Walking in France: 12 Best Walks, From Coast to Camino

Walking in France means marked paths from village to village, a hotel at the end of each day and lunch that is worth the walk. The country has about 227,000 km of waymarked trails, and most of the best walks need no mountaineering at all.

This guide picks the twelve best walks in France, from the pilgrim route out of Le Puy to the cliffs at Étretat. Ten are walked on our own self-guided weeks; two you can do on your own.

The essentials:

• Where: Brittany and Normandy's coasts, Provence, the Riviera, Alsace, Chamonix, the Pyrenees coast, the Dordogne and the Massif Central.

• What: coastal paths, vineyard tracks, pilgrim routes and alpine balcony walks.

• Difficulty: mostly 10 to 20 km a day, with 100 to 600 m of elevation gain.

• When: April to June and September to October; July and August for the Alps.

Why Walk in France

France has one of Europe's densest networks of marked paths, built for walking from village to village. The FFRandonnée and about 9,500 volunteers keep up 115,000 km of long-distance GR routes and 112,000 km of local PR circuits. You can follow painted marks from one village to the next almost anywhere.

The walking is also unusually varied for one country, and most of it is easy to reach by train. In a single year you could cross the Aubrac plateau on the Way of St James, walk the granite coast of Brittany and look at Mont Blanc from a lake at 2,352 m. Every one of those days ends with a bed and dinner, not a tent or a mountain hut.

The 12 Best Walks in France

The list is numbered for navigation, not ranked. Walks 1 to 10 are the routes of our self-guided walking weeks, with the luggage moved between hotels; 11 and 12 are walks you can do independently.

1. Le Puy Camino: The Via Podiensis to the Aubrac

• Walking: 91 km over four days from Le Puy-en-Velay to Aumont-Aubrac

• Elevation gain: 2,570 m in total, with stages of 19 to 28 km

• The whole route: about 750 km in 32 stages to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port

• Best months: mid-May to June and September to October

The Via Podiensis is one of France's four historic routes to Santiago de Compostela, and the GR65 has marked it in red and white since 1970. The day starts with the pilgrim mass at 7am in Le Puy cathedral, where walkers are blessed before leaving through its doors, the route's point zero.

Our Le Puy to Aumont week walks the first four stages across the volcanic Velay and the Margeride to the edge of the Aubrac plateau. Seven sections of the route further west were listed by UNESCO in 1998. The Camino Francés continues from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port into Spain.

2. Cap Ferrat and the Riviera Coast Paths

• Walking: 42.5 km over four days from Menton to Nice

• Elevation gain: 630 m in total, the gentlest week on this list

• Best months: April to June and September to November

Between Menton and Nice, the Riviera is lined with sentiers du littoral, customs paths cut into the rock just above the sea. The Cap Ferrat loop is 4.8 km and takes about an hour and a half, and the path around Cap Martin passes Le Corbusier's Cabanon, his one-room seaside hut.

The one real ascent is the Nietzsche Path, about 400 m from the sea at Èze-sur-Mer up to the medieval village. Nietzsche walked it in the winter of 1883 to 1884 while writing part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

3. Mont-Saint-Michel Bay to Saint-Malo

• Walking: 96 km over six days from Pontorson to Saint-Malo

• Elevation gain: 955 m in total, almost all of it on coastal headlands

• Highlights: Mont-Saint-Michel, Cancale, Pointe du Grouin, the Saint-Malo ramparts

• Best months: April to October

Our Emerald Coast week starts with the most famous approach in France, the 760 m footbridge across the bay to Mont-Saint-Michel. The tides here reach up to 15 m, and the sea retreats as far as 15 km, so never cross the sands without a registered guide.

From Dol-de-Bretagne the route joins the GR34 to the oyster port of Cancale and Pointe du Grouin, then ends on the 2 km circuit of the Saint-Malo ramparts, free to walk at any time of day.

4. The Pink Granite Coast on the GR34

• Walking: 99 km over seven days from Lannion to Tréguier

• Elevation gain: 1,200 m in total

• The best stretch: 9 km return from Perros-Guirec to Ploumanac'h, about 2.5 hours

• Best months: May to September

Around Brittany the GR34 runs more than 2,000 km, and French walkers voted it their favourite GR in 2018. Its finest stretch is the Pink Granite Coast, where the rocks are pink because of iron oxides in 300-million-year-old granite, worn into rounded boulders by the sea.

