Walking in Beaujolais - Land of Wine and Walking

Issue 89 November/December 2011 edition of French Entree Magazine ran a 5 page article about our self-guided walking holiday in southern Beaujolias. In this article Kate Sykes tells us about her first French Walking Holiday in the beautiful French region of Beaujolais, where the hospitality and food is as impressive as the medieval villages.

Kate was walking with her husband on our independent Medieval Village Tour in the Southern Beaujolais. Below are extracts of the first couple of paragraphs from the article. Follow the link at the bottom to read the full article.

“Bonne journée et bonne Randonnée”, exclaimed Martine, our extremely friendly host, bidding us farewell as she watched us tentatively wander out of sight. We had booked on a six day walking tour with High Point Holidays called the Beaujolais Medieval Village Tour, which explored the stunning and surprisingly quiet Pays des Pierres Dorrées (Golden Stones Country) in the southern Beaujolais.

Some friends of ours had done the same walking holiday in France the previous year and had literally raved about the Beaujolais hospitality, its great food and delightful countryside. We absolutely adore France, but our long list of visits had never included this part of the hexagonal before. Despite the glowing endorsement from our friends, we were a bit reticent, having never done a multi-day walking trip.

Don’t get me wrong, Michael and I aren’t exactly couch potatoes but we were concerned about how we would last the walking over the course of a whole week. However, some gentle words of encouragement from our friends and an evening spent drooling over their photos finally made up our minds. We would take the plunge.

And on this fresh but sunny September morning we were in high spirits after Martine had shown us around the 12th century chapel of Saint Barthélemy at Chatillon d’Azergues. Perched on the end of a ridge, this pretty village in warm ochre coloured stone would, like many of the settlements we were to discover during our week, find pride of place in the Cotswolds of England. But here in the heart of France, we had found a secret gem; the hordes of tourists you might expect to find in such a picturesque region were nowhere to be seen.

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