Hexatrek: The long distance thru hike in France | Hacker News Reader

Hexatrek: The long distance thru hike in France

en.hexatrek.com

346 pointscarabiner179 comments

> 47 Great Hiking GR® trails have been brought together in a single path to create this thru hike.

Fun fact: the GR trails, and hence this through route, aren’t allowed to be mapped in OpenStreetMap.

The federation that administers them, the FFRP, claims copyright in them as a creative work. French law agrees.

You can see the little red and white trailblazing marks on trees, but you can’t record that information and put it into OSM. If you want a map, you need an FFRP-licensed product.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/France/Itinéraires_pédes...

That's not fun at all, I'd never have imagined such a level of selfishness!

What would happen if a well meaning editor added those trails though, is there automated removal or would OSM get in trouble?

That's not selfish, GRs are sometimes crossing natural park in which nature and wilderness related laws are enforced, there are people that can sue you if you smoke a cigarette/walk in certain areas/throw some trash at the ground/camp in les calanques de marseille for example (the south of france is highly inflammable during summer). In order to maintain the local biodiversity, keep a minor impact of the local wilderness of these places (endangered species often), some money has to be raised, experts have to be paid to help decisions (should a trail be modified for X reasons related to what I said supra, should some trees be cut down for security reasons, should some security lanes be created to prevent fires etc...), which then requires the intervention of professionals to apply these decisions. You also have to pay "rangers" sometimes (I don't know of many parks of france, i'm mainly talking about calanques and cevennes).

When I go climbing I have to buy a local guide documenting all the historical climbing spots; the persons that sells the guide are the one that equipped and maintened these historical routes : is it selfishness ?

No, sorry, that's an absolute nonsense argument.

To start with, the official law enforcement, and park maintenance is managed and facilitated by the state, payed by the tax payers.

Secondly, the associations like the one mentioned above, although making use of the resources of their members, are in part being bankrolled by the state. So, again, payed with tax payers' money.

Thirdly, the association, labelled an association of public benefit, should fit the following definition: "Elle n'exerce pas d'activité lucrative. Sa gestion est désintéressée. Elle ne fonctionne pas au profit d'un cercle restreint de personnes", or, after loosely translated: 1) It should not be profit driven 2) Its management should be selfless 3) It should not function at the benefit of only a restricted group of people.

And it this case, it sure sounds like point 2 and 3 are put in doubt with their patent and intellectual property fighting nonsense barring open maps from including their paths.

Beyond a recognition for the time and effort invested in the maintaining of the markings on the hiking trails they trace, it really looks like a disproportionate and misplaced application of intellectual property rights.

And taking into account that a lot of tax payers' money is making the entire endeavour possible, it would make some sense to return a bit of that value back to the tax payers by making the markings available for free in openly accessible maps.

Just charge admission/sell a permit

I don't find a good solution to have to pay a license to have the right walk the path I walk everyday to go from A to B, that my grandparents walked (just as their own grandparents did etc...), a path that has been traced by the sole circulation of humans in a forest, that local people "created" and that is now part of a GR. Maybe that's only a psychological effect in my person, because something in me is okay with the fact of paying a global tax that would fund every activity related to the maintenance of the trails and the protection of wilderness.

There can be a free permit register along the trail need to sign. This is fairly common for hiking trails in some countries. It may also assist search and rescue efforts.

If the permit only covers a small area and it's not at the trail head, through hikers will rather buy a permit that covers the whole route.

How ?

The same way you force them to buy a map.

Unless "I have to buy" is a mistranslation.

You can buy the hexatrek map for 50 euro, or each section for 10 euro each.

As a long distance hiker, I can promise that this monetary decision will result in wilderness rescues if not tragedies.

Even trails that have free apps there are people who try to go without...

It's inevitable that people will follow parts of the trail without the paper map. Perhaps hunting geo caches. Or perhaps looking for a waterfall they saw on Google maps or some website.

If it's in OpenStreetMap, they can easily follow established trails using an app they are used to. I.e. less erosion. And when they get lost or injured, use the app to self rescue.

You don't have to buy a map, paths begins usually in villages or lead to them. Usually when I walk in an unknown place I can find some of the red signs that indicates a GR, sometimes with distances and names of places they lead to. I hiked a lot without a map, never struggled to find a GR, local people usually know about them very well.

If you want to do a through hike in the US, don’t follow this approach. You can’t believe how much bigger the place is than the anywhere in Europe.

I have hiked sections of the PCT without seeing another human for a week. Other western trails are even more desolate.

Also backcountry trails are rarely marked, except at some trailheads. The government maps were mostly made in the 1970s and contain trails that don’t exist any more (and of course don’t include newer trails).

My preference is to carry topo maps + compass and carry a small GPS for emergencies if I cannot locate myself.

In Canada the typos are quite good but have in my experience even less trail or stream information.

