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September 1, 2024 – The last post saw us spend a night in a Middle Age castle, Château de Cambiaire, Saint-Étienne-Vallée-Française. That was our last night on the Trail, so this post will cover our last day actually hiking the GR 70, ending on a happy note, after some drama:

Well, we made it! But to say I limped into St. Jean du Gard would not be much of an exaggeration. Part of it was climbing up and over Col St. Pierre, with [lots of] rocks… You always think today’s ordeal was the worst so far, but in this case I’d say that’s true. A big part of that was that for the first time I had a slip and fall. In fact, two of them!

Now to backtrack a bit. First off, I noted that early that morning – when it’s always most pleasant on such a hike – we looked back, walking along that paved D984 highway, and could still see the tower of Chateau Cambriaire, “last night’s digs,” miles south of St. Etienne. But this turned out to be a “moist, misty morning,” which wasn’t too bad as long as we stayed on the pavement. But in due course we had to turn off, onto the dirt path heading up to Col St. Pierre. Meaning that after leaving our lovely medieval chateau we had One More [Steep] Mountain to Climb before the end. And way too soon we found ourselves hiking over “shaley, slippery rock.”

To put things in perspective, this Col St. Pierre – a part of which is shown at the top of the page – is 3.4 miles south of the Chateau and 4.4 miles from St. Jean du Gard. And this is a different “Col” than Col de la Pierre Plantée, the one I mentioned back in From a Cottage to a Castle (and a beer). And yes, all this is confusing, but that guidebook from Le Puy showed the col “Pierre Plantee” as being between Cassagnas and St.-Germaine-de-Calberte. But this shortened version of a “col” – it can mean either a collar or a pass (as in a pass through mountains) – juts up between St. Etienne Vallee-Francaise and St. Jean.

So anyway, the trail on this day – down to St. Jean, after up and over Col St. Pierre – was indeed covered with “shaley, slippery rocks,” followed by slick granite-like boulders. And this time I took plenty of pictures of the rocky, twisting path, mostly because we took way more than our usual number of Standing Stops. (Which we usually do while climbing uphill, but on this day the downhill hike was equally treacherous, if not more so.)

But back to leaving that nice smooth pavement and turning onto the dirt path. And heading up Col St. Pierre and coming to “shaley, slippery rocks.” We first followed a river – Le Gardon de Saint Martin – for a bit, then headed west and then back east across a branch of the river, “Gardon de Saint-Croix,” through thick-forest hills. At first the trail was covered over with smallish rocks, like we’d seen before. Then came thick tree roots snaking their way across our path, along with more ferns to the side like we’d also seen before. Then we hit the shaley, slippery rocks; tougher going, which is why we stopped quite often, ostensibly to take pictures of the view to the west. We kept following the horizontal-striped trail markers into thicker woods and bigger boulders strewn across the path. Soon the trail became pretty much all rock, with here and there a bit of soil and pine straw nestled in various nooks and crannies. It was slow going – “Careful where you plant your feet!” – and that long wooden staff I found came in handy.

Unfortunately the day stayed damp into the afternoon, and climbing up onto one of those slick granite-like rocks the “moist and misty” did its job. Which brought back thoughts from all those earlier 14 days of hiking. When I constantly reminded myself, “If you fall, fall backwards. The pack will cushion you.” But because of the moist misty morning and the granite-like rock being so slick, I ended up falling down to the left instead of backwards. I broke the fall – kind of – with my left hand, “which was okay, but I tweaked my left ankle… I could just hear the old high school football coach in my brain, telling me to ‘Walk it off! Rub some dirt on it.’ So I stepped very gingerly with that left ankle the rest of the day.”

And speaking of new things on the trail. (Aside from the “moist misty” and “shaley, slippery rocks.”) As we got closer to St. Jean we started seeing “TONS of the tree-droppings:”

Hiking along the Trail we saw TONS of the tree-droppings, with their green and sharp spikes. It turns out they’re chestnuts. I wondered if the locals just let them all rot on the ground, but no, they’re actually big business…

That’s what I wrote the following day, when I also learned that a “place of honor is given to the omnipresent chestnut tree, the so-called ‘bread tree’ which has been an important food source in the Cévennes for more than a thousand years.” In other words these seemingly wild-growing chestnuts are big business in this part of the Cevennes, but on the Trail they were mostly a pain. They lay all over the place and many times cover the path and make for even more tricky footing. Then came more of the new-ish parts of the Trail like I’d noticed in the last few days.

