Pilgrim's Progress – Long Distance Walks in Europe and the UK

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

Søren Kierkegaard on the Importance of Walking

Since finishing the first leg of my walk across ‘The Hexagon’ in May, south west France, like much of Europe, has been in the thrall of an interminable heatwave. Temperatures have regularly exceeded 40C and with such extreme weather the only sensible policy has been to spend as much time as possible lounging by the pool.

As the date for the next stage of my walk across France has drawn nearer, I have been spending large amounts of time scouring the long term weather forecasts hoping to see temperatures falling back below the 30C level by the time I head off again from Manosque. Sadly, the next couple of weeks doesn’t seem to offer much respite from the extreme heat so I have had to make some adjustments to my schedule. Instead of trying to walk 750km over the next three weeks across the Massifs central from Manosque to Aubusson I’ve decided to cut the distance by 50% and only walk as far as Saint Flour.

In order to avoid the worst of the heat I plan to head off as early as possible each day and try and complete the bulk of each day’s walk by lunch time. I don’t want to meet a similar fate as Dr Michael Mosley,(the celebrity medic who offered health advice to millions through his radio and TV programmes including ‘Just One Thing’ which highlighted just one thing you could do to improve your health) tragically died of heatstroke while on holiday on the Greek island of Symi in June 2024. If there is one message that resonates from beyond the grave, it’s that it is extremely unwise to go on long walks when the temperature is above 30C!

For the next three weeks I’ll be following the GR4 which runs some 1,500km from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Although it won’t be a pilgrimage in the true sense of the word, there will be a spritual aspect to the walk. Quite apart from walking to Mont St Michel (in 2027), this year my walk will take me to the Abbey of Notre Dames des Neiges. Nestled in the heart of a forest in the Cevennes mountain region, at an altitude of 3,600 feet, the abbey was founded in 1850 by Trappist monks and has hosted such luminaries as Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles de Foucauld, who was canonized in May 2022. 

Charles de Foucauld chose the trappist Abbey of Notre Dame des Neiges for his novitiate when he decided to embrace the religious life in 1890, under the name of brother Marie-Albéric. Although he only stayed at the abbey for seven months before being sent to the Trappist monastery of Akbes in Syria, the abbey always held a special place in the heart , as he confided later in correspondence with the brothers. It was at Notre Dame des Neiges that he celebrated his first Mass a decade later, in 1901, after his ordination to the priesthood in the neighboring city of Viviers and it’s where his relics are now kept.

It is the latter, that I am particularly interested. Not only for his life which forms the core of a superb travelogue called Les Chemins des Estives ( the path of the summer pastures) by a French author called Charles Wright, but also because of a ‘miracle’ which occurred on the 30th November 2016, on the eve of the centenary of Charles de Foucauld’s murder on 1 December 1916 in Tamanrasset, Algeria.

As I’ll only be averaging 15 miles a day over the next three weeks, hopefully that will give me more time to meet and chat to people as well as spending more time looking around the places I pass through on my walk! There’s also the possibility that I’ll be spending considerably more time in bars and restaurants en route.

With the mercury forecast to hit 36C in the afternoon, I decided to head off from Manosque at 7am in the hope of reaching Cereste by lunchtime.

It proved a wise move. The walking was fairly straightforward, through the suburbs of Manosque and on to the hilltop village of Pierrevert.

For most of the way there was shade and much of the morning was on tarmac heading to Montfuron.

The best of the day’s walk was along a ridge towards Cereste. There were no other walkers, and the only person I encountered all day was a shepherd with his dog and a small herd of goats!

I reached Céreste at midday and ensconced myself in a cafe for a lengthy liquid lunch. Céreste isn’t a particularly large village but the café was packed out.

The fact that I was in the heart of the Luberon, one of France’s most popular tourist destinations, may have had something to do with it. Fans of Peter Mayle may remember that he lived in tbe heart of the Luberon in a village called Ménerbes!

The municipal gite, where I was staying the night for the princely sum of 15 euros was extremely well appointed and had the capacity to sleep 30+. I looked at the guest book – the last people who’d stayed were four hikers on the GR4 a month ago in mid July! Maybe I need to revise my notion that I’m going to be able to practise my French on hordes of other hikers I going to bump into on the GR4 over the next 3 weeks!