In both countries I recommend planning trips with someone local who knows the territory.

Yes, and It has some interesting historical implications.

Yea, I think this is what is interesting about this approach. It’s an optional tax If you don’t have the money you can muddle along or do your research but if you have money you can just support the trails by buying a map.

Seems easy and efficient. You don’t need to charge mandatory admission and collect money (like is done in the US) you just sell an optional map in local stores. Makes sense.

> there are people that can sue you if you smoke a cigarette

Wish this was true everywhere!

Thats still not fun though.

What is fun is that you don't need a map.

I wouldn’t say selfish, just stuck in the past. The money they collect from selling official guidebooks pays for the maintenance of the trails

Seems absurd until you look at how America is handling it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33835815

How is this "stuck in the past" ? Is the future about building some gates and selling some pass ?

You can totally find the GR and walk through it without a map.

In the past if you wanted to do a GR you would need to buy one of their maps. There’s no way you’re going to plan a 2-week hike without a map

Now that’s challenged by the internet

What past do you refer to ? GRs exist since 1947. Trails didn't change a lot since then, the principle stayed the same : Red and white signs to mark the path, and "recuperation" of historical paths, made by the circulation of persons (think about Le Saint Jacques de Compostelle, which is the historical path of the pilgrims). It never was "extreme" or "dangerous" to follow a trail without a map in france, you would go through a lot of villages where you could get some water, buy some food, ask for directions and etc...

Very logically, if I were to plan a 2 week hike without a map in the past, I would go to a village that's on a GR path, walk one week and then go back. I never felt unconscious or in danger, I had no cellphone and no map

Believe me, hiking the alpine GRs without a map is asking for trouble. The trails are very well maintained but you need to plan your days, you don’t want to be tired out at 4pm in the middle of a very rocky portion. And if you were to hit fog or heavy rain, a map can be a lifesaver.

I’m pretty sure that until the 21st century, nearly everyone doing the gr5 for example would have bought a map

Well, you picked up one of the most difficult GR, situated in one of the most lethal landscape, with one of the worst weather, of france. That's not the fairest example, because that's not representative of the relative triviality of most of GRs. (Even "difficult" ones seems trivial compared to GR5.

France specifically seems to have a bizarre tolerance for "pay to play" culture and limited access in outdoor recreation. Countries all around them have shown how strong freedom to roam laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam) can work. Those just don't exist in France. Even in the US, trails are largely maintained by volunteers, non-profits, and federal institutions.

The French hiking federation is a nonprofit, and the vast majority of members are volunteers. But you still have costs, maintaining these routes costs money

They’re not charging toll. They’ve got an outdated funding model based on selling maps, and they’re sticking their head in the sand. But what are the other options? Go to the taxpayer? Put up advertising billboards on the trails?

Yes, you use taxpayer funds and volunteer trail crews. Having done trail volunteer maintenance myself on the PCT, I can tell you it works just fine. There are also low cost permits for thru hikers and trailhead parking, which offset some of the cost without creating nasty externalities like getting people lost (which is what happens when you charge for maps).

> France specifically seems to have a bizarre tolerance for "pay to play" culture and limited access in outdoor recreation. Countries all around them have shown how strong freedom to roam laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam) can work.

Source? Because that Wikipedia page does not state that: no word about France, Italy and Spain, and just a little "freedom to roam" in UK and Germany.

In France, you can enter any open landscape and bivouac there, unless the owner directly states you cannot. The law also forbids to build anything too near to the sea, breaking access to the coast. Private beaches are forbidden. Isn't that more than in most neighbouring countries?

> Even in the US, our trails are largely maintained by volunteers, non-profits, and federal institutions.

It's the same in France: mostly unpaid helpers from associations and paid workers from municipalities.

Right of passage laws are not part of the code civile, which is the legal system in France. Quebec follows this as well - a hiking/climbing had access removed because someone was thinking of building something. In common law countries areas, the fact that there is a well-used trail that has existed for some time means that people get to pass, regardless of whether it's private property or not. In code-civile jurisdictions, the government steps in and buys part of the land to allow for access.

This is completely at odds with the French GR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GR_footpath) trail. There are legal mandates to require public access to all coastline country wide and they are aggressively enforced. Nothing comparable exists in the US or most countries.

There are more miles of coastline with legally mandated public access in the US than in France. It’s simply handled at the state level not the federal.

https://beachapedia.org/Beach_Access

> There are more miles of coastline with legally mandated public access in the US than in France.

This sentence is silly. France is smaller than Texas.

> There are more miles of coastline with legally mandated public access in the US than in France.

France has 2,000 miles of total coastline (before considering access); Alaska alone has over 6,600.

A more sane comparison would be share of coastline with public access, or maybe for some purposes per-capita public access coastline. But absolute miles of public access coastline is silly.