The customs path from Trestraou beach in Perros-Guirec reaches the Mean Ruz lighthouse at Ploumanac'h, rebuilt in pink granite in 1947. Offshore, the Sept-Îles hold France's only gannet colony.

5. The Luberon Villages and the Ochre Trail

• Walking: 71 km over six days from Apt to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse

• Elevation gain: 2,010 m in total

• Highlights: Bonnieux, Roussillon's Sentier des Ocres, Gordes, the Abbey of Sénanque

• Best months: April to June and September to October

Created in 1977, the Luberon Regional Natural Park covers 185,000 ha of hill villages, cedar forest and vineyards. Walking from one perched village to the next is the classic way of walking in Provence.

At Roussillon, the Sentier des Ocres follows cliffs of clay coloured by iron oxide, from yellow through orange to red. From 1 July to 15 September, fire rules can close the massif paths, so spring and autumn are the reliable seasons.

6. Van Gogh's Provence: Saint-Rémy to Arles

• Walking: 76 km over five days from Avignon to Arles

• Elevation gain: 840 m in total

• Highlights: Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, the Alpilles, Les Baux, Arles

• Best months: April to June and September to October

Van Gogh spent a year at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy, from May 1889 to May 1890, and painted about 150 works there, including The Starry Night. A free walk of about 1.5 km through the town passes around twenty panels of his paintings at the spots where he stood.

From Saint-Rémy the route crosses the Alpilles, a regional park since 2007, to Maussane and Arles. In Arles a second circuit marks ten places where he set up his easel.

7. The Alsace Wine Route on Foot

• Walking: 72 km over six days from Thannenkirch to Eguisheim

• Elevation gain: 2,375 m in total

• Highlights: Kaysersberg, Turckheim, Lac Noir, Eguisheim

• Best months: May to October, with the harvest in September

Along the foot of the Vosges, the Alsace Wine Route runs more than 170 km past 51 Grand Cru vineyards. Walking it means vineyard tracks between half-timbered villages, and Eguisheim and Riquewihr carry the Plus Beaux Villages de France label.

The paths above the vines are marked by the Club Vosgien, founded in 1872, which looks after more than 20,000 km of trails. The last loop climbs to Eguisheim's three castle keeps at 591 m.

8. Lac Blanc and the Chamonix Balconies

• Walking: 25.5 km over three days from Chamonix

• Elevation gain: 1,960 m in total, with cable cars doing the first part of each ascent

• Lac Blanc: 7 km return and 500 m of elevation gain from La Flégère, about 3 hours

• Best months: mid-June to mid-September, while the lifts run

Chamonix is the one place on this list where you walk in the high mountains on our Mont Blanc week, but the classic walks stay on marked balcony paths. The cable cars turn a mountain day into a walk, and the Lac Blanc path from La Flégère starts at 1,877 m.

Lac Blanc lies in the Aiguilles Rouges nature reserve, created in 1974, so dogs and swimming are not allowed. The Aiguillette des Posettes at 2,201 m looks down the whole valley to Mont Blanc.

9. The Côte Vermeille: Collioure to Cadaqués

• Walking: 87.5 km over seven days from Collioure to Cadaqués

• Elevation gain: 3,475 m in total, the most on this list

• Highlights: Tour Madeloc, Banyuls, Portbou, Cap de Creus

• Best months: April to June and September to October

This is where the Pyrenees meet the Mediterranean, on our Côte Vermeille week. The GR10 ends at Banyuls-sur-Mer after about 1,100 km from the Atlantic, and the coast path carries on over the border past Portbou, where the Passages memorial remembers the writer Walter Benjamin.

The route climbs to the 13th-century Tour Madeloc at 652 m and finishes on Cap de Creus, the easternmost point of the Iberian Peninsula. Summer heat makes this a spring and autumn walk.

10. The Dordogne Valley to Rocamadour

• Walking: 101.5 km over eight days from Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne to Rocamadour

• Elevation gain: 2,440 m in total

• Highlights: Loubressac, Carennac, the Dordogne river, Rocamadour

• Best months: April to October

In 2012 the Dordogne basin became France's largest UNESCO biosphere reserve. Walking in the Dordogne here follows the river and the limestone plateaus above it through four of the Plus Beaux Villages de France: Loubressac, Carennac, Autoire and Rocamadour.

Rocamadour has been a pilgrim stop on the Way of St James for centuries, and the 216 steps of its Grand Escalier end the week. The GR6 and GR652 both pass through it.

