Nature Along the Way: Landscapes and Wildlife on the Via Podiensis GR65

 “If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, 

then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.”

Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

Learning to Read the Landscapes of France

When we left Le Puy-en-Velay in the spring of 2017, the idea of walking across Canada had not yet entered our plans. We had completed the Camino Francés only months earlier and were still discovering what drew us to long-distance walking. Pilgrimage offered movement, routines, simplicity and time away from the pressures of ordinary life. It also gave us the excitement of setting out into somewhere unfamiliar, carrying what we needed and allowing each day to reveal itself as we went.

Nature was already part of that pleasure, although we had not yet learned to describe it as the central thread that it would later become. Along the Camino Francés, we had noticed mist over the Pyrenees, lizards warming themselves on stone walls and empty stork nests above Spanish towns. On the Via Podiensis, or GR65, our attention began to focus. The route crossed such varied and beautiful regions of France that it became impossible to think of the landscape and natural world as a mere backdrop. The land shaped the difficulty of each day, the character of the villages, the food we were served and the wildlife we encountered.

Looking back years later through our original blogs, travel journals and photographs, we can see that we were beginning to look at the world around us more carefully. We still did not keep comprehensive bird lists, and many of the flowers, insects and songs we encountered went unidentified. Yet our notes are filled with observations: wildflower meadows humming with bees, lizards among warm rocks, fox kits playing in a field, swallows nesting in cliffs, cowbells sounding through mist and entire regions transformed by geology, water and agriculture.

The GR65 therefore occupies an important place in our story. It was not yet a nature expedition, and we had not begun to imagine #Hike4Birds or six years on the Trans Canada Trail. Instead it was a journey during which nature became less incidental and more clearly part of the reason we wanted to keep walking.

From Volcanic Le Puy into the Allier Valley

The landscape asserted itself before our first day on the trail. Le Puy-en-Velay rises among dramatic volcanic formations, with chapels and statues perched on rocky spires above the town. When we climbed to the Chapel of Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe, the stone staircase carried us past mosses, lichens, ferns and wildflowers growing on the rock. Lizards warmed themselves near the summit, while the town and the mountains stretched away below us.

Leaving Le Puy, we climbed through rolling countryside and fields full of spring flowers. Crickets and birds provided the soundtrack to that first day. At the time, I admitted with some frustration that I could not identify a single bird by its song, but that did not prevent us from enjoying them. That small confession now seems more significant than I would have credited at the time. We were paying attention, recognizing the limits of what we knew and becoming curious about what surrounded us.

The route of GR65 soon descended into the deep valley carved by the Allier River. Yellow flowering shrubs bordered the path, while lizards appeared among rocks and wildflowers. One especially vivid individual was large and green with a bright blue head. Near Monistrol-d’Allier, a pine forest with exposed rock, moss and lichens unexpectedly reminded us of the Canadian Shield, although the abundance of lizards made the resemblance imperfect. 

The cliffs beyond the village revealed another aspect of life. Swallows moved around the rock faces, nesting and searching for insects, while birds of prey circled above the surrounding countryside. The day was demanding, involving steep descents and climbs through the valley, but the difficulty also made us increasingly attentive to the terrain. As a result, vegetation, weather and wildlife were no longer separate details of a day’s stage. Together, they defined the experience of moving through the land on foot.

Wildflowers and Cowbells on the Aubrac Plateau

The transition onto the Aubrac plateau was among the most memorable changes of the entire journey. After forests and enclosed valleys, the land suddenly opened into a vast, rugged expanse of rolling hills. Granite boulders and thousands of smaller stones appeared scattered across fields divided by old rock walls. Spring flowers covered the pastures in white, yellow, purple and pink, including narcissus, dandelions, buttercups and clover.

We arrived during the Festival of La Transhumance, when Aubrac cattle are driven onto the plateau for summer grazing. What might otherwise have been understood simply as pastoral scenery became a living agricultural tradition. Herds moved along the roads with bells ringing, some of the animals decorated for the occasion, while residents and visitors gathered to watch their seasonal return to the high country.