If you include Alaska, ~75% of the US coastline has meaningful public access protections. If you don't include Alaska, because people don't sunbathe topless there or whatever, it's like ~20% based on my napkin math?

The original comment was "Nothing comparable exists in the US". Given that the entire West Coast and other key beach recreation states like North Carolina and Hawaii have stellar laws on public access, the root comment was simply not true.

Well, 20% is really not comparable with France's 100%, is it? Or it is comparable, but quite unfavourably.

Oregon has similar laws - all beaches are public.

What's not fun at all is when every pretty place is a GPS coordinate and then swarmed by people who only want to take a picture of themselves and have little regard for nature.

It's very common near where I live for the agencies who manage trails and other unique spots to opt-out of GPS-enabled maps (like Avenza) and to actively monitor social media to ask that people refrain from naming 'photo opp' locations.

Why have the trails at all then? This sounds like some gatekeeping bullshit, where you think people who take a few pix along the trail are not enjoying nature correctly. They don't "respect nature".

The gatekeeping happens because less experienced people who drive to a spot are more likely to leave used toilet paper and discarded snack wrappers everywhere, not because they're "not enjoying nature properly".

> leave used toilet paper and discarded snack wrappers everywhere

This sounds like a good example of not enjoying nature properly.

Many trails are, in fact, private. Land trusts and similar organizations often maintain the trails on private land, for private landowners, and are charged with both protecting the land and _managing access_.

A very common occurrence is for miles of trail system to be accessible by less than a dozen parking spots. This is not convenient; and that is on purpose.

Another common thing where I live are preserves that are only accessible via paddle, and only via membership in the organization (often a land trust, sometimes another kinds of nonprofit) that stewards the land, and sometimes only if you are lucky enough to "win" a reservation. (That process used to be by mail, like Grateful Dead tickets; now it is a single morning when everyone wakes up at 6 and tries to snag a reservation online.)

There is simply no way to allow mass access and maintain the circumstances that make these locations special and worth preserving. In the US, the most popular state parks (where wild landscapes are ruined, wild animals molested, and deadlocked vehicle traffic are the norm) are an example of how attempts to do so fail.

I think the answer is more education, rather than “let’s keep the best spots secret.” So many of our current societal problems stem from people’s disconnection from nature. I don’t think a world where more people spend time in it is a bad thing. Apps and signs on the trail could remind people to leave no trace, be quiet and mindful.

There are countries where you could put all the signs in the world, and people just would not care.

For better and for worse, France is one of those.

Can we try just putting those signs out in the rest of the world, too?

Whoever has time for this sort of thing probably has money to pay them.

Someone made the effort to string together the info on all the connecting trails and figure out where to bivouac, etc., and started a non-profit association to continue the effort, so they're charging. How is that selfish? If you're that intent on hiking the trail without paying then go ahead and figure it out on your own.

I would guess OpenStreetMap could record the location of each marker without linking them in trails or using the official logo of the markers (“one of our contributors saw a marker labeled ‘13’ here” should be public info, shouldn’t it?), but even if that’s the case, I can see they don’t have the resources to go and try that in court.

> Fun fact: the GR trails, and hence this through route, aren’t allowed to be mapped in OpenStreetMap.

This is misleading : the GR trails as a whole, named... but I believe all the trails are mapped, they just aren't named or continuous.

See this one for instance : https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/323697041#map=16/48.3484/-...

In the mountains, it can be a problem, more than on the coast.

That’s so weird, I wonder how that works. If I’m the first to make a map or a street or any geographic object in France, it can’t be featured on any other map, unless so license it?

> That’s so weird, I wonder how that works. If I’m the first to make a map or a street or any geographic object in France, it can’t be featured on any other map, unless so license it?

A GR isn't a geographic object, it is a sequence of trails that has been arbitrarily chosen by the author among all the possible sequences of trails.

The gr are pretty well maintained and that takes energy. So the analogy is lacking a bit here, even though I think that this seems somewhat backward and there should be a better solution.

Italians don’t have this issue with OSM , yet trails are very well maintained.

That is silly, but at least you can download the GPX in a very straight-forward way ("The Trail" > "Download GPX"), which you can then load in OsmAnd.

Surely the existence of a trail is a fact, and can therefore be mapped, because facts are not copyrightable in most countries?

It's also apparently illegal to insult the President in France, but why would anyone outside of France care?

> If you want a map, you need an FFRP-licensed product.

On the government site https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/ one can select "Carte topographique IGN" and the GRs seem to be marked.

Whether the government has a license or they are just the government I don't know. But as an end user I can use them for free. I have not studied the conditions for republication.

Last time i plotted points with coordinates from the English Wikipedia i noted the density of points falls off dramatically in France compared to its neighbors. That kind of attitude is widespread in advance.

