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help with route from Paris, I start on October 23rd

Aaron Bullock

New Member
Time of past OR future Camino
Oct 23 state date
hello I'm planning on bicycle in the Camino de Santiago from Paris to Orleans Torres on down through the French way
I don't know what where to start this journey I still have to obtain a pilgrimage passport I don't know about where to sleep I mean I'm perfectly comfortable with pulling off on the side of the road and and just sleeping there with my bicycle but it be nice if I could find hostels most importantly is is the trail will mark from Paris or do I need a good map of paper map preferably
 

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Hi Aaron,

Here are some answers to your questions:
  • You can get a pilgrim passport from this website or your local association.
  • You can get a first stamp in Notre Dame in Paris, it's a couple of years since I did this route but they gave me a leaflet with info about places to stay through France.
  • Paris or Orleans? Where are you actually starting from? For me, Paris feels much more like a starting point. Take a St James walk around the city.
  • Sleeping, there is some pilgrim accommodation, quite a few cyclists I met pulled off the road and camped/slept out (I did for a couple of nights but it was pretty cold/wet when I cycled). F1 hotels are easy, cheap and some let you keep a bike in your room but lack character and are usually on edge of town. I arrived in Chartres in torrential rain, a lot of places were full or closed and ended up staying at an expensive IBIS but it was heaven to get warm again. I wasn't organised enough to book gites.
  • It is marked in France? Not really, some places are really well marked like through Chartres but others aren't marked at all. I did parts of this route using Google Maps for navigation but it has no idea of what counts as a bike friendly road which lead to some 'interesting' experiences. (Found out later the Loire Valley has some great cycle routes). Everyone I met had books, paper maps, photocopies of a road atlas, etc.
  • I found coming out of Paris really miserable, followed a lovely cycle route to Versailles and then I ended up on some really awful 'cycle path' which involved pedestrian crossings over 6 lanes of traffic and then back again a few minutes later, road works meant humping bike over crash barriers. Sure there must have been a better way out of Paris!
  • Try to find the Dutch (I think) spiral bound guide for bikes, then you can follow the Dutch bike stickers on signposts and have some notion of where you are going and it has city maps too!
  • I found getting through the cities really hard, you can't really follow the signs because you end up on the ring roads
  • I got hopelessly lost in Bordeaux, the pilgrim society has been really active marking up a safe (but very complex) route, trouble is if you miss a sign or someone has removed a sign you're left scratching your head
  • FYI: In France, cathedral/church stamps tend to come from tourist info places rather than in the cathedrals themselves.
Hope that helps a bit - Helen
 
Yeah this definitely helps. I'm going to ask in paris if I can get a passport, and eurovelo Route 3 . But still looking for paper map
 
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I walked the variant that goes from Paris via Chartres and there was a wonderful glossy booklet available for the Chemin á velo as far as Tours, with very good maps and info about the facilities available along the way. I'm sure there must be an equivalent one for the main route via Orleans. All the tourist offices had them. (And tried to tell me that the walking route was the same, but that's another story.)

In Paris, you can also visit Compostelle 2000:

http://www.compostelle2000.org

And there are helpful pilgrim associations in the various départements you'll be passing through. If you know the numbers, you can usually find them by typing compostelle<département number>. org into a browser.

BTW, the Tour St. Jacques is another great place to get a stamp in Paris.

ETA, there's a whole forum here about the Tours route:

https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/forums/the-tours-route.47/

And FWIW, this route is far more popular with cyclists than with walkers.
 
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hello I'm planning on bicycle in the Camino de Santiago from Paris to Orleans Torres on down through the French way
I don't know what where to start this journey I still have to obtain a pilgrimage passport I don't know about where to sleep I mean I'm perfectly comfortable with pulling off on the side of the road and and just sleeping there with my bicycle but it be nice if I could find hostels most importantly is is the trail will mark from Paris or do I need a good map of paper map preferably
You have a long trek ahead. Treat yourself to a nice hostel with a reservation in SJPD.
 
