T minus 100

Sunday 2nd June 2024

Today it's exactly 100 days until we board QF72 to Singapore and then on to Europe for the start of our next big walking adventure. "We", in this case, is my wonderful wife Janet and our good friend Helen.

Janet, Helen and I have travelled together many times - to North and South America, other parts of Europe and the UK, and to New Zealand. We know each other well, having all first met back in the 1990s.

But "we" is an even larger group. Seven days after we leave home we'll be joined in St Malo, France, by Trish, another friend, from Dunsborough. Trish will have left home a week or so ahead of us and will have been exploring and experiencing the delights of Paris before boarding a train to Brittany to meet us as we come off a ferry from England. This will be the first time that we have travelled with Trish, but she and I have known each other for many years now, having first met over our shared but differing community interests in our beautiful region, something we are both passionate about. Here's the four of us below, at a 100-day planning soiree ...

Front: Helen and Trish; me and Janet behind.

This will be another long distance walking holiday, another Camino. This trail goes by several names. Officially I think it is called the rather beautifully named La Voie du Puy ("The Way of Puy") or in Latin, the Via Podiensis. But it also goes by the GR65, ("GR" standing for Grande Randonnée, one of the many long distance walks through southern Europe); Chemin de St Jacques de Compostelle; Le Chemin du Puy; or simply the Le Puy (if you'll excuse the double "the").

In the introduction to his guidebook Walking the Camino de Santiago - Via Podiensis, Dave Whitson says "Distinguished by delightful and historic French villages and pleasing walking through idyllic countryside, the route offers tranquillity and charm in equal measure. With small bakeries churning out pain au chololat in the morning, rustic cafés offering delicious lunches, and home-cooked dinners served with warm hospitality each evening, it's hard not to feel an all encompassing joie de vivre." So what's not to like and look forward to about that picture.

The map below shows the route we'll be taking:

The colour codes are these - the purple ones are Le Puy-en-Velay (top right) and St-Jean-Pied-de-Port (bottom left), the start and finish points. But it's a bit more complex than that. The four of us are walking along the blue markers from Le Puy to Cahors (in the middle, also in purple), from where Janet and Helen will depart for home. Trish and I will then continue along the green markers to St Jean. The occasional red marker signifies a rest day. Janet and Helen will walk for 19 days over 17 stages; in total Trish and I for some 41 days over 38 stages.

To put the above map into perspective here's the route within the nearby France, as well as Switzerland, part of Spain and part of Italy. The total walk is about 750 klms - the first part just a little under half that.

It'll take us almost a fortnight to get to the start of the walk. The three of us will fly into London for a few days exploring, then catch a train to Portsmouth and ferry across the channel, collect Trish, then a week or so driving around Brittany before ending up in Lyon some 800 kilometres to the south-east, and then finally onto Le Puy-en-Velay by train. But that's all well ahead of us, and if all goes to plan there'll be a daily blog as there has been for trips past.

But today, T minus 100, had to be acknowledged.