Surely the coordinates still get leaked through 3rd party apps like Strava, then become visible on the Strava Heatmap. Quite ridiculous they’d try to keep the information private in this day and age.

I did the GR20 last year and they were all in AllTrails.

This trail only opened last year, and was inspired by the US Pacific Crest Trail. The creator (from Chamonix) quit his tech job and journeyed from South America to Canada, and while on the PCT wondered why doesn't France have its own grand mountain trail? So he and a few others planned this route, crowdfunded an app to consolidate its info (campsites, water sources) and came up with this. https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/Mag/Nature/New-3-000...

Nice story. But all the guy did is take parts of 47 trails that have been around for decades and put them in a single map. The trail didn't "open last year". The website did, maybe.

Yep - like the article says, he didn't hire backhoes and trail crew to build new trail. The route as a new linkup of GR's opened last year due to the creation of the app. Planning the route of 3,000 km with water sources, road crossings, camp sites, towns, points of interest is a massive amount of work though. Think of building a Google Maps-level rich display of a path across the US starting from just paper maps and Wikipedia, knowing that users could potentially be in danger in the wilderness if the information is wrong. This is a huge effort and I have no doubt that this will become a very popular route because of his work. This was a heavy lift in GIS!

All of that was already in the GR footpaths. I mean, come on, do you really believe it took a startuper to launch hiking in France?!

Yep I’ve done a good chunk of Stage 2 it seems, because much of it is part of the Tour du Mont Blanc. I can’t rave enough about the experience, though. It’s a beautiful trek well worth doing. Especially that segment.

The GR didn’t open last year… they’ve been around longer than the author :)

The hexa prefix at first made me think that the trail went around the entirety of mainland France, commonly known as l'Hexagone [0]. However, from what I see, it "only" goes along 3 of the 6 sides [1] (not that it makes it any less impressive!).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Hexagone

[1] https://en.hexatrek.com/hiking-trail/hexatrek/the-great-fren...

I never understood that expression. When I look at a the outline of France, I see a pentagon, with the Pyrenees and the Côte d’Azur forming a single side.

Yes, that’s a side made up of a mountain range and a coast, but to my eye, it fits way better than the hexagon of https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagone_(France). You can fix that around about any somewhat country whose outline isn’t very elongated such as Germany, Iceland or Poland.

And I’m not the only one. https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=https%3A%2F... argues a square or a pentagon are better fits for regular polygons. I would mare the pentagon slightly irregular to get an even better fit.

If you directly connect Biarritz to Monaco you do get a pentagon and a reasonably good fit to the actual border; but the angle between the border and the coast at Perpignan is so tight (well under 90° at higher zoom levels but close to a right angle even at a glance) that it feels like it ought to be a point of the surrounding polygon. (Treating the Pyrenees as a separate "side" from the Med coast also means that each side is either land or sea, not both.)

In this case, “hexa” (meaning “6”) is the number of stages of this trail. A bit arbitrary though but I guess it hints at the fact that it’s a French trail, France being referred to as “l’Hexagone” like you said, even when talking about only part of it.

> not that it makes it any less impressive!

Covering three sides is exactly the same amount of impressive as covering six sides?

I can imagine the impressiveness isn’t linear with sides, so it doesn’t have to half as impressive, but I would expect some dependence.

Maybe it saturates? So covering three sides is peak impressiveness, and any more sides has no effect?

Although your language leaves open the possibility that covering three sides is more impressive than covering six sides. Not sure why that would be, but maybe three sides is the optimum?

Your joke went on too long. If you'd just said "Well, I'd call that about half as impressive." and left it at that, I doubt you'd be getting downvoted to hell.

Impression is about depth, not length.

Very cool! Reminds me of the Trans European Alpine Route (TEAR) someone put together a few years ago.

https://www.mountainsandme.ca/tear-overview

Pommes and oranges and I don’t mean it competitively, but the Trans Canada Trail system being 24,000km vs France’s 3,000km really puts into perspective for me just how much space we have here.

Europe always feels really small when examining any single country. I still feel surprised by the idea that you can drive across many of these countries in less than a day.

The 3000km is just one path to cross France. France’s GR trail system total 60,000km: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GR_footpath

Nice! That's almost as much as Switzerland has (The Swiss trail system totals 65,000km): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_Wanderwege

The GR are only long trails, and there are in fact 70,000 km, according to the French federation.

WOW!

What a great system.

But france is extremely diverse in nature relative to its size. This trail goes through wet lowlands to coasty areas, through ancient vulcanic areas. High mountains, dry grounds etc. You have travel a hell lot further in most other places.

True but you see very different landscapes in these 3000kms and probably more diverse than in the 24000km of the Canadian trail.

Also if you like history you probably can visit some castles from different centuries along the way.

But it is true that on the French trail you cannot experience real wilderness where you encounter no humans for days and fear to do a bad encounter with wildlife.

