The GR5

The GR5 (Grande Randonnée 5) is a hiking route from the North Sea (Hoek van Holland, near Rotterdam) to the Mediterranean (Nice).  Its total length is about 2,300 km.  

Here's a link to an interactive map that shows the entire GR5:

http://www.gr5.info/routekaart.php 

The first section of the GR5 winds around the Dutch provinces of Zuid Holland and Noord Brabant.  After passing through Bergen Op Zoom, the GR5 enters northern Belgium and crosses the region of Flanders.  Approaching the Dutch border near Maastricht, the GR5 turns south and enters the region of Wallonie.  Passing Liège, the GR5 crosses the Ardennes mountains to reach Luxembourg.  Continuing south and west on an arc through Luxembourg, the GR5 enters France in the Lorraine region, north of Thionville.  Apart from short incursions into Switzerland and Italy, the GR5 remains in France for the rest of the route, all the way to the Mediterranean.  After Lorraine, the GR5 crosses the beautiful Vosges mountains in the fascinating region of Alsace.  From there, the GR5 enters the Jura, a region of forests, hills, rushing rivers and plateaus cut by dark valleys.  Leaving France, the GR5 enters the Swiss Jura and reaches Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) at Nyon, an attractive lakeside city.  One can spend a pleasant, relaxed day crossing Lac Léman on a paddle-wheel boat that stops at just about every town on both sides of the lake. 

For many people, the section of the trail south of Lac Léman, is the GR5.  This is the great crossing of the Alps — la Grande Traversée des Alpes.  The trail departs from Saint-Gingolph, on the Franco-Swiss border (with a variant departing from Thonon-les-Bains, west of Saint-Gingolph).  Within about a day, the GR5 hiker catches a first glimpse of the massif of Mont Blanc, but several more days of hiking are required to set foot on it.  The trail passes through valleys, climbs to passes around 2,000 to 2,800 meters elevation, and then descends to the next valley.  There are villages and small towns along the way, where one can buy provisions and find overnight accommodations.  At higher elevations, there are mountain refuges (huts), where hikers can enjoy a cool drink at the end of a long day of hiking, a hearty dinner and a warm bed (sometimes too warm, because the French generally prefer to keep the windows closed at night...).  The flora and fauna change as one hikes from the well-watered northern Alps to the more arid southern mountains. 

The highlights of the GR5 after Mont Blanc include the Vanoise, home to many bouquetins (ibex), and the lesser-known Queyras region, on the Italian border.  As one approaches Nice, a highly-regarded variant — the GR52 — branches off the GR5 and passes through the spectacular Vallée des Merveilles in the Mercantour National Park.  The GR52 reaches the Mediterranean at Menton, a small town near the Franco-Italian border.  

I first learned about the GR5 when I lived in Liège in 1976-1979:  The trail (actually, a route along city streets there) passed under the window of my apartment.  I had already done some serious backpacking in the United States (and had dreamed of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail), so I became interested in the GR5.  In the early 1980s, I did some hiking in the Vosges along the GR5 (among other trails), and in 1984 I hiked a short section of the GR5, from Thonon-les-Bains to Chamonix (followed by a hike of the Tour du Mont Blanc). I hiked on variants of the GR5 when hiking around the Vanoise National Park in 1985.  Happily, Mary likes to hike, too.  We hiked the TMB together in 1986 — and then, in 1989, we hiked for two months on the GR5, from Schirmeck in the Vosges to Nice.  Since then, hiking the entire GR5 — Walking Europe from Top to Bottom, in the words of an excellent book on the subject by Susanna Margolis & Ginger Harmon — has been our dream (at the top of my list of things to do upon retirement).  And now we're about to do it!  Watch this space...  

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Carroll & Mary on the Crête de Peyrolle, 2645 m., on the GR5, north of Briançon (September 1989): 

P.S. — We will hike with much smaller and lighter backpacks this time!