General walking in France

France offers the keen walker an enormous range of walking country. As well as many rural hilly areas it has the major mountain ranges of the Alps and the Pyrenees. For British walkers the altitudes experienced can be considerably more than in the U.K. There are uncountable peaks above 1500 metres and it is easy to walk up to 3000 metres. This can introduce extra precautionary rules, which will be detailed later.

The major feature for walkers in France is the national Grande Randonnée(GR) footpath network. This consists of almost 50,000km of long distance footpaths reaching into every part of France. The familiar red and white markings are being copied by other countries. The GR network is unquestionably the finest system of footpaths in Europe.

The paths are invariably very well marked and maintained and are generally very easy to follow.
(Much excellent information on France and GR's is available in the website "Walking in France").

In addition to the excellent GR footpath network there are numerous Petite Randonnée (PR) footpaths created and maintained by local communes. They are usually well marked, although often not as clear as GR's. The paths are usually marked with a single coloured bar, The colours can be blue, yellow or green. In some areas the paths are marked with regular wooden or plastic signposts.

The PR colour markings depend on the time the route takes. The colour markings are:-

Note that all GR's and usually most PR's are marked on the IGN Blue Series maps (scale 1:25,000 i.e. 40mm to 1km).