The only wildlife that you'd probably see are ibex/chamois, beavers, vultures/eagles in the mountains, and if you are lucky wild boars, foxes, squirrels, deers, snakes and extremely lucky wolves in the Alps and bears in the Pyrenees.

You probably see more interesting and diverse landscapes in 3000 km of France vs 24000 km of Canada.

Western Canada alone is absolutely stunning and wild af. You won't find a wilderness like that anywhere in Europe anymore. It's not for the faint of heart at all. While I am a pretty experienced backpacker I stayed away from most remote areas in western Canada. Even a day trip would take me on a peak that would be hiked just a few times per year. Zero cell service too.

What does extreme wilderness and no phone service have to do with diversity of landscapes?

Should be obvious for an average person.

Canada isn’t all frozen tundra.

There is forest, mountains, plains, lakes, deserts, jungles, etc.

Nice strawman. I never said otherwise, but it's a fact that very few (if any?) countries pack so many diverse landscapes in an area as small as France.

"You probably see more interesting and diverse landscapes in 3000 km of France vs 24000 km of Canada."

Nothing in your comment had any mention of the density of diversity.

The idea a vastly smaller area would be more diverse is also silly.

You made a foolish, and unsubstantiated claim and are trying to say I am presenting straw man arguments, hahaha.

I am legit at a loss of words. The part you quoted literally state that in a much shorter distance you can see more diverse landscapes. This is literally what these numbers and words mean.

As for "The idea a vastly smaller area would be more diverse is also silly." I have rarely read something so silly. France covers 213k square-miles are you saying that it cannot be more diverse than the Sahara that covers 3.5M ?

I don't see this conversation leading to anything remotely interesting. It is clear that you don't have the most elementary knowledge of geography.

Canada isn't the Sahara, it is a big diverse area. It's spans a big continent. (Is that a straw man argument I detect?)

Nothing you've stated infers that France would naturally have more diverse landscapes compared to Canada.

I don't know French Geography as much as I do Canadian, but I am not uneducated in the subject because we learn about it in school for history involving the wars.

I've actually driven across most of Canada, and even I was surprised at the diversity. I didn't think I'd be driving through desert environments, or rainforests. Mountains, and endless farm and forest land was the stereotype.

"The geography of France consists of a terrain that is mostly flat plains or gently rolling hills in the north and west and mountainous in the south (including the Massif Central and the Pyrenees) and the east (the highest points being in the Alps)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_France

"Canada can be divided into seven physiographic regions: the Canadian Shield, the interior plains, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Lowlands, the Appalachian region, the Western Cordillera, Hudson Bay Lowlands and the Arctic Archipelago." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Canada

Much more geographically diverse.

But please, if I am wrong, correct me. But I don't see this conversation leading to anything remotely interesting either, because you're trying to insult my intelligence and you are also incorrect about the facts.

I've unfortunately never been to France, so I look forward to being corrected if I am mistaken.

Unfortunately, the TCT still involves thousands of miles of roadwalking.

For alternate long distance French routes, check out Chemin St Jacques.

I note this trail passes through St Jean Pied de Port, and thus could be used as a natural connector to walk across France and Spain.

It's very... civilized. I was riding my bike on part of it without knowing I was. It's not what I would call a backpacking experience to compare with the AT, CDT, etc. I'm sure this isn't either, as there's no real wilderness in France, but it sure is more appealing to me than El Camino.

Yeah the Ways of Saint James is a pilgrimage route (or a catchment thereof until you reach the Camino francés), so it's supposed to be accessible to most everyone, and would have way stations all along as pilgrims of the early middle ages could hardly be assumed to carry months worth of necessities.

No one carries months of supplies fwiw. Two weeks of food is the absolute max on the PCT and the AT is much less. 2-3 liters of water is the most you need even for the Mojave unless you are very late (or early if you’re SB). I imagine this French linkup is to the AT what the AT is to the CDT.

I think they meant in Medieval times - some I would assume would be on horseback/cart.

In medieval times people likely carried less. Pilgrim routes were like tourist attractions these days. Lots of people making money.

For those who don't know, the Chemin Saint Jacques (or Camino de Santiago, or Way of Saint James) is a pilgrimage route (or rather a network of pilgrimage routes) which goes all the way to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. Spanish "Santiago" = French "Saint Jacques" = English "Saint James the Great".

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago

Two popular starting routes are the towns of Irun for Camino del Norte and St. Jean Pied du Port for Camino Frances, which the Hexatrek pass by.

* https://caminoways.com/camino-del-norte

* https://caminoways.com/camino-frances

If anyone is curious, there are vloggers on YouTube documenting their travels for these.

The good part of this path is the logistics. A lot of people travel though it so there are a lot of cheap lodges, good signaling and places to buy food or have a meal

To add to that cultural tidbit, in France the pilgrimage is most commonly known as Saint Jacques de Compostelle or chemins de Compostelle.

