2010 Diary

Walking in France: Meeting a mushroom collector deep in the forest near Saint-Pastour
Meeting a mushroom collector deep in the forest near Saint-Pastour

A 30-day, 770 km walk from Cosne-sur-Loire to Auch.

This expedition allowed us to link up some of our previous walks. We began in Cosne-sur-Loire, the place where we had joined the Loire in 2006, and three weeks later crossed our track of 2007 at Bergerac. A week after that we crossed our 2004 pilgrimage at Condom and ended two days later at Auch, which we had passed through in 2004.

From Cosne-sur-Loire we headed south, upstream to Fourchambault, where we joined the  Way of Vezelay and left the river in favour of the Canal de Berry.

This took us into the old province of Berry, the country of George Sand, with its peaceful fields divided by great hedges, a part of France still relatively unvisited by tourists.

Walking in France: Finally a sunny day and only ten more kilometres to Auch, the end of our walk
Finally a sunny day and only ten more kilometres to Auch, the end of our walk

Pressing on into Limousin, passing from one pilgrim church to another, past Limoges and into Périgord, we crossed the Dordogne at Bergerac, the Lot at Castelmoron and the Garonne at Aiguillon. It was a land of plenty, full of vines and punctuated by bastide villages, relics of the Hundred Years’ War.

Despite the weather, which had been wet and got wetter, we arrived at our destination, Auch, in time to have a day of rest and sunshine before getting the train back to Paris.

A quick visual summary of this walk can be seen in the yearly photo album. For the statistically inclined, there is also a spreadsheet that gives details of distances, costs etc.

Our route for this year

The diary has been broken up into the following sections:

Cosne-sur-Loire to Fourchambault

Fourchambault to Loye-sur-Arnon

Loye-sur-Arnon to Cluis

Cluis to Bénévent-l’Abbaye

Bénévent-l’Abbaye to Flavignac

Flavignac to Périgueux

Périgueux to Bergerac

Bergerac to Castelmoron-sur-Lot

Castelmoron-sur-Lot to Condom

Condom to Auch

To see icons for each night’s accommodation on this map, press the full-screen symbol at the top right and then tick the accommodation icon box at the top left. Zoom in on a particular icon to see its precise location. These accommodation icons are also shown on all section maps.

You can also see this map using Google Earth and take a virtual flight along our route.

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