Time For An Adventure!

I’ve done just about all I can do at our home this early in the spring. A good part of the veggie garden is planted (about 3-4 weeks early🤞), the apple trees are ready for this year‘s crop, roses are pruned, windows washed, and the flower gardens cleaned up. I’ve even completed our tax returns!😑

While I’ve walked regularly and maintained my fitness, I must admit that I’ve done very little pack training during the lead up to this walk. Annemarie sagely reasoned that I’ve walked with my pack plenty over the past two years. And disliking pack training, I happily accepted her seemingly rational approach. I sure hope she’s right, but I guess I’ll find out pretty soon!🤣

I’ve pulled my gear together, replaced a few things where necessary and severely tested my limited sewing skills on a couple of damaged items, more specifically my walking shorts. My 30 litre Gregory Zulu pack weights a reasonable 14.3lb before food and water and I expect that most days it should weigh about 18lb all in. I’ve grown to love this pack. Small, yet it comfortably handles everything I’ll need over the coming 7 weeks with room to spare. The only extra I’ll carry, if you can call it that, is the small umbrella I purchased while walking in Italy last year. I find it useful at the end of the day when it’s raining so that I don’t have to hang wet clothes after running errands and finding a meal. A small luxury item that I’m perfectly happy to carry! ☔️

I’ll be staying in a wide variety of accommodations that I’ll arrange as I walk. With this in mind I’m carrying both my silk liner and a super light down blanket to put inside the liner. This combination is considerably lighter than my very light sleeping bag, and takes less room. The odd things one learns along the way.🙃 I expect it to be cooler in the early part of the walk so the blanket should help mitigate this. I actually tried out the combination for 3 nights in our guest room with the window wide open and it seems to have mostly worked pretty well. Usually as long as my feet are warm I don’t suffer too much. My buddy Rob will see the walking nerdiness in this!😂 By the way, as I walk in France, Rob is going be walking the Portuguese from Porto along the coastal route for a couple of weeks. I’m sure he and Laurel will have endless fun, and no doubt better weather.

A note about the layout of my new blog. If you click on the upper right corner, this will bring up a different page where I’ve put a map of the entire route. Further down the page you can also subscribe with your email address for notifications when I post should you choose to do so. There is also a link to my bio and my other 3 blogs. Tapping on my photo in the top left will always return you to my most recent blog posts. Navigation is that simple. Should you honour me with a comment (at the foot of each post) it won’t show up immediately, but it will once I have a chance to approve it. That will stop my friend Dennis from posting somewhat questionable content!

I fly off early tomorrow afternoon and I’ll arrive in Paris Sunday around noon where I’ll transit the city and then train SE to Auxerra. I’ll spend one day in this beautiful city and then be on my way Tuesday, April 30th to the small town of Vézelay.

Time for a new adventure, and thanks for coming along!

Bon chemin!

Geoff🍷