Not really an alternate. I did the Camino de Santiago from vezelay and it was along roadways for the most part. Some beautiful, out of the way roadways, but still roadways. This trail network seems much more in the wilderness, considering they recommend bivouacing along it.

I walked from St Jean Pied de Port, France to Finisterre, Spain twice. It was a great experience and highly recommended.

Me too! Had a little less time than I'd have liked, so I started in Burgos instead of St Jean Pied de Port. Nonetheless, it was an amazing experience. Finisterre might have been one of the prettiest places I've ever been to.

The pictures are beautiful, but what about the logistics? Ideally, day stages with lodging and/or public transport at the ends, such as German trails often have. Wild camping is not allowed in France, so a mere gpx trail through the middle of nowhere isn't that useful all by itself.

Bivouac is allowed. So as long as you don't make fire and are up and packed before 9, you're good.

There's an article about it on the website: https://en.hexatrek.com/hiking-trail/bivouac-rules-in-france

Wow even the rules for bivouac seem bizarre and arbitrary. Only one night in the same place allowed... what if you set out to climb some peaks in the Alps and need to wait a few days for the right weather window, do you have to move your tent every day (and tear it down after sunrise)? Very odd and arbitrary. It almost seems like it would incentivize dangerous fast and loose/sloppy outdoor behavior.

For comparison in the US dispersed camping usually just has very general rules like can't stay in an area more than 30-60 days, have to leave no trace, respect fire bans, and deal with other local restrictions like on hunting, foraging, fire wood collecting, etc.

> For comparison in the US dispersed camping

Good luck with dispersed camping in the US east of the Mississippi (or for that matter, in Texas). It is totally reliant on federal public land, which essentially exists only in the western states. Out east [0], or in Texas, you will find yourself in a situation much more similar to the one in France (or England, or Germany, or ...)

[0] and effectively, the east/west boundary is not even the Mississippi, but something like the 101st meridian. Dispersed camping in eastern Kansas is next-to-impossible.

I'm in the PNW and national forests with dispersed camping are everywhere. It's glorious, I can drop everything and disappear into the woods and mountains at any moment.

Directly east of the Mississippi is the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois (https://www.fs.usda.gov/shawnee) with 289,000 acres with both primitive (free but 14 days max per camp spot) and dispersed camping allowed.

I grew up in the area and camped many times with friends in high school and college by just walking a few miles down a trail and then moving off the trail a bit. I believe back then the primitive camping limit was 90 days per spot. The Rainbow People used to push that to the max when they moved through the area.

I live in New England now and other than some remote state parks here in Massachusetts there isn't any primitive camping so you are right about far east of the Mississippi.

>It is totally reliant on federal public land, which essentially exists only in the western states.

You do have federal and state lands in the eastern US but, of course, nothing like the vast tracts out west. In any case, with the notable exception of the Appalachian Trail, there are fewer options for long-distance backpacking in the east though there are some hut systems and, subject to various rules, you can find places to camp in national forests in particular.

State land regulations tend to differ from the federal ones. They even vary forest-to-forest. I know that some state forests in PA allow dispersed camping, some do not. Makes it all very confusing.

And in Texas don't be surprised to be woken up looking at the muzzle of the rifle of whoever decided they own that patch.

Mark Twain National Forest is in Missouri and allows dispersed camping.

I tried not to say "impossible". Yes, there are some small bits of national forest in the east (I've stayed in some recently in VA, for example), but they tend to be small and very much the exception.

France has about four times the population density of the US, so it's somewhat easier to step on each other's toes. The idea behind the rules is simple: pick a spot where you don't bother anyone (including protected wildlife) and set up a tarp, not a camp. The latter is somewhat indirectly enforced by forcing you to move

This is not really correct -- it is not true, for example, in many of the national parks in which people typically hike.

For others who didn’t know bivouac is camping without any sort of tent or shelter. In terms of doing a long hike this seems completely unrealistic because you can’t rule out bad weather.

> For others who didn’t know bivouac is camping without any sort of tent or shelter.

Well that's not correct as far as the subject of the article goes. In France at least the term also covers camping in an light tent.

Thanks for clarifying, that is not what the definitions I found via Google said

I can confirm that Google is wrong in this case. Sleeping outside without a tent is generally referred to as “dormir à la belle étoile”, but it is not necessarily implied in “bivouac”.

From my experience (which varies, the rules are local and not nation-wide laws) the difference is whether you can stand in your tent or not. I have seen whether you can carry your tent with your backpack used as a criterion as well.

No, you can use a tent, as long as you don't stay more than one night.

This might sound like a daft question but is a bivi bag allowed?

If (as the name would imply) it is then it’s not so bad.

Lots of long distance cyclists use this approach in areas where camping is not strictly allowed.

