Three Cheers for Eure-et-Loire Part 1

[pudgypilgrim]

Since there is so little information available about the Voie de Tours par Chartres in English, I thought I should post my experience walking this route last Sept. before I forget the details. Unfortunately I only got as far as Cloyes sur le Loir before my broken foot made it too hard to continue, but here's what I would say about walking from Paris this way. This post is about the part from Paris to Épernon.

First of all, the Lepere guide for this route is pretty appalling. Really nearly useless. At first I thought it was just my rocky French, but every time we stopped for help any French person who looked at the book would look, and look again and look up and look at us pityingly. One man said, "I can't say it's wrong. It will get you there if you can follow it, but it's a terribly complicated way to do it and I'm not sure anyone can follow these directions." It does have some use for suggestions for accommodations and it's pretty much all that's out there, though. There are a couple of others but they're seriously outdated.

The first day, from Paris, at first things went swell. We made it to Montrouge much, much faster than I thought we would, but then Lepere became so needlessly baroque (sending you three blocks this way and four blocks that way when you could have just gone right down the street you were on) that one of my companions who was tracking our progress on his phone began to complain loudly that this was crazy and we should just let Siri do it.

So we did, but she's just as whacky, so I'm not going to say anything about getting from Paris to Vauhallan except that you would do best to look at a map and see what looks like the shortest route and then ask someone about the best places to cross the highways on the outer edges of the Paris suburbs.

The Benedictine abbey at Vauhallan is a lovely place to stay the first night, but very busy with all sorts of retreats and such, so reserve well in advance. Also, my companions were surprised at the vegetarian meal--they didn't know most cloistered nuns don't eat meat. But we had the best cheese I had the whole time I was in France. Not everyone is there for spiritual reasons. Our dinner companion was a young man who was a financial planner who was studying for the test to move to the next level in his career. He said it was easier to study there than at home in Paris.

The next day we walked from Vauhallan to Chevreuse. I can't say much about that day because it poured torrentially and we were under the domination of Siri and I had no idea of what we were doing, except that we managed to walk 6 km in the Bois de St Aubin to get about 20 metres towards our goal. You will want to cut through the woods, but look at the signboard with the paths when you enter. It's mostly a huge loop if you don't see the path that cuts off towards St Rémy-lès-Chevreuses. We stayed that night in Chevreuse at Résidence Hotel les Ducs de Chevreuse, because September is a very busy month in this area and we had a hard time finding accommodation even 6 weeks ahead. It's okay but would not be my first choice.

The third day we walked to Rambouillet, again in torrential rain, mostly along the D906. There are many paths you could take going cross country that would be pleasanter and save time, but it was raining so hard we couldn't have seen them even if we knew for sure which ones to take. In Rambouillet, again everything was booked months before so we wound up at the Ibis Budget, a rather austere hotel in a huge shopping center with amenities like a McDonalds. I had fallen and broken my foot and cracked a rib and a bone in my arm the day before (rain had scooped out a big hole under the fallen leaves and my pole and one foot went into it), so I wasn't paying all that much attention to where we were going, I'm afraid.

The fourth day we walked from Rambouillet to Épernon. The Prieuré Saint-Thomas would be the place to stay but they were full up even two months before, so we stayed at the Epi Hotel, a very pleasant place with a very good restaurant, but not actually in town. It's on the southern edge of the town.

 

[pudgypilgrim]

Which way?

• pudgypilgrim
• Dec 15, 2015

Entering Le Coudray

Part 2--Épernon to Le Temple

From Épernon on you can follow the truly excellent directions on website of the Eure-et-Loir chapter of amis:
http://www.compostelle28.org

The route is well-marked (not sure about the first part, because we were under the turn by turn domination of Mr. Google that day, but from St Prest onwards, for sure). We met our first fellow pilgrim on the outskirts of Épernon, a young man with all the accoutrements including gaiters, very trim and almost paramilitary looking. He was walking with just the Michelin France Centre roadmap as a guide, and told us he was taking two weeks from Paris to Chartres. He was appalled at how far we were doing each day, which made me feel better about our sluggish progress, especially since we made it to Houx before him. We invited him to walk with us, but he looked sideways at our colorful American costumes and declined to join our scruffy little circus.

