The Masterplan

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As a result of becoming far too enthusiastic about walking all day, every day, for a year, Jen and I finally hatched the following route plan:

We'll start off in Reading and follow the North Downs Way to Dover. A quick ferry ride across the Channel will deliver us on the shores of Calais from where we'll walk, on a couple of local routes, to Brussels. From Brussels we'll head south into France and onto the GR654, which is path that runs down the backbone of France to Montreal near the Pyrenees.

This leads us onto a pilgrim route, the Way of St. James, which we can tramp down along the north of Spain until we reach Santiago. Upon arriving in Santiago, we'll stay on the Way of St. James, but continue on it in reverse down into Portugal to Porto and then Lisbon.

From here, our ideas begin to get sketchy. We'd like to follow the GR7 up from Tariffa in the south of Spain, but how we get from Lisbon to Tariffa is a mystery....we might walk, or hitch, or anything else that we can think of at the time.

The GR7 runs back up Spain and into France. We hope to follow this all the way and then make our way through the south of France and into Italy, before walking into Rome and then Naples. We've toyed with the idea of cutting out some of sothern France and northern Italy by crossing to Corsica and walking down the island to get a boat to the Italian coast close to Rome. We've also discussed making a bit of a detour into Morroco whilst we're in southern Spain.

No doubt, whatever we decide, it will be a grand adventure. Provided we make it to Dover. Which we might not.

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