“Quite a bit of this part of the Stevenson Trail looks like tropical jungle, with lots of ferns and even some bamboo.” Then, still heading mostly downhill toward St. Jean, “plus it being the last day, and me wanting to get there, and passing through a ferny, close, overgrown area, with lots of (bleep)ing rocks to clamber over gingerly, I slipped and fell again,” but backward:

This time Carol called out, “Are you hurt?” I answered, “Only my pride!” Meaning this time I did fall backward, just like I had planned if just such an incident happened. And this thought:

A lot of sounds and fury, but signifying nothing. (Thank you “Macbeth.”) Meaning no damage done, except to my pride. Musta been that PLF (parachute landing fall) training I got for my seventh and last skydive…

That was all during the last stage of our heading into Saint-Jean-du-Gard – a glimpse of which you can see in the photo below – and yes, I guess I was in a bit of a hurry, but we finally got into town. There we stopped for a break and a libation at a sidewalk cafe – and collectively breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!”

In other words, despite my slipping and falling twice we made it to the lodging shortly after 4:00, at what our spreadsheet called La Castanhs aux Fumades, 195 route de Luc. (A “5-minute walk from the village, it is ideally located on the path taken by writer Robert Louis Stevenson.”) Tom had heard – via some kind of internet magic – that the landlady would be working until 5:00, but this day she took off early. (“Thank you!”) To cut to the chase, we got checked in and shortly after I wrote, “Climbing Col St. Pierre seemed the most rugged [hike], more rocks. 1st slip moist misty rock.” But fortunately I had some “pretty good and quick powers of recuperation.” (Or so I thought. Next morning I added, “Feet and legs are still sore, left ankle tender.”)

That night we had a nice, quiet relaxing home-cooked dinner of burgers and salad, plus for me “a couple quick-freezer beers and I’m good to go.” To bed that is, weary but with a feeling of accomplishment. Next day – Wednesday, October 4 – we planned to sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast and visit the Cevennes museum. (Maison Rouge – Musée des … Cévennes Valley). There we learned a whole lot more about those hordes of chestnut-tree “droppings” that littered the Trail and indeed covered the whole driveway area of our quaint apartment.

On Thursday we’d take a bus to Alès, and from there a train to Paris on Friday. We’d have a day off to enjoy Paris – in which I finally got to see that Père Lachaise Cemetery I missed by 10 minutes back on Tuesday, September 12 – then fly back home on Sunday, October 8. And I finished this series of 2023 hiking posts just in time. In a few days I’ll be flying over to Madrid, this time to hike the Camino Finisterre. And all that I’ll cover in future posts, but in the meantime:

We made it hiking 150 miles to Saint-Jean-du-Gard!

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The upper image is courtesy of Col St. Pierre France Stevenson Trail – Image Results.

Incidentally, for this section of the hike I mentioned that following the Trail you look for special markers. (Not like the ones on the Camino.) Usually three horizontal red and white bars, to let you know you’re still on the Trail. But when it comes time to make a turn you’ll see some bars in an L-shape, indicating which way you should turn. An “X” means “Don’t go this way!” The signs are usually pretty helpful, but sometimes you get mixed signals. Or no signals, which can mean backtracking.

The middle image is courtesy of Chestnuts On The Ground France – Image Results. According to Wikipedia, the term applies both to the deciduous trees and the edible nuts they produce. (But first you have to get through that spiny outer shell that feels like a cactus – “he said, from not-pleasant experience.”) For more on the subject see The history of the chestnut – Cévennes Tourism and The history of the chestnut tree in the Cevennes | History.

Re: “Parachute landing fall.” I most-recently did a second tandem parachute jump on October 1, 2020. The first one – at Skydive Spaceland Atlanta – happened the previous summer, in July 2019. But those were actually the sixth and seventh times I’ve jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. My first jump happened on May 30, 1971, at Zephyrhills (FL) municipal airport. The fifth jump happened on April 29, 1990, at Keystone Heights Airport, nine miles south of Starke, Florida. (My wife at the time – who died in 2006 – watched the jump, then said “You’re never doing that again!” Which led to a 19-year hiatus.) “Anyway, with that second tandem jump I’m now qualified to jump ‘solo’ at Skydive Spaceland. But I’m not sure that’ll happen any time soon. After all, I am turning 70 in a few months.” (From a February 2021 post in my companion blog From two years ago – “Will I live to 141?”)

The lower image is courtesy of St Jean Du Gard France – Image Results. I used the image and caption in An update – Stevenson Trail “REST of the Way.” An interesting “go back and read,” first posted on September 10, 2023 – the day I flew over to Paris – but with an update from October 12, after arriving “back home in God’s Country, safe and sound.”

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