I can't say enough good things about the Eure-et-Loir group. We actually ran into them in St Prest, working on the balisage, and they were as excited to meet American pilgrims on their chemin as we were to meet them. They are the nicest bunch of folks you could hope to meet anywhere, and if you plan to walk this route I would strongly suggest getting in contact with them about pilgrim accommodation, since it's mostly with families. I would say that you will find walking this route very uncomfortable without any French. There just aren't that many folks around (not just pilgrims--a lot of it is across the fields with nobody at hand), and after Chartres I didn't meet anyone who spoke any English at all except one clerk at the hotel in Cloyes. And it is a really interesting route with unbelievably kind and helpful folks, so it would be a pity to miss out on all that.

My friends left for Italy from Chartres so I was on my own after that and it was blissful to be free of GPS and turn-by-turn. I relied on the pdfs from the compostelle28 website and the way marking and mostly it was just wonderful. There are a few things I would point out to make it easier for other people, though.

First of all, the section from Chartres on is too well marked, if anything. There are markings for:

Chemin Compostelle à velo
Chemin Compostelle à pied
Grand Randonnée
Grand Randonnée du Pays
another Randonnée
and the Topo Velo guide

and everything is marked in both directions, so it can be tricky sometimes to know which marking is yours. As a pilgrim on foot you want the small yellow scallop shell. There are also larger scallop shells and supposedly one is for foot pilgrims and one (with a tiny bike on it) for cyclists, but I found that the big shell is always the bike route. There's nothing wrong with that, except that it's usually longer. In Thivars, for example, before I had figured this out, I opted to follow the scallops instead of the pdf and that took me all around the perimeter of the town, when I could have just cut through the center. I walked farther than necessary several times because I hadn't realized this yet and tended to follow the shells when they and the pdfs diverged.

There were a few places, though, where the pdfs could be clearer, and I want to post those spots here for the benefit of anyone coming after me.

Leaving Chartres it was very easy and clear until I reached the entrance to Combray, number 6 on the tronçon Chartres--Bonneval. The attached is what I saw there. You actually want to turn left and go under the overpass, whereas I turned right and followed the markings over the bridge. Either way works. There was also another group of pilgrims, three older people, walking down the opposite side of the Eure parallel with me and they went that way, so I just followed them. They were the last pilgrims I saw the whole time.

However, when you get to the end of the parks, in either case you want to go down across the parking lot at the west end of the bridge (you would turn right if following the pdf and left--away from the markings--if following the shells, to reach the bridge). There is no tourniquet on that side of the bridge, just an opening into the park along the lake. The first tourniquet you pass through is the one to the parking lot at the foot of the lake.

12 on the pdf: in front of the church the road to Vers-les-Chartres la is marked as the D.115; you have to walk down it a few blocks before the D.114 turns off it.

17 The only shell marking at the turn off here is for the velo camino towards Meslay-les-Grenets; don't go that way. Follow the D.337 anyway or you will add a whole big bunch of kms to your walk. This is one time it matters which route you choose.

18 and 19 IMPORTANT!!! The pdf for this stage is printed up for doing a 40 km day; all the way from Chartres to Bonneval in one day. I opted to break it up by stopping in Le Temple at the Gite Ferme Le Temple there. It's right on the N10 and the official directions for getting there say to go to St Loup and walk back 800 meters, but when you are in Chenonville you can see Le Temple and there's a short road, the D.337.3, that leads over to the N10. It seems like it would save you some walking to pick up the N10 there and walk into the village that way, but DON'T DO IT. At that point the N10 is still in superhighway mode and it is no fun at all to try to keep your balance slogging through the long grass verge with semi-trailers roaring past you three feet away at about 80 miles an hour.

