Walking from Paris to Chartres Cathedral in France

Near the end of October 2024, I flew to Paris to walk along the Via Turonensis from Paris to Chartres Cathedral in France. Via Turonesis is one of the four major Camino de Santiago pilgrimage routes across France that, if you follow them to the end, will eventually get you to the world-famous pilgrimage destination of the tomb of Saint James in the city of Santiago de Compostela in the far northwest corner of Spain.

My walk allowed me to knock off two birds with one stone (or to scratch two very serious itches). First and foremost was that I have always wanted to visit Chartres Cathedral but had never done it. And the second was that I wanted to do another Camino walk but didn’t have the time for a 500 to 1000-mile walk. So a nice 70-mile walk or so to Chartres Cathedral managed to do the trick.

Before going any further, I want to mention to those who have done a Camino or are hoping to do a Camino that the walk from Paris to Chartres did not have the feel of a typical Camino experience. If you want to know more about the Camino experience, click here as there are several posts in this Blog about it.

When you are walking on the Camino in Spain or on another popular Camino route, it is very much a shared community experience where you are meeting fellow pilgrims on every day of your walk. The walk from Paris to Chartres was truly a solitary experience. In fact, I did not see or meet another pilgrim the entire way. There were other walkers, runners,  cyclists, and dogs at various times, but they were all doing a local walk. None of them were doing a Camino walk or pilgrimage.

Because there are not many pilgrims on this portion of the Camino, there is not the same infrastructure in place to support a pilgrimage that you find in Spain or on other popular Camino routes. When walking on those routes, you’ll find pilgrim lodging in every community and plenty of places along the way to obtain provisions. On the walk from Paris to Chartres, many of the places recommended for lodging and provisions in the Miam Miam Dodo guidebook were as much as a mile or more off the route.

This is not to say that the walk from Paris to Chartres was not fantastic (because it certainly was). It just means that you have to be comfortable with a solitary and self-sufficient experience and to prepare and adapt accordingly. But if you are looking for a traditional Camino experience that you are sharing with other pilgrims, I would walk in Spain or take one of the other more popular routes.

 

As for walking from Paris to Chartres, the Via Turonensis starts at Tour Saint-Jacques in the heart of Paris just on the north side of the Seine River. (Saint-Jacques is French for Saint James or Santiago.) Tour Saint-Jacques itself is the surviving tower from a cathedral that once stood at the location.

From the tower, the Camino route crossed the Seine,

and passed Notre-Dame Cathedral, which will be re-opening in a few short weeks,

on Rue Saint Jacques (Saint James Street in French).

Once past Notre-Dame, Rue Saint Jacques proceeded through the Sorbonne University area and passed many spectacular buildings, including the Panthéon. This stretch of the route even had Camino medallions pointing the way to Santiago de Compostela embedded in the sidewalk.

Unfortunately, the sidewalk medallions soon petered out and route finding became a bit more problematic. I had hoped that the combination of route markings and the maps in my Miam Miam Dodo guidebook (which happens to be in French) would be sufficient to make this trip entirely analog and that I would not need to check the maps on my phone or, for that matter, to use my phone at all. This proved to be a bit of a pipedream and I had to turn on my phone (and pay the daily travel pass fee) on several different occasions to check out the maps on the phone. Oh well.

When Rue Saint Jacques came to an end the route continued south and west through the streets of Paris and its suburbs until it reached a very long and wonderful linear park called La Coulée Verte.

La Coulée Verte even had a great view of the fabulous chateau at Sceaux.

Near the south end of La Coulée Verte, the Via Turonesis split into two branches. One going to Orléans and the other, and the one I wanted, going to Chartres.

It is here where you really have to pay attention to the route markings. The Via Turonesis follows the long-distance hiking route GR655 (GR – Grande Rondonnée). And you’ll soon discover that France has a huge network of GR routes that sometimes overlap each other. So there is a chance of ending up on the wrong route, and that you might spend a portion of the day backtracking, or checking your map to see which road or path you can follow to get back on track. If you do get off-track, you’ll be surprised how your natural intuitions can get you back on-track sooner than you expect. And in some cases, you might deliberately choose to get off the “official” route and follow a different way for a while. As long as you keep heading the right direction, it should all work out.

With that being said, the GR655 takes great advantage of existing creases and corridors to create and provide a very interesting, pretty, and peaceful walking experience as it leads you through the outer reaches of Paris and into wide open countryside on the way to Chartres. (Using creases and corridors to develop a wandering adventure is one of the many themes discussed in the book The Gentle Art of Wandering.)

 

Once on the way toward Chartres, the route followed a path along a creek, took a walkway through an apartment complex, and finally reached a forest. After a steep climb to the to the top of a ridge, the route continued through the forest, and since it was late October, the path was paved with acorns.

Eventually the route left the woods and passed the Abbaye Saint-Louis-du-Temple where you are welcome to spend the night and attend services with the Sisters. (I did.)

From the abbey, the route gets very creative. You’ll follow paths through farm fields, walk along lightly traveled farm roads, and take a combination of bike paths, forest trails, and canal paths as you head toward the town Chevreuse. Since you’ll still be within commuting distance of Paris and passing through a new university area, you’ll be with students riding their bikes to school, people out for a run, and others walking their dogs. You’ll even spend time with farm animals and pass wonderful buildings.

From Chevreuse, the route climbed to a castle high up on a ridge,

The route then left the ridge to work its way down to another village.

When the route started to go back up to the top of the ridge, I decided to follow the road for a while to see what it had to offer rather than deal with a trail that was getting muddier and muddier by the hour.

The GR655 eventually worked its way to the community Rambouillet with its enormous chateau and incredible grounds.

As the GR655 got further away from Paris, it took advantage of farm field access tracks. While walking along one, I noticed a crop that looked like turnip greens. I soon discovered that they were sugar beets. And when I got home, I looked up sugar beets and learned that France is the largest grower of sugar beets in Western Europe.

I continued to notice creative and whimsical items on almost every step of the walk.

As I got closer to Chartres, I noticed that most of the surface rocks were large chunks of chert. (Chert is a hard flint that is good for making stone projectile points and tools).

I also found myself constantly wiping silky threads from cocoons or webs off my hat and face. They were literally floating in the air.

And the when I reached a farm field perched on a bit of an uplift, I noticed two small specs on the southwest horizon. When I zoomed in, I saw that they were the towers of Chartres Cathedral. The excitement and elation I felt was just like seeing Mount Katahdin for the first time when I hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. You’ve now seen the goal, so let’s get there!

We’ve made it! With so much to see inside and outside Chartres Cathedral, I’ll put them in the next Blog Post.