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

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  • Day 12: Le Puy en Velay to Pradelles (42km) No room at the inn.

    I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. Robert Louis Stevenson – Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes I have something to confess. Sleeping in dormitories is not my idea of heaven on earth. Ten years of…

  • Day 11: Saint Jeures to Le Puy-en-Velay (36km) How to make a cat bark

    Stand-up comedy is what I do, and it’s so rewarding. If you write a joke and tell it to an audience of 15,000 people who laugh their heads off at it, it’s the best feeling in the world. Michael McIntyre There are many things I wanted to be when I…

  • Day 10: Les Sétoux to Saint Jeures (38km) The end of the beginning and the beginning of the end.

    Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Winston Churchill I woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night from a terrible nightmare. I’d seen the image of a short…

  • Day 9: Saint Julien Molin Molette to Les Sétoux (25 km) Cousinade and crumble.

    I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it. Lewis Carroll – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland It was just past 4pm. I had been waiting outside the gite I had booked at Sétoux for nearly an hour and there was a band of dark menacing looking rain…

  • Day 8: Saint Romain de Surieu to St Julien Molin Molette (38.5 km) Carpe Diem.

    Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles todayTomorrow will be dying. Robert Herrick – To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time. Michelle and Françoise were the perfect hosts. They’d lived in the area all their lives and loved having pilgrims to…

  • Day 7: Ornacieux Balbins to Saint Romain de Surieu (35 km) All about Berlioz,Byron and Fred.

    The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant Albert Einstein At around 5.30pm as I entered the little village of Saint-Romain-de-Surieu I spotted a chap emptying a large quantity of empty bottles into a bottle bank. I decided he was probably either an alcoholic…

  • Day 6: Charavines to Ornacieux-Balbins (33 km) Another Day in Paradise

    She calls out to the man on the street                                             He can see she’s  been crying,                                           She‘s got blisters on the soles of her feet,                                         She can’t walk but she’s trying    Phil Collins – Another Day in Paradise I limped into the village of Grand- Lemps shortly before midday. It had…

  • Day 5: Romagnieu to Charavines (30 km) Spider sense

    There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow William Shakespeare – Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2 If they gave stars for accommodation standards by host families on the major pilgrim routes across France, I’m not sure Agnes would have secured even a solitary star. The two up, one…

  • Day 4: Yenne to Romagnieu (30 km) A funny old day.

    There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends,                                          Rough hew them how we will William Shakespeare – Hamlet Act 5, Scene 2 It was 6.30pm, I was sitting in a shelter outside a church with thunder and lightning directly overhead. I was some way from where I thought I was spending…

  • Day 3: Pelly to Yenne (44 km) Yearning for Yenne.

    Our doubts are traitors,                                       And make us lose the good          We oft might win                          By fearing the attempt. William Shakespeare – Measure for Measure Act 1 Scene IV As I headed off from the Chateau de Pelly shortly before 8am, I wasn’t entirely confident that I would reach Yenne in…

  • Day 2: Charly to Pelly (26km) Pilgrim paradise.

    In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln For all its charms, the communal gite at Charly lacked one important element for a comfortable stay – large enough windows to let sufficient air into the rooms to prevent…

  • Day 1: Geneva to Charly (26km) Feeling a bit of a Charlie in Charly.

    Making fun is serious business Charlie Chaplin Maybe it was the early (5am)  start to get the plane from Toulouse to Geneva, maybe it was the unrelenting 30C heat and humidity, maybe it was the simple fact that living high on the hog in south west France had taken its…