Sunday, August 2, 2009

One Step Forward With Route Planning

I took another day off, consistent with my recent enlightenment about not pushing things in the heatwave we have been experiencing. As it happens, last night we had a thunderstorm and rain all night long, which cooled things down decidely. It would have been a comfortable day for walking, for a change.

But, having decided to rest, we planned a few things to do. One of these was to go to a vide grenier at the tiny village of Villefort nearby. On the advice of my route-planning consultant Usas, in Australia, I have been looking for an understandable catalogue of the Serie Bleue maps which would give me plenty of detail both of roads and, hopefully, off-road options where possible, as I progress up through France during VBW. Usas tells me I will need in excess of 30 maps (out of a total of 350 for the whole of France). At 8 or 10 Euros a throw, this is an expensive exercise, especially if I buy maps I don't need. And yet I have nowhere seen a method of finding out exactly which maps I need. Today I found a solution to the problem.

At the vide grenier a man was selling Serie Bleue maps for 1 Euro instead of 8 or 10 Euros. He had lots, but unfortunately most of them were round the coast of France. I managed to get a couple I will probably need in Dordogne.

More importantly, I also got a catalogue, which he threw in for free, which showed all the 300-odd Carte Bleu maps superimposed on a map of France. So I can draw my pencil line between the main points and see which maps I need to buy.

I have walked 81 kms this week, bringing the total for the year to 2822 kms

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