Yes, I can tell you for sure that they re-route it, in particular to take it off the road. When we walked it in 2019, I had the kml tracks from the Dutch Confraternity, and even though they were supposed to be only a year or two old, many changes had been made. Ditto with the tracks shown on Gronze and the maps in the Cicerone guidebook. Only accurate tracks and maps I found at the time were those from Miami Miami Dodo. The towns and villages were unchanged, however.
Walking it at the moment. I left Le Puy on the 7 April. Arriving SJPDP on the 8 May. The Wise Pilgrim app is following it exactly as the route signage. In case that's helpful to anyone.
Walking it at the moment. I left Le Puy on the 7 April. Arriving SJPDP on the 8 May. The Wise Pilgrim app is following it exactly as the route signage. In case that's helpful to anyone.
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Do you have a GPS on your phone? Check where you are on Google Maps against the towns you are seeing in the GR 65 guide. I have a friend who took a wrong turn in the forest and ended up walking until midnight until he found a village. He slept on a park bench. He missed dinner and breakfast. It took him most of the next day to get back on the GR 65. The GR routes are not frequently marked as the Caminos in Spain and most of the time the markings don’t tell you which GR route you’re on. It makes getting lost much easier.
I have walked this section a good number of times since 2014 ... very few, if any, changes to the path / route in that time [between Le Puy-en-Velay and Conques] ... my photos confirm will that ...
Very unusual for this to happen [rerouting due to newly-opened gîte] ... the trails and the waymarking is maintained by the local volunteer members of the FFRP [hiking federation of France] and its various divisions ... involvement of the local mairie and the mayor is incidental unless that person happens to also be one of the local baliseurs [waymarkers] ... most if not all rerouting in recent years, where that has taken place, is to make the GR65 safer and / or because of erosion or degradation of the track ... such as the new way out of Montcuq in the Lot region OR the new path out of Espalion that follows the river and takes hikers off a busy section of road with little or no shoulder ... very occasionally it is because access to private land has been denied / withheld ...Yes, sections do get rerouted from year to year. Sometimes, the on-the-ground signage doesn't quite catch up (or the old ones dont disappear when the new ones get posted). Usually this reroute is because of some new gite that's just opened up, and has lobbied to have the pilgrims brought to their door. Or, since the local mairie is in charge of trail maintenance, the new major has got a bright idea and thinks they've improved things by the reroute. (Trying to suss out "why?" in France is about as fruitful as trying to suss out meal hours in Spain, imho.
As of earlier this year the path out of Le Puy-en-Velay [at the very start of the Via Podiensis] will also start to change in an effort by the mairie to make the Way safer ... I understand that the first stage of this project is in the process of being implemented ...
