The Crazy Scheme

It all started because I was looking for information on routes we could plan on riding in the Lubéron region. 

France is extremely well served with walking routes, known as Grande Randonnées, or GRs for short. Many, if not all, of these are open to horses as well. I did the obvious thing, and googled “grande randonnée map”

What came up was something like this, although I've left out quite a few GR routes. (I can’t reproduce the one that actually came up because of copyright issues)

I sat and looked at this and went “Ooh look!  You could go from here…. to there… and there…. ohhhhh… I wonder could we ride all the wa…. no, that would be daft….” and carried on searching for routes in the Lubéron.

Over the next few days, though, I kept thinking about the map.  I revisited it several times and plotted possible routes across France.  I trawled through some google searches and came up with loads of long distance riders, many of whom had covered immense distances on horseback.

Even though I knew it was mad, I decided to talk to Anne about it.  The conversation went like this :

Me:            I know this is a really crazy idea, but do you think there’s any way we could ride part of the way back home across France?

Anne:         Martine.  I have dreamed of doing that my entire life.

Me:            Well.  Let’s do it so. 

There followed some discussion revolving around dogs, husband and when exactly we’d do it.  Initially we thought we might do it in 2013, but GiGi’s age is a little against her – she is thirteen now – and Anne’s age is.... no impediment whatsoever, so the long and the short of it is, we’re doing it in Spring next year.

We feel we need a support driver, who will tow the trailer from point to point and be there to rescue us should one of the horses have a problem.  George, the dear Long Suffering Husband, was our Number One choice.  He managed to rearrange a few things in work and freed up the last three weeks of April.  He will spend the days roaming around the French countryside with his camera while Anne, myself, and our trusty horses slog up hill and down dale.

What about the five dogs who are accompanying us to France?  We’ve worked out a plan of course!  Roxy is due to go into training the first week of April – in fact, Anne has promised to have her on the first Brittany Ferries sailing of the season, from Roscoff into Cork.  Anne will also take her own Fionn and my Molly back – she’ll have her hands full on that trip, but at least it’s a relatively short journey, and all three dogs are pretty well behaved.  Fionn and Molly will be cared for by our wonderful daughters at home, and Cookie and Cinnamon will accompany George while he’s following us across France.

Because we are limited to three weeks, our aim is to cover 500km, with a rest day each week.  This gives us a target of nearly 30km (18.5miles) per day, which should be quite doable, so long as we stick to fairly easy ground.   This also makes some allowance for GiGi’s age – she has not had a hard life by any means, but we both feel that the horses’ welfare must take priority throughout the trip, and, at fourteen, she will be just barely on the wrong side of “the Prime of Life.”

We’ve had a look at prospective routes, and our number one choice at the moment is the GR 36, which runs from Caen in Normandy all the way down to the Spanish border near Perpignan.  I've marked the possible beginning and end of our journey.


View GR 36 in a larger map

Here are a couple of more detailed maps from everytrail.com.  You can see how much it winds around.
We'd be starting at Cahors and travelling to Périgueux (231 km approx)

GR36 De Périgueux (Dordogne) à Cahors (Lot) at EveryTrail


Then from Périgueux to Niort (approx 300 km)
GR36 De Niort (Deux-Sèvres) à Périgueux (Dordogne) at EveryTrail

and from there to Sarthe, near Le Mans (approx 200 km), via Saumur, with it's tremendous equestrian history
GR36 De Yvré l'Evêque (Sarthe) à Niort (Deux-Sèvres) at EveryTrail

EveryTrail - Find hiking trails in California and beyond

Astute mathematicians will have spotted that this adds up to nearly 700km.  We've noticed this too, and we intend to whittle it down.

By happy coincidence, the GR 36 brings us through some really good wine growing regions and perilously close to Cognac.  I wonder what is the law about drinking and riding in France?

We’re still researching routes and aren’t fully committed to the GR36 yet – we’re also looking at the GR 3, which runs from the Massif Central through Tours all the way to Nantes. It may be tougher than we'd like, though, with its mountainous start.

The final thing we both agreed on is that we want to do this with a purpose.  Regular blog followers will know that Anne has been puppy-walking for Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind for nearly four years now. 
Dash is a Guide Dog,

Dash as a wee lad

Abe is a companion dog for an elderly lady

Abe as a young man

and Reece is an Assistance dog for an autistic boy and his family.

The handsome Reece

We have both been particularly touched by the way in which the Assistance Dog program improves the quality of life of not only the child who receives a dog, but also of their entire family.

