GR765 East, Cluny / Lyon to Le Puy

Walking the GR765 means following in the footsteps of pilgrims. In the Middle Ages, the Order of Cluny carried great weight on the Compostela routes: a network of priories, a welcome for walkers, an active role in the Christian reconquest of northern Spain. A thousand years later, you follow the same thread, between abbeys, Romanesque priories and the volcanic pitons of the Forez.

Our take: this is not the busiest stretch of the routes to Le Puy, and that is exactly what gives it its flavour. You come across more cows than walkers. The Forez is livestock plateaux, woods, villages where time slows down. The final descent into the Loire gorges brings back a bit of relief before the arrival. A multi-day walk cut out for anyone who likes quiet rural life, regular stages and peaceful ends to the day.

The GR765 east branch is the thread that links Cluny and its great abbey to Le Puy-en-Velay, the best-known starting point of the routes to Santiago de Compostela. A variant also joins Lyon. From Burgundy, the route heads due south through the Mâconnais, the Beaujolais and the vineyards of the Côte Roannaise, before tackling the Forez. You walk it over several days, stage by stage, rucksack on your back.

The section that concerns us here is its crossing of Auvergne: about 76 km through the Monts du Forez, then the shift towards the Velay. Allow for nearly 2,400 m of cumulative climb and a little over 2,600 m of descent, between 500 and 970 m in altitude. Nothing vertical, but one bump after another, a real roller-coaster profile, most often split into four stages.

The path goes through Montbrison, the former capital of the counts of the Forez, passes the priory of Montverdun perched on its volcanic hill, crosses Champdieu and its Romanesque priory, then Marols, the village of craftspeople and artists. In places, you follow the line of an old Gallo-Roman road, the Voie Bollène, which linked Lyon to Bordeaux.

The signature of the east branch is its ending. Rather than going through Saint-Paulien like the west branch, it swings into the Loire gorges. You go down towards the river, around Retournac, before climbing one last time up to Le Puy-en-Velay. Forez woods, high plateaux, stone hamlets: the scenery changes at every stage.