If you go the way Mme Guiard says, you are only on the N10 while it has slowed way down to pass through the village. The gite is okay, nothing special and most of the rooms were being used by foreign utility workers who didn't even speak French, but Mme Guiard is very, very nice, and it's a great location for breaking that stretch into 2 more manageable pieces. The brasserie-pizza that is the only restaurant has been closed for centuries judging by the look of it; bring something for dinner. There's a kitchen you can use. (continued in next post)

 

[pudgypilgrim]

Part 3 Le Temple to Cloyes sur le Loir

From Le Temple to Bonneval, everything is pretty self-explanatory. Someone in Luplanté asked to see the pdf and was very impressed with how thorough it was, BTW.

In Bonneval, I cannot recommend staying in the little gite run by Madame d'Ostende highly enough. She is a true camino angel. I was heading for le camping since I was still nervous about making phone calls in French at that point, but when I stopped to ask directions, the young woman in the mairie insisted that a pilgrim had to stay with Mme Ostende, and I was so glad she did.

http://evamariadostende.com

I will never forget her great kindness (at a huge inconvenience to herself, since she had no notice that I was coming). She has walked to Santiago and back herself, and whenever I tried to thank her, all she said was, "people did this for me, so now I do it for others".

From Bonneval to Chateaudun, everything is easy till you reach Marboue. There is a very nice park right on the route, a good place to stop and eat your lunch, on the Rue du Croc Marbot (13 on the pdf). Right after that there is a confusing spot where there is balisage for all the possible trails and it seems to be X-ed out that you continue for any of them, but if you turn towards the intersecting street, that's all X-ed out, too. There were a group of people sitting on the balcony of one of the houses who yelled down to ask where I wanted to go and told me to go straight on, which was correct.

No. 15 on the pdf is a big problem, though. En haut de la côte, prendre totalement à gauche (château d'eau et antenne relais en vue) Well. When you get to the top of the path, you can certainly see the water tower and the antenna, but there are big fluorescent Xes on the ground that way. You see that a lot, where say, the Randonnée turns and the chemin doesn't, so sometimes it's hard to tell whose X it is. In this case you want to turn right at the crest of the hill and follow the path over to the road.

I dutifully turned left, following the pdf, and after about 50 yards the path just evaporated. I saw a man cutting wood in the yard of the water tower and he told me I needed to be down at the bottom of the hill and that there was a path right there. It looked like a runnel to me, but it had been raining like heck the whole time I'd been in France, so I took a deep breath and started down it. By this point the hill was more of a cliff and I got stuck in a spot where the ground was too soft to stand on, too steep to walk on, and I couldn't turn around and get back up. Eventually I was reduced to sitting down and scooting from tree to tree to get down, only to find that the riverside road he told me to take dead-ended about 2 km down the road, so I had to turn around and go back. This time I followed the advice in number 16 in the pdf and took the road, which is how I know what I should have done in the first place.

There's nothing else tricky on this stretch, although at number 18 in the pdf, it's a long way from the pont de la déviation to the petit ponts, and there's no sign about the station. It's just a green metal bridge on your left, but after you cross it you will see the mill and know it's the right way. The Gîte de Mondoucet was closed for the season, so I stayed in the Hotel St Michel, but there are other options for more pilgrim-y accommodation if you ask the association.

While I was in Chateaudun, I fell in with a tour of the historical district being conducted by three local historians, two of whom have walked the camino. It was one of the highlights of my trip, extremely interesting and they were very funny, too. I don't know how often they do it or how one signs up (they just swooped me up when they saw me heading for the Madeleine church), but if ever you're there, do it. The tourist office might know.

Leaving Chateaudun, at number 4 on the pdf (Chateaudun -- Cloyes sur le Loir) it's a long way to the start of the dirt road, and it runs smack through the middle of a farm. I was kind of doubtful especially since a scowly man and an Alsatian came over to stare at me. I timorously asked if that was the chemin compostelle, and he broke into a big smile and with a sweeping gesture announced "Ç'est lá, le bon chemin!" He seemed delighted to have pilgrims walking through his farmyard.

