Route(s) Through France, From Top to Bottom

David McDowell (see France from top to bottom) has got me thinking. What would be a good route through France?

France is a country that offers some stunning walking along well marked routes; it’s not all just wine and baguettes! Here you have the dramatic mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees, but also the hills of the Massif Central and the Voges, the wonderful undulating country of the Perigord and the lands of the Lot and the Tarn — the Aveyron is a real gem of a place. Getting closer to the sea there’s the Ardeche and the Cevennes. And France also offers some stunning coastal walking.

There are some problems though. I’ve heard of people cycling from top to bottom and taking boats through the rivers and canals from the Channel to the Med. But I’ve never heard of anyone walking it before. Route planning would be critical. Those great expanses of lowlands —kilometres of wheat fields that seem to go on forever — may be welcome when your are riding a bike, but they might be just too much on foot during the heat of summer.

Fortunately the French have done a lot of the planning for us. For example, the GR 36 footpath starts at Caen on the North Coast and winds its way down to the Med near Narbonne, by way of Normandy, Le Mans, Saumur, Angouleme, Perigeux and the Dordogne, Cahors and Carcassone. That would be some walk. You could branch off at teh Loire and head South East through the Limousin, the Massif Central and connecting onto the Stephenson Trail through the Cevennes to the Camargue. That would be a fine trip as well.

Starting would present a challenge.  Calais might seem obvious and a route from here would you through the picturesque country of the North including the lovely Somme. But Calais means a big chunk of extra walking and probably sends you on a path that is far too easterly, unless you choose to walk through Paris.

My favourite start would probably be at Cherburg. Cherburg is not the most attractive of towns and tourists tend to race away from it and down the peninsula. The peninsula, though, is a lovely place and would be a great start to a long walk, whether you took a coastal route or walked through the middle.

There’s almost too much choice here to make route plotting easy! Ideally, you’d want to criss cross from west to east and back again.

Weather would also be a real challenge as the walk would take months. Winter weather can be pretty horrible in France and you probably wouldn’t have to finish walking through a cold, wintery Languedoc landscape. Perhaps, this alone means that this would be a project best tackled in stages over a number of years.

But above all else I can’t get away from the thought that one route wouldn’t be good enough. I reckon you’d have to do the walk (at least) twice to do the country justice. Add in (a some would) tours of famous vineyards and things get even more complicated.

A real challenge this and one that I’ll come back do occasionally.

It will be fascinating to see the route that David comes up with!