11. The Stevenson Trail Through the Cévennes

• Distance: 272 km on the GR70 from Le Puy-en-Velay to Alès, usually about 14 stages

• High point: Pic de Finiels, 1,699 m, on Mont Lozère

• Park: Cévennes National Park, part of the Causses and Cévennes World Heritage site since 2011

• Best months: May to June and September

In 1878 Robert Louis Stevenson walked from Le Monastier to Saint-Jean-du-Gard in twelve days with a donkey called Modestine, and published Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes the next year. The GR70 follows his route through the Cévennes National Park, created in 1970.

Donkey hire is still offered along the trail, and the chestnut valleys of the southern Cévennes are some of the emptiest walking country in France.

12. The Étretat Cliff Path

• Distance: a few kilometres over both clifftops; the GR21 runs 179 km along the coast

• Landmarks: the 51 m Aiguille, the Porte d'Aval and Manneporte arches, the Falaise d'Amont chapel

• Rules: stay at least 5 m from the edge and never walk under the cliffs

• Best months: April to October, early or late in the day

Étretat's chalk arches are the best-known view on the Alabaster Coast, and the GR21 runs over both clifftops above the town. The Falaise d'Aval side gives the view of the Aiguille and the Porte d'Aval; the Falaise d'Amont has the sailors' chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde.

The chalk is crumbling, and fines apply to walkers who go near the edge. Be off the beach at least 3.5 hours before high tide, as the prefecture's warnings put it.

Walking, Not Hiking

Everything above is walking: marked paths, a bed every night and days you finish by mid-afternoon. You carry a day pack, not a tent. France's big hikes, the GR20 across Corsica and the Tour du Mont Blanc, are a different kind of trip, with mountain huts and long days above 2,000 m.

If that is what you are after, our sister brand's guide to hiking in France covers them. The walks on this page stay below those heights, apart from the lift-assisted balconies at Chamonix. None needs mountain experience, and every one can be walked in trail shoes.

Waymarks, Maps and Luggage

Three things make walking in France easy to do on your own, and the painted waymarks are the most useful of them.

When to Walk in France

France walks well for most of the year, but each region has its own best months, and the south and the Alps peak at opposite ends of the summer.

Sleep, Eat and Walk

Most nights on these walks are in family-run hotels and guesthouses in the villages themselves, 10 to 20 km apart, with breakfast included. Lunch is a picnic from the village shop or a café on the route, and dinner is the reason to finish in a French village.

Each region on the list has a dish worth planning a day around. These four are the ones walkers remember.

Getting There

Eurostar reaches Paris Gare du Nord from London St Pancras in about 2 hours 16 minutes, and the TGV continues to Avignon in about 2 hours 40 minutes or Marseille in about 3 hours. Most of the walks on this list start within a train ride of Paris, Lyon, Nice or Bordeaux, and walking in the Loire Valley starts 55 minutes from Paris by TGV. Book TGV seats early for summer weekends.

For the south, Nice, Marseille and Toulouse airports have direct flights from the UK, and Nice is the natural gateway for the Riviera walk. On a self-guided week, the tour notes give the train times from the nearest airport or station to the first hotel. Local buses reach most start villages, some only a few times a day.

How Much It Costs

Our walking weeks include hotels with breakfast, the luggage transfers, a digital guidebook and GPS app, and support during the trip. The tourist tax is paid at each hotel, and dinners, lunches and train fares to the start are extra. Single rooms and hotel upgrades are available on request.

Walking independently, pilgrim gîtes are the cheapest beds in France, and the pilgrim passport sold at Le Puy cathedral opens them. Coastal and alpine villages cost more in July and August. The Ochre Trail at Roussillon has a small entry fee, and the Chamonix cable cars are paid by the ride.

What to Pack

Light walking boots or trail shoes with a good grip cover every walk here, including the granite of Brittany and the limestone of the Luberon. A 20 to 30 litre day pack holds water, a waterproof and lunch, and walking poles help on the Côte Vermeille's steep descents. Blister plasters are worth more than any gadget on a six-day walk.

Add sun protection for Provence and the Riviera, a windproof for Chamonix and the Brittany headlands, and at least 1.5 litres of water on the southern walks. On the Way of St James, the pilgrim passport is worth carrying from the first day. A small torch helps on early starts in the gîtes.

Ready to Walk France?

Our self-guided walking holidays in France cover ten of the walks above, from April to October. Each week includes:

• Hotels with breakfast every night

• Luggage transfers between the hotels

• A digital guidebook with route instructions

• A GPS navigation app and support during the trip