Today was 14 miles walked,  1,000′ climbed.  We arrived!

The journey had far more traffic than we’re used to …

But still had the beauty we’ve come to expect

And, we crossed the Loire River!

We’ve now traveled from the Rhone-Alps, to the Massif Pilat and on to the Loire valley! For us, amazing!

The total for this journey was 242 miles and 30,100′ of climbing.  We have now walked, in three Caminos,  from Geneva to Muxia/Finnesterre  … a distance of 1,320 miles. Among our 5 European walks, we’ve now walked at bit over 2,100 miles … approaching a length similar to the whole of the Pacific Crest Trail ( from Mexico to Canada).

So, how did this hike compare?

Beauty- wise:  This was, hands down,  the most “every day jaw dropping” beautiful! The Del Norte? The ocean views were the best. The other walks? Wonderful! But this one takes it.

Remote-wise: For someone without local language skills, this would be a tough one!  Such limited resources and consistently closed businesses; you really needed to be able to get information from locals who probably don’t speak English.  Probably the sister walk to this one (Le Puy to St Jean Pied de Port) would be the next most difficult … but there were more resources consistent available to the hiker.

This was also remote for the lack of fellow Pilgrims. We’re going to keep our count at 7 “through-hikers”. As we approached Le Puy, the numbers grew, but we’ve found that there are a lot of 3 – 10 day hikes in and around Le Puy that draw the numbers.

Toughness of stages: Probably this journey is the toughest, yet, but a close tie with the Del Norte. The Del Norte had longer average stages (15 mi/day) vs this one (13.4 mi/day), lasted much longer (41 days vs 18),  with roughly (1,600’/day of climbing vs 1,700′ avg for this one). This Geneva to Le Puy journey, however, had some consistently difficult surfaces to walk on, particularly with the steep grades. We’re probably just getting older and don’t remember the Del Norte pain, but this one seemed tougher.

So what’s next?  We’re still working on what we will do with the rest of this trip (more to come later).  We are sure that,  God willing and our health allows,  we will walk, in the next few years, through Switzerland, through the Alps and in to Italy to connect up with the 2019 walk we did from Lucca to Rome.

More later. Thank you for reading and being a part of our adventure.