Over on my Facebook page, I decided that I would revise my ambition to walk one of France's Grande Randonnees. These are state maintained long distance footpaths, which can run most of the length of France in any direction, north/ south/east/west. They are all clearly signposted and marked by a dedicated ministry.
When asked in the days prior to my retirement what I intended doing with my time, I would repeat the idea of walking one of these long distance paths which stretch for hundreds of miles across la belle France. I have done several sections of several GRs when camping in the vicinity and over the years we have been going to France. The events of 2007 rather muddied the picture for a while but I feel as fit as I have ever done and am stubbornly planning to undertake this marathon walk. Half the pleasure is in the planning and preparation of such a project and so I will be spending some time just doing that - probably via these pages. The GR5, I think, runs from the Channel coast to the Mediterranean cote and would be a marvellous one to tackle. I think it is possible to do the whole think in 32 days if you were able to tackle it continuously. However the logistics and physical wear and tear probably make that impracticable in my case. If it was broken down into sections of 8, each section taking 4 days with rest days interspersed then the feat becomes much more accessible. I wouldn't walk in the summer months as being too hot but could either walk in the spring and/or autumn, thereby completing in either 8 years or 4 years! You can see that this would be a long term project! (Also want to fit in a Great Rail Journey of the USA coast to coast - not walking but going by train!)
"She had lost the art of conversation, but, unfortunately, not the power of speech" (George Bernard Shaw).
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