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 Stevenson’s footsteps. We will read about Stevenson’s 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.

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RL Stevenson Cévennes
14 – 27 May, 2012