The plateau was beautiful, but it was neither simple nor easy to trek across. There was little shade, the days of late spring became hot, and the trail often felt exposed. Groves of mature beech trees offered welcome shelter, and a cool breeze across the open hills could change the character of an afternoon. From the plateau, the trail descended past volcanic and granite rock into river valleys, where small streams, mossy walls and tree-lined paths created a more enclosed world.

Walking through these changing environments made the route feel far larger than the line shown on a map. The Aubrac was not merely a scenic section between two towns. Its elevation, pastureland, seasonal grazing and stone-built human history all shaped one another – just as they did our days. The cattle were part of the landscape, just as the flowers, rocks, weather and old herders’ shelters were. Long before we spoke regularly in our journals or blogs about cultural landscapes or the connections between people and nature, I now see that we were beginning to experience those relationships under our own feet while en route.

Forest Valleys Rivers and Quiet Places

Beyond the Aubrac, the GR65 repeatedly descended into river valleys and climbed back into the hills. The Lot River accompanied us through towns and countryside, sometimes flowing beside busy paths used by walkers, cyclists, anglers and families, and sometimes appearing far below a steep wooded slope. Forests of beech and oak stands offered relief from the heat while also changing the sound of the journey. Open views and wind gave way to birds, insects, moving water and the enclosed spaces of green pathways.

Our detour to Bonneval Abbey brought these qualities together. The abbey sat on the side of a steep forested valley, separated from the surrounding world. The approach felt almost hidden, with farmed fields visible only in the distance. While we waited beneath a tree, Sean photographed nearby wildflowers, bees and lizards. That night, the only sounds in a small community that eschewed technology and promoted silence were birds and insects.

The peace we felt there did not come from the absence of life, but from being surrounded by it without the noise of traffic, schedules or competing noise. The following morning, cool air and views across the valley carried some of that feeling back onto the trail. Experiences such as this helped us understand that slow travel was not only about covering distance more gradually. It allowed time for a place to enter the day through sound, temperature, light and small observations that faster travel would have passed by.

Other valleys along the route also offered their own moments. We watched clouds fill the land below us during heavy rain, followed the Vers River beneath cliffs coated in thick moss and walked through fog that softened the steep escarpments around the village. Near Cahors, the path formed a shaded green tunnel beside the Lot, periodically giving way to fields, gardens, locks and canals. Water shaped both the route and the communities along it, offering cool places to explore while navigating the deep valleys that made the walking so physically demanding.

Bees, Butterflies, Lizards and Other Encounters

Our wildlife observations along the Via Podiensis were rarely consistent or systematic, but they were frequent. Lizards were among the most noticeable companions, appearing on sun-warmed rocks, beside chapels and among flowers. Bees and butterflies gathered in meadows and along field edges. In some places their buzzing, together with bird song, became the loudest sound we heard for long portions of the day.

There were also encounters that lasted only moments. A family of young foxes played and chased one another through a field near Lacapelle-Marival, too distant for a useful photograph but close enough to remain one of the trek’s most delightful sightings. We recorded mallards and a heron on a small lake, bats in old buildings, large beetles on forest paths and an earthworm whose size astonished us. We heard an unidentified frog or insect calling in the evening at Rocamadour and watched swallows working the cliffs near the Allier.

Domestic animals were equally woven into our experiences on the GR65. We passed sheep, horses, goats and innumerable cattle, along with donkeys who often accepted dandelions, apples and an ear rub. On the plateau, animals expressed the region’s agricultural rhythms; in the Pyrenean foothills, their bells carried through mist before the animals themselves came into view.

We could not name everything, and it would be misleading to reconstruct a precise species inventory years later. The value of these records lies elsewhere. They show that our curiosity was refocusing our hikes and journeys. Instead of moving through a generalized idea of beautiful countryside, we were beginning to notice the particular lives within it and to understand how much remained for us to learn.