Everything is fine till you reach Montigny-le-Gannelon. If you look at the pdf, numbers 12 and 13 are duplicates, and at this very spot the waymarks also break down. There is a shell in front of the gates to the chateau, but if you turn left (the only options at this point are into the chateau grounds or turn left in the parking lot) there is nothing after that to show you where to go.

I wandered around a while and asked several people who had no idea. Finally a young woman with a car full of children suggested that the chateau must have a concierge who would know. I decided that was my best bet, especially because I had seen a video a few years back where the old comtesse talked about the importance of the chemin in the life of the chateau and I'd actually seen someplace that they still occasionally offered pilgrims a place to stay, so I went into the grounds and looked around for a gardener or someone. I found a very elegant young man in the stable yard and asked him, but he gave me a decidedly de haut en bas look and said, "You can't just walk in here." We looked at each other for a minute and I wanted to say, "You ought to watch your mom's video" but bit that back and just humbly shambled away. After all, maybe he wanted to be a hedge fund manager or symphony conductor and here he was stuck with this beautiful albatross around his neck.

Anyway, here's what you should do: turn left at the gates of the chateau, cross the little parking area there, then turn right down the hill. Keep going downhill and eventually you will some shallow stairs going down on your left with the coquille on them. From there it's easy.

I had to go home from Cloyes because of my foot, but I can tell you that the next place to stop would be Moree. Lepere lists two places before that, but neither has rooms anymore; they've been remodeled into restaurants. Once you reach Cher et Loir, you're pretty much back on your own. Their association just says to follow the GR, and the local people I spoke to all just shrugged and said that it's a different departement and you have to contact the parishes along the way for help finding places to stay.

Anyway, I wish everything was as well plotted out and marked as Eure et Loir. It gave me an idea of why everyone here always says you should do the Frances first, although I'm so very glad I walked where I did. It was so nice to be in an area where I didn't have to worry all the time about how to proceed, and that is the only place on the Tours route that is like that. It was lovely countryside, not terribly difficult (although for a flatlander there were more than enough ups and downs) and I can't wait to go back.

It's not a social pilgrimage, though. I only saw five other pilgrims the whole time: the one in Épernon, one in the cathedral in Chartres, and the three walking along the Eure.

One last remark for anyone considering walking this way: they aren't kidding on the pdfs when they talk about where to walk if it floods. Even though I was there in September, if I had been one day earlier I would not have been able to walk along the river from Chartres. The barriers were still there alongside the path and there was a lot of standing water everywhere. Floods don't only happen in the spring.

 

[C clearly]

Quite the adventure! Thanks for the report, and I hope your foot is healing well.

 

[pudgypilgrim]

Thanks, C clearly. I hope your foot is all healed up now.

 

[C clearly]

Thanks, C clearly. I hope your foot is all healed up now.

Yes. It is 100%. I walked SJPP-Santiago last month.

 

[pudgypilgrim]

That's great to hear!

 

[Kanga]

Wonderful stuff @pudgypilgrim, and truly helpful for those researching the route. It inspires me to try the walk from Paris again, although your description of the pouring rain and lack of other pilgrims is what caused us to abandon the route last time at Poitiers (and we only walked from Orleans). Still, its such a romantic idea, to walk from Paris all the way to Santiago - it niggles me still.

 

[pudgypilgrim]

Thanks, Kanga. You know, the lack of other pilgrims didn't really bother me because practically everyone I met was both interested and interesting, and a surprising number of them had walked to Santiago and back at some time. I never felt that there was any lack of company; just not so much while I was actually walking. I had no idea that those little towns were so interesting. I thought I'd be giving up a lot by not going the Orleans route but that turned out not to true.

 

[Helen Mannersjö]

Interesting reading. Me and my wife will start in Tours' in March/April 2016 and walk to Santiago. Non of us speak any French and that scares me a bit. But with English, some Spanish and a LOT of body language, I hope it will work. Or It has to work And we only have a French guidebook for the Camino trough France. Exiting, isn't it

 

[Athena Atterdag]

Wow, @pudgypilgrim, thank you so much for the detailed record! I'm going to walk from Paris to Chartres this May, just received my Lepere guide today, and was very puzzled by the complicated route it offers for the first stage, from Paris to Saint-Remy-le-Chevreuse. The only explanation that comes to mind is that it's the optimal route for walkers, without lots of residential areas and busy highways to cross.

