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Guided walking & holiday packages
Touring: France, Vietnam, Bhutan, Turkey & Patagonia
FRANCE - RL Stevenson Cévennes
RL Stevenson's Travels with a donkey in the Cevennes
(GR70) walk.
We follow in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish
author who wrote Travels with a donkey in the Cévennes. The
French have turned this into a properly waymarked and beautiful
long distance footpath (GR70) which we will be walking from Le Puy
en Velay south, towards the Mediterranean, and finishing at St Jean
de Gard.
Our tour to the Cévennes: tour overview
On 22nd September, 1878, the young Scottish writer Robert Louis
Stevenson, (RLS), set out on foot from Monastier sur Gazeille in
the Haute-Loire with his donkey Modestine. 12 days, 220 kms and
many adventures later, he arrived at Saint Jean de Gard. He had
a twofold objective to try and forget his love for Fanny
Osbourne, the beautiful American woman who he in fact eventually
married some years later and to explore the countryside of
the Camisards, the French Protestants, from the rugged and isolated
Cévennes region of southern France.
He wrote an amusing account of his journey and a long distance
footpath (GR 70) has been devised with the object of letting us
walk in Stevensons footsteps. We will read about Stevensons
adventures as we have our own.
This beautiful trail follows footpaths, ancient bridleways and
drove roads and fits conveniently into a fortnight of walking. We
start in the Velay area and then move through some of the remotest
countryside in France strewn with beautiful old historic villages.
After Velay we move into the Gévaudan area and then the Cévennes,
protected by National Park status, and rising above the plains of
the Languedoc and the Mediterranean. The Cévennes is a maze
of deep valleys with winding rivers of clear waters and hill slopes
covered in forests of sweet chestnut along with the mulberry which
was planted in days gone by for feeding the silkworms bred in the
mills called magnaneries. A country of rebellion and tradition,
the Cévennes gradually reveals a bit more of itself at each
bend in its glorious footpaths. In the latter stretches of the walk
we arrive at the land of the Camisards, infamous for 100 years of
fighting between Protestants and Catholics in the Middle Ages.
We will have at least two leaders, and a minibus to move your luggage
while you walk. We will also be able to use the bus for shuttles
on a couple of the longer days.
RL Stevenson Cévennes
14 27 May, 2012
A$3690 per person twin-share. Single supplement A$425
Best Travels, 82 Bellevue Street, CAMMERAY, NSW
2062
tel (61+) 2 9929 9391 besttravels@ozemail.com.au
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