A Journey Through Distinct Ecosystems

One of the Via Podiensis’s defining qualities was the speed with which the landscape changed as we ventured westward.  The volcanic hills around Le Puy led into the forested Allier gorge, followed by the granite highlands, meadows and pine-covered slopes of the Margeride. The Aubrac plateau then opened around us before the trail descended through beech and oak forest into the Lot Valley.

Farther west, the limestone country of the Quercy brought dry plateaux, stone walls and shepherds’ huts. Moss grew thick along shaded waterways, while exposed paths could become glaringly hot. Beyond Cahors, we entered oak savannah and scrub unlike the greener landscapes we had crossed earlier. The trail then moved gradually into the more intensively cultivated lands of Gascony, where fields, fruit trees, corn and vineyards shaped the horizon.

Agriculture did not diminish the natural interest of the journey. Wheat moved like water in the wind. Red soil contrasted with green and yellow crops. Hedgerows shaded field paths, orchard tables offered cherries to passing walkers, and vineyards reflected centuries of people adapting their lives to climate and soil. Later, fields of sunflowers seemed to turn whole sections of the route toward the sun.

These were working landscapes rather than wilderness, yet walking allowed us to see how much life remained within them. Field margins held flowers and insects. Rivers and small lakes attracted birds. Forest patches broke up vast expanses of farmland, and old stone walls created refuges for lizards. Each of these was fascinating to spot and watch as we ventured along the GR65.

Mist and Bells in the Pyrenean Foothills

As we approached the western end of the route, the landscape began to rise again. The distant Pyrenees were often hidden by cloud, fog or heat haze, but their presence was nonetheless evidenced in the growing hills and cooler mornings. We crossed reservoirs and streams, passed fields of opening sunflowers and began to encounter the traditional white-washed buildings and red shutters of Basque country on the border with Spain.

Forest tracks and grazing land seemed transformed by dense fog, while the bells of sheep, horses and cattle sounded through the whiteness. Long before we reached the mountains themselves, those unseen animals and their bells became inseparable from our memory of the Pyrenean landscape – as they had been months before hand when we first hiked through this region on the Camino Frances.

The route into Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port did not feel like arriving at a simple endpoint. We had crossed hundreds of kilometres of France through an extraordinary succession of environments, and this town marked the conclusion of the Via Podiensis.  Yet almost the whole of historic SJPP is dedicated to the line that extends from this point westward to Santiago de Compostela.  In this way, and with the grace of having extra time, the mountains ahead represented both a boundary between one journey and another – as well as an invitation to continue onward.

Before the Idea of Walking Across Canada

At the time, we understood the Via Podiensis mainly as our second pilgrimage and as a beautiful, physically demanding journey across France. We had not yet articulated a commitment to connecting to nature or promoting citizen science, and we did not know that long-distance walking would come to reshape our lives. Even so, the beginnings of that later direction are visible throughout our journals.  I see that now, years later. 

We slowed down – even on long stages - for birds we could not name, photographed insects and flowers, watched weather move through valleys and noticed how completely the land could change from one region to the next. We found peace beside rivers and in forests, learned to value shade and water, and began to understand that the outdoors was not simply where our journeys occurred. It was part of what restored us and kept calling us forward.

The Camino Francés had taught us to enjoy time on the trail – even if nature and weather periodically interrupted our journey.  Then the Via Podiensis began to show us that those interruptions and moments of wonder were part of what made us want to keep exploring.

During the weeks after the walk, one conversation from the GR65 remained with us. At one point, a woman had asked why, when Canada was one of the most beautiful countries in the world, we were not walking there. It was a simple question, but it unsettled our assumptions about where adventure had to be found. Before long, we began considering whether it might be possible to trek across our own country and what that might involve.

We could not then have imagined the years, distances and challenges that would follow on the Trans Canada Trail. The Via Podiensis did not give us a plan for #Hike4Birds, and it would be too neat to present it as the moment everything changed. What it did was give way to deep questions and focus our attention. Across the volcanic hills, flowered plateaux, river valleys, oak country, vineyards and misty foothills of France, we were learning to see more of the world through which we walked. Soon afterward, we began to wonder what we might discover if we brought that same curiosity home.

See you on the Way!