Personally I prefer a lightweight tent but hve thought about getting a supplementary bivibag for stealth.

Either way this route looks magic.

EDIT: having read the page on the site “bivouacking” looks pretty permissive. Since all the pictures show small tents that all looks vey sensible and better that we have in England and Wales (Scotland is very permissive too).

If it rains, I think there's 0 chance that anyone would blink if you put up a tarp for additional shelter.

You're also more likely than not a stone's throw from a cheap municipal campsite that at least has a restaurant attached to it with a Michelin Star. This is France, after all!

There are only 632 Michelin starred restaurants in France, and it is only the 6th most-dense country for such establishments. So no, probably not a stones throw away. Still, probably a great boulangerie to make up for it.

Apparently, Japan is where you want to be if you want to have the lowest average distance to a Michelin restaurant [0]

[0] https://www.chefspencil.com/density-of-michelin-starred-rest...

There's nothing that makes a joke funnier than someone who explains why that joke is statistically unsound.

At your service, with delight!

The actual funny part of it is that campsites in France are actually starred just like Michelin restaurants on their maps (and on their signs - France of course loves to over-sign everything). A 3 star municipal campsite could be 40 Euros for the night!

One of the reasons I spent so many nights in apple orchards.

There you go. That's why if I choose to go on a long distance hike it will be in the US rather than France.

Here's one 6km away from camping

https://goo.gl/maps/muFXPTy9okhex6U48

Here's one 3km away,

https://goo.gl/maps/Qe3QHtKzo6BQ9Hiz9

< 3km,

https://goo.gl/maps/QRob7cDWYZ2ufuQi6

2.3km

https://goo.gl/maps/3kotrgfmjUT4kERbA

I'm sure we can find one closer, but <10km seems to be not out of the ordinary.

France is 643,801km^2 (that number may include some departments not physically part of "Metropolitan France"). If they were uniformly distributed, 632 restaurants would be 1 per 1018km^2. A land area of 1018km^2 is actually a box about 32km per side, and so on average, a restaurant and a campground would be about 16km apart.

So ... you're not far off.

IFFFFF the restaurants were evenly distributed. They almost certainly are not.

I would think municipal (the kind you find in a town) campsites - the kind you find in a town would be closer to a Michelin starred-restaurant - also usually in a town, then on average when just looking at total area.

Anyways, it's fun to look up things on the Internet I guess, but maybe go and camp in France, and go have some dinner out every once in a while - a little meatspace joie de vivre certainly won't hurt. Usually.

Do they have a Michelin star system for campsites in France as well? With rankings for grass softness and lavatory fragrance?

It's mostly to give you an idea on amenities. Like a 1 star campsite will have Turkish toilets and showers; three stars you'll find swimming pools and mini golf courses. Prices for the night usually correlate with stars in an upward trajectory.

Not allowed, but certainly tolerated. I camped in many an apple tree nursery for months in France, with only a few drunken teens joining me. The gypsy camps were also very accommodating. You could find safe enough places in the middle of Paris to set up a tent.

> Wild camping is not allowed in France

That is not true. It is disallowed in some cases (though these cases involve things like close to listed buildings, which can be quite difficult to know without some research). The country is also covered with camping sites, and refuges in the mountains.

> Wild camping is not allowed in France

Maybe they drastically increased monitoring but my memories of my teenage years are that you could do whatever you wanted, and that was in relatively urbanised areas... so wild camping in the middle of nowhere? No-one will even know.

That's great but we can predict that more attention, more foot traffic and more people will bring the need for more rules around this.

In my experience the French are very tolerant provided you are not making a nuisance of yourself.

There's an app for this trail with more information. But I would have expected some info about lodging on the site, just to set expectations, do people walk with tents, or doable without?

I did a part of it last year. You need to walk with your tent, you won't reach a lodging site every night. I think the longest stretch without civilization (no village/town to buy food etc) is 5 days. So you also need to manage. your food and water supply.

The app is very helpful for that as it gives you water, food and lodging information on the trail related to your current position (so for instance you can see that in 10km there is a river/water fountain/grocery store etc.)

5 days without a resupply is not bad at all. What about camping? Someone here said you are not allowed to pitch your tent on the trail. That would make the whole thing expensive and a logistical nightmare.

Did the Corsica GR 20 from my first vacation out of family. Magical souvenir.

The GR20 is epic, walking along ridgelines between crazy weather systems, thunder and high winds on one side, humid tropical updrafts on the other, followed by wild boar saucisson, a hunk of bread and corsican beer at the refuge.

And then you discover https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Hiking_Markers_System and https://mapy.cz ;)

And then you quickly determine how horrible an idea it is. It allows people who are completely unprepared to hike in difficult terrain. They get in trouble and then call for help putting the mountain rescue people in danger. There are dozens of rescue missions like this every year in the Tatra mountains.

