1757 miles (2827 kilometres) walked in 93 days.
It has, once again, been a while since my last blog, mostly because, in the best way possible, not much has been happening. Lots and lots of lovely walking, many beautiful sights and a few lovely people has made the last couple of weeks a real walk in the park. Well, several parks. National parks that is.
Saint Nectaire, Besse and Bort-les-Orgues:
I spent a couple of nights in each of these places, the last parts of volcano-land (what I am now calling the northern Auvergne region) after covering a bit of it in my last blog. Three beautiful spots with the first two being particularly good for wild walking and food. Saint Nectare has this wonderful cheese which is the absolute best thing when generously melted onto a burger. The region is a bit more rough and rugged in an agricultural way than some places I have visited which made for some nice walks, mostly along farm tracks which is right up my street!
Besse is quite a fun little town with some very good restaurants. Nearby is Lac Pavin which is a great place to visit as it is a lake in the crater of a volcano. You can see the shape of it all really well (though the pictures I took do it no justice at all!) and it just has an interesting feel to the place that is hard to put into words. I did have a slight panic moment when walking down from Lac Pavin back towards the town. The area is covered with small volcanoes and it got me wondering about if all of the volcanoes would have been active at the same time, or if one volcano goes dormant only for another to be created thousands of years later? I was daydreaming about the carnage that would happen if all of the volcanoes around me were erupting at the same time when I heard a distant rumble over the music that was playing in my headphones. It got louder and louder and I was imagining a volcano erupting nearby when it turned into the huge roar of a fighter plane flying overhead. I think it was just a good coincidence of timings that I was so deep in my imagination that it did get my heart pumping for a moment or two. Going out of Besse there are also a series of really nice waterfalls which you can see in the pictures.

I then visited the stunning reservoir at Bort-Les-Orgues which was just beautiful - probably the best view from my van-tent to date. The story behind the dam is very interesting if you want to google it and the Chateau du Val was breathtaking. The way it borders the lake made it one of my favourites of the trip so far which really is saying something. I am however going to surprise many with my next recommendation: don’t go there to walk! The footpaths surrounding the lake are, quite frankly, rubbish! Stinging nettles, fallen trees, poorly marked and just generally not looked after. This lake could easily be a metropolis for walkers if they looked after the paths a bit but they just haven’t. Definitely visit - just don’t walk it! And if you do, beware of the asp vipers which Mum helpfully informed me are poisonous (after I had got close up to take a photo!)

The Gorges du Tarn
What a stunning valley this turned out to be, a fantastic recommendation from Mum and Dad. The Gorges du Tarn run through the Cevennes National Park and it is rather strange geographically as, at about 1000m, you have this very open plain with really gentle summits, lots of farmed areas and several forests. This all made it great territory for spotting vultures. From the top you can’t really see the great fissure in the earth that is the Gorges du Tarn and when you descend into the gorge it is completely different. Very steep cliff faces with thick forest down the bottom of the valley and a wonderful wide river with nice clear water running through this. On top of this the towns along the river Tarn are great with so many different bits of impressive architecture and just loads of character.Â
There were also lots of people there and, for once, I am not going to moan about that! These were, in my humble opinion, the right kind of tourists 😂. Lots of like minded idiots all sweating our arses off in the name of adventure. I met a really nice Australian guy who I walked with for about 10km and heard some wonderful stories from when he and his late wife travelled in France a few years back. It was so nice to walk with someone and learn about them - I can’t believe it has taken this long for it to happen. I have met plenty of people but never decided to join up for a proper period of time. Being a fellow long distance walker, we also got to compare notes on all of our walking gear, which is the kind of nerdy thing I love to do! On my way back I then met three Irish gents riding their mountain bikes along the rocky and hilly paths. Riding 100km a day is impressive when on roads but the fact that these guys are doing so much of it off-road just makes this super crazy! I then got caught in a thunderstorm and drenched through which was actually rather lovely, especially as I knew the showers at the campsite were toasty warm and I would be able to stay dry in my van.

The walking is going really well; I am managing to average 20 miles per day over the last two weeks but it is nice as I don’t really feel like I am having to push too hard to keep that up. My Fitbit however, has a funny way of telling me it is not good enough! It sent me a weekly summary email to say well done for 300,585 steps, which was nice until it informed me that this was 4,077 less than the week before - I guess I am on a downward trend and need to work harder :(
I have also noticed that I am becoming far more aware of what is going on around me. I had noticed a few things that I was getting what felt like a sixth sense for: things like people approaching on the trail well in advance and if it is going to start raining any time soon. Not sure about the rain one but I figured out and tested the people approaching one: I have started noticing, sometimes almost subconsciously, the change in birdsong. I can tell what are warning calls and even sort of hear them spreading through the woodlands. This tells me if someone is approaching and even to some extent what direction they are coming from. I used this to my advantage yesterday when I was alerted by the birds to something in the direction of a field nearby. Luckily I had my camera out as there was a fox playing around in the field and I got some good shots of it jumping in the air and pouncing on something. You’ll have to wait for the photos though as I can’t currently get them from my camera to my iPad! I really don’t think I would have noticed without the birds raising the alarm.
Next step is to go across to the Alps which I am definitely excited for. Well, I was until the drive there…
The Idiocies of Mark:
I got so close to not having an idiocies section in this blog. It was all going so well. And then this morning happened…
This one is so cringey and so similar to something that Mr Bean would do (think of the chair on the car roof sketch) that I really did think twice about even admitting to it. There are now two small towns in France that I will never be returning to, despite them both being lovely places. I am just too embarrassed to ever return. However, for your enjoyment, here we go!
Woke up early this morning so that I could go for a lovely stroll through the valley before it got too warm. I had to be back by about 9.30 so that I could get out of the campsite on time but that was no problem. I packed up and drove off.Â
A lady who worked at the campsite gave me a strange look and only half waved at me as I left - ‘a bit strange,’ I thought.Â
I then saw the very friendly owner of the campsite in the village - ‘he’ll definitely wave to me,’ I thought - he just gave me a completely incredulous look and I thought back to make sure I had paid my camping fees, which I had, and wondered why he wasn’t quite as jolly today as he was yesterday.Â
I then drove past a fairly large lorry in a slightly narrow street and wondered why he was pretty much rubbing up against a curb on the other side of the road - ‘the street’s not THAT narrow!’ I thought.Â
I then drove past the market in the town and had a couple of people pointing which happens from time to time when people wonder what is in the rather large roof box - ‘when are people going to get used to roof-top tents?’ I wondered.Â
Finally, driving up one of those windy mountain roads filled with chicanes I had a van swerve massively to avoid me - ‘calm down mate’ I thought.
All in all, I really was wondering what was going on with the French this morning. And then I put all of the above together… ‘oh ****!’ I thought. I got out of the van and looked up at my tent. Which was still up! Complete with the little awning bit out on the left hand-side, the same side as the lorry and the van which had both done their best to avoid me. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the lay-by that I pulled into had a load of hikers getting ready to go for a walk who helpfully pointed out (as I was already putting it down) that I shouldn’t drive with the tent up. The worst part however is the number of people who saw me who I had chatted to the night before on the campsite, one of whom I even gave the link to this blog to - I hope they were just being polite and won’t bother to read this 😂. I genuinely wanted to dig a hole and hide in it.
On the plus side, I have now done a very thorough wind test of my tent which is able to survive wind speeds of around 50mph with no signs of damage…
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