 

[pudgypilgrim]

It's not too bad as far as Montrouge, the part where you are mostly following the Blvd/Rue St. Jacques. After that, I think I would skip over to the Coulee Verte as far as Sceaux ,or even the station at Massy. When you get to Paris go to Compostelle 2000 and ask them the best place to cross the peripheral expressways, or if they have a better suggested route.

If you follow lepere, it's not only complicated but takes you on the most strenuous possible route and through some not-great neighborhoods (which didn't bother me, but kind of freaked out the guys I was walking with, especially since it was getting late in the day by then). If you stick to a more southern route you can avoid a lot of unnecessary long hills. The accountant guy at Vauhallan was amazed we had gone by such a byzantine way as lepere recommends.

We left at about 8:15 am, got to Montrouge about 10 and I figured that at that rate we'd be at Vauhallan by 3 at the latest, but it was actually 6:45 pm because of all that silly wandering, and in all that time we only stopped for a five minute coffee break in Montrouge, 45 min for lunch, and then a ten min shoes-off break in the late afternoon.

ETA The part that did bother me was that we got to the Forèt de Verrières quite late in the day and the paths there were not well-marked at all. I generally don't particularly mind being lost, but I did not like the prospect of getting lost in there with the light failing.

 

[Athena Atterdag]

Oh, thank you so much again!

I asked Google Maps, and here's their version of the best possible route from Tour St Jacques to Dampierre-en-Yvelines: https://goo.gl/maps/Eixgf7nGFKG2 . What do you think?

(I'll only have three days for my Paris-Chartres walk, and, being a trained runner and avid city walker, I don't mind walking over 30 kilometres in one day.)

 

[pudgypilgrim]

Hmm. Well, once you get to Christ de Saclay I think it's okay. They were putting in bike/pedestrian paths along the D306 from there when we were walking, so those must be done by now.

However, Google continues to think that N roads are swell for walking, judging by the earlier part, and I'd have plenty of reservations about that. At best it will be a nasty walk! Note how they carefully avoid the parks and forests.

Someone here, Jabbapapa maybe, suggested that a good route for someone who's up for 40 km days would be to aim for Jouy-en-Josas for lunch, then around to Chateaufort for the evening. Let me see if I can find his old post on that.

 

[pudgypilgrim]

Found it. See his post in this thread:

https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/threads/starting-from-paris-in-december.18311/

ETA Just out of curiosity, is there a newer version of the lepere for the Chartres variant? In 2015, the only available one was from 2011 and it was already rather outdated.

 

[Athena Atterdag]

Thank you! I think I found a nice route: https://goo.gl/maps/A4weDQHAY832 (via Issy, Meudon, and the forest of Rambouillet, almost as recommended by JabbaPapa! And just 35 kilometres, not around 40!

I checked my Lepere guide, and couldn't find any indication of the actual date of its printing, except "Les tarifs indiqués dans cet ouvrage datent de Mars 2015". But, when you order the guide from their website, they send you, along with the confirmation, a .doc file with amendments and current information - in my case, as of September 20, 2017.

On a side-note, I was really touched by the fact that this email from Lepere contained a translation of the French text into Russian - done by Google Translate or the like, but still, so very kind of them to notice my address in Russia and try to translate the email into my language

 

[pudgypilgrim]

That looks good (I loved Issy) and you'll have the advantage of long days in May, but I think I'd still have a chat with the folks at Compostelle 2000 once you get to Paris, or at least get a good look at the IGN blue maps. If you don't have iPhéGeNie, you should definitely get that and see if anyone has created a track that would work for you.

I'm glad to hear that Lepere has been updated, and that's great that they sent you a Russian email as far as they could manage. Thanks for that!