Going Off the Beaten Track in France

If your heart is set on a pil­grim­age or walk­ing tour in France, and you don’t want to pay a com­mer­cial tour­ing com­pany, where can you look for help with travel plan­ning? It’s not always as easy as you might think.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple will hike the month-long trail across Spain’s Camino de San­ti­ago this year. Mean­while, only one-tenth as many pil­grims will tra­verse the French trails that lead to the SJPDP trail­head for the Camino Francés (from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port at the base of Pyre­nees and then across north­ern Spain.)

FB group for le Chemin du Puy

Because the audi­ence for French pil­grim­ages is 90% smaller, it takes skills and com­mit­ment to find rel­e­vant and timely resources to pre­pare for those walk­ing tours. The best guides have been writ­ten en français, and require at least inter­me­di­ate read­ing and com­pre­hen­sion skills in French, sup­ple­mented by Google Trans­late and other inter­ac­tive trans­la­tion dic­tio­nar­ies.

Scarce resources for niche travelers

The French trail sys­tem for camino pil­grims is off the beaten track, far from the larger or well-known cities.

In these out-of-the-way loca­tions, ser­vices are pro­vided by fam­ily-scale or very small busi­ness enter­prises, located in ham­lets with few other options. The travel sea­son is short, May to Sep­tem­ber. Change is a con­stant, given how hard it is to earn a liv­ing at such a highly sea­sonal busi­ness, with fund­ing com­ing from such a small pop­u­la­tion of tourists and vis­i­tors (many of whom are on very tight bud­gets.) As a result inns, cham­bres d’hôtes, gîtes and bistros that appeared to be thriv­ing last year may no longer be in busi­ness this year…

For peo­ple who want the com­fort of room reser­va­tions before arriv­ing in France, advance plan­ning is essen­tial. Luck­ily, my hik­ing buddy has done this before, knows the con­straints of the Chemin du Puy, and thus made sure to book room reser­va­tions months in advance. She also knew where to look for help.

Spe­cial­ized Face­book groups offer help­ful, some­times per­son­al­ized and up-to-the-minute resources for aspir­ing pèlerins — a god­send for Eng­lish speak­ers. For exam­ple, I’ve joined the FB group devoted to the Via Podi­en­sis (the Way of St. James that begins in Le Puy). Group mem­bers (past, present and future pil­grims) share pho­tos, pack­ing lists, rec­om­men­da­tions (or places to avoid), prayers and so on. On any given day there’s a lively Q‑and‑A con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place.

Some mem­bers pub­lish links to their blogs and travel mem­oirs. A few ded­i­cated vol­un­teers share detailed work­sheets with tips and links to lodg­ings, cafes, bistros, phar­ma­cies and other essen­tial resources for pil­grims.

These online travel resources are invalu­able for French pil­grim­ages, due to the fast-chang­ing nature of les héberge­ments.

When Facebook is not enough

I spend almost an hour most days keep­ing up with my FB groups’ lat­est updates, but now I want less “ran­dom” point­ers…  With just six weeks before fly­ing to France, I make time to work through a hand­ful of books/guides, and prac­tice my rusty French.

Here’s what’s on my active book­shelf right now:

• From Here, You Can’t See Paris: Sea­sons of a French Vil­lage and Its Restau­rant, by Michael S. Sanders, © 2002
• Miam Miam Dodo: Saint Jacques de Com­postelle, Le Puy-en-Velay / Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (GR 65), 2016 edi­tion
• TopoGu­ides: Sen­tier vers Saint-Jacques-de-Com­postelle via Le Puy (GR 65, 651, 652)
• Chemins de Com­postelle: Le Puy-en-Velay —> Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (Miche­lin Guide), largely focused on maps
• Advanced French, Hugo edi­tion, DK pub­lish­ing, © 2009
• South­west France: Dor­dogne, Lot, Bor­deaux (Cado­gan Guide), © 1998

These are not books you’re likely to find on the shelf of the typ­i­cal book­seller. Even Ama​zon​.com may take a few weeks to deliver some of the French guides. Half the books on my list were sourced from over­seas book­sellers so I had to wait 2–4 weeks for their deliv­ery. If you want sim­i­lar books on your shelf, it pays to plan ahead…

Bon chemin à vous!