You will do well with no fear of sleeping outdoors. As many have anxiety of not getting a bed. The thread above looks like it has your info needed. Hopefully your French is good.
Buen Camino
Keith
 
I walked the variant that goes from Paris via Chartres and there was a wonderful glossy booklet available for the Chemin á velo as far as Tours, with very good maps and info about the facilities available along the way. I'm sure there must be an equivalent one for the main route via Orleans. All the tourist offices had them. (And tried to tell me that the walking route was the same, but that's another story.)

In Paris, you can also visit Compostelle 2000:

http://www.compostelle2000.org

And there are helpful pilgrim associations in the various départements you'll be passing through. If you know the numbers, you can usually find them by typing compostelle<département number>. org into a browser.

BTW, the Tour St. Jacques is another great place to get a stamp in Paris.

ETA, there's a whole forum here about the Tours route:

https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/forums/the-tours-route.47/

And FWIW, this route is far more popular with cyclists than with walkers.


Hi, could you tell me which way you preferred via Chartres or Orléans? I’m planning walking from 5 April this year. Prefer the little tracks but I guess I’ll get what I get. I only read speak English. Do you know of any guide books in a English on route from a Paris to St John please.
 
The one from Galicia (the round) and the one from Castilla & Leon. Individually numbered and made by the same people that make the ones you see on your walk.
Well, if you walk via Orleans you get to go past the grand chateaus, and I think a lot of the way is on a gravel bike path along the Loire that's pretty easy to follow. However, I haven't walked that route, so I don't have any personal input.

I wanted to visit Chartres again, so that's the way we went. This is about the least-walked route in France, I believe. When I walked two years ago, there was no information available in English except a very outdated guide from the CSJ, but I think they may have had an update since then. I used LePere, which is in French and very dreadful for this route, but it was pretty much the only print resource for the early stages. There is a very nice glossy booklet for the bicycle route (which is much longer) which is available in the tourist offices. It's in French, but it does have good maps and some accommodation suggestions.

I would suggest that in Paris you go to Compostelle 2000, which is the local pilgrims' association. They can help you with the best routes for getting out of Paris.
http://www.compostelle2000.org

Every departement in France has its own pilgrim's association and their websites are your best bet for info on routes/traveling. Generally speaking the route roughly follows the GR655, but that loops around so much that you walk almost double the distance, so you'll probably want to look for suggestions about shortcuts. The Eure-et-Loir pilgrims' group has excellent information for that stretch and it's well-waymarked, too. They're a seriously nice group of folks and would help you with accommodations, too.

I broke a foot and cracked a rib and my humerus the second day out, so I had to go home from Cloyes-sur-le-Loir, but the stages I did were Paris->Vauhallan->Chevreuse->Rambouillet->Épernon->Chartres->La Bordiniere St. Loup->Bonneval->Chateaudun->Cloyes. Right after Cloyes you cross over into Cher-et-Loir and their association just says to follow the GR655, so you'll be more on your own at that point.

I would suggest you read through everything in the Tours sub-forum here, because there's a lot of info there.

I don't think you can do this route without relying on info in French, but google translate can help with that. The more French you know the better on this route; after Paris there just aren't that many people around and not a lot of them speak English, so I'd try to get at least some basic phrases in French. Everyone will appreciate your trying, no matter how much you butcher their beautiful language. If nothing else, be absolutely sure that you can hear the difference between à droite (to the right) and tout droit (straight ahead), because you're going to have to ask for directions sometimes. A simple, "Chemin Compostelle?" and gestures will do it if you aren't too far off the route or where there's a crossroad.

Also, you will need to arrange for where you're going to stay the next day ahead of time most of the time. The area close to Paris is very popular for weekends and even the monasteries were booked up two months ahead of time when I was looking for places to stay. I was walking in September, which is, along with May, the most popular month for French walkers, so you do need to plan ahead.

But I loved it so much. I think about going back to pick up where I left off all the time.

ETA I forgot to say that your best friend for figuring out this route is IGN maps, especially the blue ones. They show all the footpaths. There is an app, iPhiGénie, which also has them, but I found that I couldn't see enough area on the small screen to easily figure out where I was going.
 
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