The Plan
From Paris, the greatest pilgrim route leads south west to Tours. Tours is where St. Martin ended his career. It lies on the Loire, and the Loire valley is often called the Way of St. Martin. We will mainly travel the Loire on the return leg. To start out, however, we'll touch the Loire (upstream from Tours, at Orleans) but head for another major point - Arles, which is on the Rhone, near the Mediterranean. Why head to Arles? We would mention its pilgrimage church - Eglise St. Honorat, but actually we expect to be freezing and hope to find some warmth at the Med!
From Arles we will follow the Mediterranean coast until cutting out toward Carcasonne. From there it's on to Toulouse and beyond, the famous town of Lourdes. Next it's St. Jean Pied de Port, which is the focus point for people launching off into Spain along the "Camino Frances", the main way to Santiago.
Coming back from Santiago we will travel an alternate "Camino" - the "Del Norte" which follows the coast. Of course, we will be doing it "backwards". doing the Del Norte backwards smacks of St. Peter who at his request when crucified in Rome under Emperor Nero Augustus Caesar did it "upside down". Presumably for us this will just be a pleasant coastal route. Hah!
Exiting "Del Norte", we plan to follow the cycle route the Velodysee up the Atlantic coast, before ascending the Loire, leaving it at Orleans to get back to Paris.
As this is being written, the exact details are still sketchy, but aside from offering maps and descriptions of the sections as we start them, we will also fill in daily with a map of where we went. The sketch right now, though, looks like this:
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