The Way of Tours
In medieval times, this was the most westerly of the the four traditional pilgrim routes. It was a fairly movable feast, with several strands running roughly parallel in a southerly direction. It catered for pilgrims from the Low Countries, Paris and Britain, and converged with two of the others at Saint-Palais in the Pyrénées, before crossing into Spain for the final push to Compostella.
It is probably the easiest walking of all the pilgrimages. The countryside is flat and fertile, with many poignant historical remains going back to Roman times and even earlier.
The traditional route, or one of them, has been replicated by a marked pathway called a Grande Randonnée (GR). The Way of Arles is the GR653, and there is an accompanying guide book put out by the French Walking Club, the Fédération Française de la Randonnée Pédestre, commonly known as the FFRP (see Maps and Guides).
There is also an alternative marked track, very similar to the GR653 but not identical, managed by the Amis de Saint Jacques, a religious organisation. To get the maps and guides for these, it is necessary to have a créanciale (or crédential), a sort of religious passport, obtainable either from your local bishop or from a cathedral or Office of Tourism in France. The créanciale also entitles you to stay in pilgrim refuges along the way.
It took us 14 days to do this walk.
Our route for this walk
The diary has been broken up in to the following sections:
Poitiers to Brioux-sur-Boutonne