In June 2022 we walked out of my front door in Champéry, Switzerland and started heading south. We walked for 13 days in 2022 and another 13 in June 2023 to reach the Mediterranean at Menton. I had already walked the two days from Lac Leman to Champéry so this completed the 'Grand traverse of the Alps'. Our route followed two famous long distance footpaths - the GR5 and GR52 with a variation through the high Mercantour in the second section of the trip. Overall 612km and over 32,000m of climbing!

The GR footpaths are a series of long distance marked trails that extend all over Europe. Originally set up as 'Grande Randonée' in France by the French hiking association (FFRP) they can now be found in France, Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. There are over 60,000km of trails in France alone.

I had known about the GRs for some time and had spotted a guidebook in a shop in London to the GR5 'Through the French Alps from Lake Geneva to Nice'. It was only in 2021 that I realized that the GR5 goes past our village in Switzerland. After a long walk in Scotland that summer this would be good for a next adventure!

When we walked the Cape Wrath Trail in Scotland we carried 14kg packs with tents, sleeping bags and food for several days. The GR5 passes sufficient climbing huts (refuges), and villages and towns with B&Bs, gites or hotels, that you don't need to camp or cook your own meals. We managed to get our weight down to 11kg for the GR5 despite adding cameras, chargers and binos etc. There are two great guides to the walk, Paddy Dillon's Cicerone guide, Trekking the GR5 Trail, and also a set of four French TopoGuides. The advantage of the French guides is that they include the IGN walking maps. For Brits the Paddy Dillon guide is easier to read!

The links below describe the stages of our route. I also enclose a page on logistics and a link to the GPX files that I used.