With this in mind, we plan to use our trek across France to raise money towards the Assistance Dog Program run by Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind.  We’ll provide a “donate here” button on the blog closer to our departure date, but at the moment, if you want to help this worthy cause, the IGDB donations page is here :

http://www.guidedogs.ie/iopen24/donations.php

Half of the Wagons go to Lanzarote

The Long-Suffering Husband and I took a week long break and headed off to Lanzarote to try and remedy our chronic Vitamin D deficiency after this year's craptacular Irish Summer.
Why Lanzarote?  Ehhh, because we live ten minutes from Cork airport and we could get a direct flight from there to Lanzarote, of course.  And we seemed fairly certain to get good weather there.  So other than "sun" we arrived into Lanzarote with no expectations whatsoever, other than that I'd previously spent a week in the neighbouring island of Fuerteventura and was fairly unimpressed.

My favourite pic from the holiday!

Thankfully, our expectation were well exceeded, mostly thanks to a visionary artist/architect called Cesar Manrique.  Back in the 60s, he spotted Lanzarote's tourism potential, and managed to convince the powers-that-be on the island not to allow high rise development, such as has marred so much of the coast of Spain.  Many of the attractions on the island were also designed by him - Mirador del Rio, a beautiful viewing spot at the North of the island, the guest centre at the heart of the volcano park and his own residence, which is designed so the lower floor is made up of bubbles in an old lava tunnel, to name but a few.


Some of Manrique's works on the island:

Cactus Garden

 Ladies Bathroom

Gent's Bathroom

Jameos del Agua - an underground cave system, built into
lava tubes.  Based on an idea by Cesar Manrique

We unwound pretty well - ate way too much, drank way too much, watched Ireland annihilate Australia (woohoo!) in a lively bar at 9.30am, walked a bit, swam a bit and lolled around a bit.

We also rented a car and did some touring around.  There's loads to see, and even though it takes at most an hour to drive the length of the island, we found that after having the car for three days, there was still stuff we hadn't seen.

View at Mirador del Rio

I'm always interested in agriculture in different countries ('cos I'm a country girl, I guess) and boy do they face challenges on Lanzarote.  Wind, sun and lack of rain combine to make their lives difficult.  Everything they grow has to be given shelter from the elements, and they do this by building little individual windbreaks out of lava rock around their plants.

Ploughed fields, covered in moisture retaining lava gravel

Individual stone walls for plants.  And they think they have it rough
 on the Aran Islands!

Add into this the fact that the ground is covered in volcanic rock of some sort, and you'd wonder how can anything survive, yet they produce an award winning goats cheese, there's a large area with lettuce & other greenery and there's a thriving (& unique) wine-growing region.  This last one was what most grabbed my attention!

To protect the vines from the steady and desiccating winds, each vine is planted (by hand) in a conical "dimple" about one meter deep.  A teeny stone wall is built at the top of each dimple to further protect the vine from the prevailing North wind.  A thick layer of volcanic rock which has been broken down into gravel (picon) is then put on top - this helps trap moisture, and the conical shape helps the moisture run down to each vine.  It makes for some interesting landscapes:

Pruning and picking are are also done by hand and are made even more difficult in that the farmers have to slide down into each "dimple" to work on each plant, so Lanzarotean wine is not cheap, but I can personally testify that it's excellent.  Our favourite was the Malvasia Secco from the Stratvs vineyard - there's not much of this around, though, but there's plenty of El Grifo wine available, and it's pretty drinkable too.

They also seem to be growing corn.  I'm not sure how successful this is.  Maybe it's intended as fodder for the goats?

Lanzarote cornfield

Another highlight of the trip was watching Spaniards playing with volcanos.  If you take the bus trip around the volcanic park Timanfaya, you'll be treated to this experience at the end.  They have a couple a fumaroles just beside the car park.  They place a piece of dried brushwood over one, and WHOOMPH! it goes up in flames.  Then they chuck a bucket of water down another, stand back, and a couple of seconds later, WHOOSH! the volcano spews it back up in a geyser of steam.

Great fun, but Health & Safety would never let them away with it here!

The dining room at Stratvs Bodega

We ate out "posh" twice - once at the Stratvs Bodega restaurant which was excellent (interesting menu, great setting and service) and once at Oskar's restaurant in Costa Teguise which was very good (food was good but not so exciting, lovely outdoor patio and pleasant waitress).



We were getting reports from home that doggies, horses and cats were all fine, until I got a slightly worrying text from Denis on the last day, saying he was on his way back from a walk with Cookie and

"it may be a case of too little too late.  You will appreciate the import of the above when you see the state of your back kitchen...."

Gulp.  We weren't sure were we facing major toilet mishaps or what.  Thankfully it turned out to be "or what" :

The result of a leaving hyperactive young terrier
 alone for long periods

She had unpacked all of Tansy's horse-gear boxes and had cleared every shelf she could reach of every item.  Thankfully, she's a disorganiser, not a chewer, and no lasting damage was done.  I think she is aiming for Scampy's "Naughtiest Dog" title.  She could indeed be a contender!