodations if you expect them to prepare you a meal, and it is a good idea
to reserve even if you just need a bed. You need a plan for when you can't get
a place, such as a tent and food, a taxi, etc. The stages work a little better
if you can easily do 30k per day. If you are staying in a place that provides
breakfast, it is hard to get walking before 8 or 8:30. If we couldn't find
accommodations within 25k, we would opt for a lesser distance. For 30k per
day, it is best to get going by 7 or 7:30. Accommodations are frequently off
trail, so your navigation skills must be good.
Always carry lunch material. It is very rare to find more than one place per
day where you can buy supplies, so when you hit the village of the day, get
what you need. I also suggest carrying snack material so that you have
something to eat about 10:30 in the morning and 2:30 in the afternoon. That
snack should provide lots of salt and sugar to keep you going.
For most of the trip, we found we didn't have much energy after walking the
first couple of hours. Late in the trip we decided that this was probably an
electrolyte imbalance due to hours of sweating, and at first opportunity
started carrying bags of potato chips. This helped quite a bit. Energy bars of
some sort would have been a good idea, but we never had our act together
enough to get some. The little Casino groceries didn't have them and
supermarkets within walking distance were rare. On the plus side, there were
lots of figs on trees hanging over the trail, so we got some fruit intake. (We
would never reach over a fence or onto a farmer's property, but we figured
that anything in the airspace directly above the road/trail was fair game).
We had a number of days in the 80s (ºF) and a number in the 40s, a couple of
days of rain and boot sucking mud - the rain happened to coincide with few
days of dirt tracks. Humidity very high for most of the trip. 95% of the time
is on small paved country roads. Imagine a 10 inch pie 2 inches thick attached
to your foot, and a softball on the end of your hiking stick, and that is boot
sucking mud.
When we got home and looked at our pictures, it looked like the best trip we
ever took, and in some ways it was. The people we met were delightful, the
cities buzzing with activity. However, on the trail, we saw practically no
one, maybe a dozen hikers over three weeks, including the ones we met in the
few gites where we stayed. Many days were fairly boring. After several days of
walking through cornfields, Susan said: "Are you sure we're not in Iowa?".
Same feeling after walking along La Rigole - a small feeder canal to Canal du
Midi - haven't we been at this curve a dozen times already today? The sameness
also made the navigation difficult. Some areas were well waymarked, others
scarce or missing waymarks. You had to count the little side roads, as they
were not labeled. "Is this the 5th side road from the right, or the sixth?
Well, it is a dirt road. Do dirt roads count?".
Almost forgot, have to put in © 2009
backpack45.com to slow the blog
bandits. I don't mind if they give attribution, but there are some spammers
that copy legitimate articles and highlight text so a click will go off to
their spam.
When to go:
We did this trip in September. That accounts for the lack of other walking
pilgrims. In talking to our various hosts, we found that during April and May
there is a lot of pilgrim traffic - frequently filling the gites. These are
the people walking the entire route from Arles to Santiago. Many of them carry
a tent and expect to do their own meals much of the time, though some have
sent their tent home by the time they get to Oloron St. Marie.
Navigation Notes:
I have carried a small Silva compass, about 2x3 inches on all our trips,
backpacking and otherwise, and rarely if ever looked at it. This trip I
carried it and the map in my hand, and looked at it frequently. With all the
little unmarked roads, and sameness of the trail, it was important to know
exactly where we were. If we had off trail accommodations, we had to know that
we were turning off on the right road. We carried the 1/100000 IGN maps for
the trail. These are identical to the map pages in the back of the
Sur le chemin de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle, la via Tolosona, la voie du
soleil... - Francois Lepere & André Dehnel guide. (we didn't use this guide
except the maps). We carried the
Miam Miam Dodo, the
Confraternity of St. James Guide, and the
Le chemin d'Arles vers Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle, Louis Laborde-Balen - Jean-Pierre Siréjol guide. We mostly relied on the
CFSJ, the MMD and the map and compass.
If I were to do this part of the route again, I would look for more detailed
maps. Excellent maps are available interactively on
https://www.geoportail.fr/ but they
don't print out easily. Since we got back I've been looking for better maps.
You can get the 1:24000 IGN maps, but it is costly and heavy. There is a
website
www.geolives.com that allows
you to download topo maps of Europe, and load them to your iphone or pda. You
can also print them. It looks like a possibility, but I haven't tried it.
Cell Phones
Last year we carried an unlocked GSM phone and bought an Orange sim card when
we got to Paris. This year we ordered a sim card in advance from
Rebelfone. The Orange card is prepaid,
and we had to buy cards to top it up as we went along. Orange also now has a
cheap cellphone that you can buy with initial minutes when you get to France.
However, the Rebelfone has worked out ok to make calls. When we got the sim
card, it had the phone number on it, so we knew our number in advance. We were
able to make calls without problems throughout southern France. We still
haven't gotten the final charges on our credit card, since they have to wait
until the charges from the French carrier come through. Hopefully they will be
reasonable. Orange is the French carrier.
Why did we have a difficult time?
It was a matter of mindset and circumstances. We were not primed for a serious
venture. If we had been headed for Santiago, a couple of months away, then a
week of not so good walking would not be significant. We could anticipate
something different in the days to come. In this case we were using our scarce
vacation time, and when much of that time was not fun, having some doubts
about our choice of activity. We did get off to a bad start. Missed our plane
connection in London, so got to Toulouse the next day and by taxi, bus and
taxi again, got to Dourgne and started walking immediately, rather than having
a night's rest first in Toulouse. That put us into catch-up mode as far as
food, arranging accommodations, etc., not to mention jet lag, and we never
really caught up. The lack of other hikers had a big negative impact. When we
encounter other walkers and spend a few minutes chatting, that has a huge
positive effect - it gives us a burst of mental energy that will carry us for
a couple of hours. It helps the boring parts. That has always been a highlight
of other trips, but it wasn't till this trip that we realized how much we
depend on it.
I think if you start this trip from Toulouse, and have food for emergency
supper and breakfast, as well as the usual lunch and snacks supply, you will
do fine.
Interesting!
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