Hiking and Walking in France
Provence is famous for its pretty villages: their street markets, busy sidewalk cafes and colourfully decorated handicraft shops. Les Baux, however, one of the region’s top destinations, is not like that at all. For one, you will find fewer sidewalk cafes and restaurants, certainly none that would line the high street. You will also find…
Over the years, we have travelled extensively on the various van Gogh trails in France, driven purely by the power of circumstance. When we lived in Paris, the artist was practically our neighbour, separated from us by no more than a couple of blocks and 120 years. Way back then, we also followed van Gogh’s…
This week, we feature a guest post from our friend and fellow Riviera-resident Vaud Massarsky who used to work as a serial entrepreneur in the USA (where he, among other businesses, published a weekly New York City real estate journal and produced live drama as well as musicals) and now spends much of his time…
Vive la serendipité! Yes, you guessed it: this is another post in praise of serendipity walking, the art of making discoveries while wandering around aimlessly with the sole purpose of entertaining yourself. At least, this is how it is commonly defined, although, on a deeper level, there is much more to it than that. Serendipity…
For almost a thousand years, Saint Malo has been the best defended town not only in Brittany but in the whole of France: the only one that has been continuously surrounded by a fully functioning defensive wall. There has, after all, always been a lot for Saint Malo to defend itself against: the extent of…
Having explored the Brittany coast to the west of Saint Malo for last week’s hike, we will today turn in the opposite direction. But although the landscape around Rothéneuf – the starting point for today’s exploration of the GR34 coastal path – may look familiar with its mix of dramatic scenery … … and more…
A few years ago, French hikers were asked to name their favourite hiking trail in the country, and it was the great Brittany stretch of the nationwide coastal path that received the largest number of votes. I don’t know whether this vote was a one-off or whether it is conducted every year or so, and…
For this week’s post, we stay within Burgundy but move from a stopover town on the circuit – Auxerre – to a destination near the top of the charts. With the possible exception of Dijon, the region’s capital, no town in Burgundy attracts as many visitors as Beaune. Most of these visitors come here to…
Towns in provincial France or La France Profonde come in two varieties: they either aspire to be smaller versions of Paris, or they do not. Auxerre – as near the geographical centre of the country and, perhaps, its heart as you can hope to get – is an excellent example for the second group. Auxerre’s…
There are two reasons to travel to the town of Beaucaire. Firstly, there is the experience of walking across a border: not a national but a cultural border, one that has divided France into tribes of different customs and habits for centuries. Up to a point, it still does so today. Take the train to…