If the 3000 kilometers are a bit short you can always continue on the Via Del Norte in Spain to go to Santiago de Compostela.

Brush up on your dog whispering skills as they're quite a nuisance here (it makes my hikes less enjoyable, I always try to avoid villages and farms).

The language choices for the newsletter display as ‘French’ or ‘Français’. Touché, nice touch!

Only on the homepage area. If you try it on the footer, it shows French and English.

Also, I thru-hiked the PCT which was significantly longer than this. AMA anything about getting into this. I think this is incredible and closest to a spiritual successor to the best parts of the PCT. The best parts were the alpine segments, so why not have a trail that is mostly in the French Alps?!

enticing ! for lovers of country trails, also check the Via Transilvanica in Romania: https://www.timeout.com/news/romanias-epic-new-transylvanian...

Approx how long would it take to do the full thru hike for a group of intermediate hikers?

The site gives 3-5 months typically. "Intermediate" is broad. Do you hike every other week with more than 2k ft elevation gain? How much running do you do? If you hike that much and run like 15 miles per week or more, you're probably in the faster side of that range.

For hiking trails all over Europe see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_long-distance_paths

The trail lacks a segment on the Mediterranean coast.

It could extended by going down to Menton on the Mediterranean from the Ecrins National Park via the Queyras and Mercantour national parks, but it is quite a detour.

Yeah as he’s using the GRs he could have done a detour with GR5

For the times/durations- what does 15 à 30 J mean? 15 days - 30 days?

"J" = jour

yep, 15 to 30 days

The Tour de France of hiking

Good luck finishing that on a tourist visa! Plus, camping is prohibited in France, so you'll need to walk to a town to crash every night. Huh!

That's not true. You can bivouac (== 1 night stay) anywhere in France where it's not explicitly forbidden (e.g cities/towns/national parks etc). I did a small part of it last year and slept in a tent 5 out 6 nights.

Yes, according to the creator, 70% of the trail has bivouacs as a possibility. So ⅔ of the trail. With 1 town every 3 days of hiking, it should be totally workable (though perhaps expensive to stay in towns a lot).

It'd be about 20 miles per day if you're just on a normal visit with no visa at all. Nothing too out of the ordinary for people who do this kind of long distance backpacking.

Camping appears to be allowed along most of it according to the website.

If you're doing low profile onenighters there's about zero chance to be bothered about it. Source : I did it a long time ago, I crossed France with my backpack from east to west then went in England.

Only once a woman asked me what I was doing in her field, I asked politely if I could stay the night, she said one night is OK and that was it. The only reason I had this encounter is because I was so tired that I didn't bother to look for a hidden place. I just built my tent in the middle of her flat field.

If people are considering doing this either camp after sunset and be gone before sunrise or knock on the farmhouse and ask if you can camp in the corner of a field in their land. 99% of people will say yes and appreciate you asking (you might get some free food out of it too!), and the 1% who do care will be pissed if they find you which you want to avoid anyway.

If there is one country with many campings its france. You find them even in the smallest villages. Wild camping is not really necessary. Camping muncipals are very cheap.

Like how cheap is very cheap? If you go 100 days and each night is 10 euros that's 1000 euros in additional costs. For some people it's a non starter.

Some Americans have completed it on a long-stay visa.

What do the elevations mean?

I believe they are referring to the cumulative elevation gain [0], which is essentially the sum of all increases in altitude during the route, without subtracting loss of altitude by descent. While in theory this implies potentially different values depending on which direction the route is taken, overall the difference between both values is just the difference in sea level between each end of the route, which may be negligible.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_elevation_gain

In other words, you are saying the elevation gains quoted are useless.

No. They are useful as a representation of the overall effort one has to make. The effort made in ascending 500 metres is not recovered when you descend 500 metres. Ascending 1000 m continuously along a 10 km trek is significantly less effort than ascending and descending five 500 m hills along the same distance, even if in the first case your end point is 1 more km above sea-level than where you started, while you remained at the same altitude in the second case.

? Walking up the stairs in a 1,000 ft tall skyscraper is 1,000 ft of elevation gain. Doing it twice is 2,000 ft gain. Certainly it is useful to know whether the gain is 0, 1,000, or 2,000 because those will call for different amounts of effort and physical fitness. This is the same type of gain expressed in these figures.

love this! i'm wealthy and not creative or chartiable so i just walk to feel good. /s

You might be surprised. I did the PCT which was significantly longer, and I met baristas, grocery store clerks, long haul truck drivers and so on doing it. Living in a tent is pretty cheap, and that's why homeless people do it.

was thinking the same - can't do this with a job, spouse, children or pets. who the flip has 3 to 5 months to spare?

if you're lucky enough to live to retirement age I can't see long distance walking and camping being much fun with 70-year-old bones (and bladder)

Just ride a Segway.

towing an HGV battery?

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