ST 11: Fin de Stevenson

Last day on the Stevenson.

We had a very leisurely breakfast on the deck outside our room featuring homemade jams and honey from the farm. After a long chat with our host about how he and his partner had given up corporate Paris 15 years ago to move to a run-down farm, we set out in our last day on the Stevensons Trail.

Yesterday and this morning talking to our hosts has confirmed my fear that after a couple of weeks in France I can speak French again – but all my hard-won Spanish seems to have evaporated. We have more France to come so for the moment I guess that’s good.

Like so many other days there was a lot of up and down through forests with great views on the high bits. For the first time our navigation app let us down and we ended up on the old GR70 instead of the new route which was created to avoid the steep, dangerous old route. That made for a slow, but still pretty, downhill scramble for several kilometers.

The final stage was alongside a river, but on an annoying road, until we made our way into St Jean du Gard and finished up at the Stevenson fountain.

In total we covered 243.6km. We went up (and so broadly down) 6979m. Total walking time was 2 days and 9 hours. We got slightly rained on, stayed in some great places and a couple of places that didn’t deserve their single star. We had lots of fabulous food. We saw, by our official count, two donkeys – which means we had a donkey average of one per 120km.