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France may have the best walking trails in Europe. La Grande Randonnée, or “the GR,” a network of rustic paths, extends unbroken over the entire country and is open by right and at all times to the public. In addition, every local area has its traditional communal footpaths, which dedicated walkers fight to keep open when the occasional property owner posts a No Trespassing sign. Nowhere are the walking paths more appealing than in Périgord. Michael gets his exercise by swimming, and I get mine by walking. While house hunting, I always asked realtors about hiking possibilities in the vicinity, but finding them thoroughly blank on the subject, I did my own research. At a stationery shop, I found a walker’s map covering Sarlat and Beynac. From that, I discovered that the area was crisscrossed by three of the major 8 l a g r a n d e r a n d o n n é e Grande Randonnée routes—the 6, 64, and 36. Then one rainy afternoon, when we were sipping hot chocolate at a Sarlat café, I spotted, next to the postcard rack, a set of booklets detailing local GR walks. A few early mornings, I set out with map, booklet, and a compass, to follow the GR for an hour and a half and then double back by a different route, creating what the French call a circuit. The challenge of the GR for a small-time walker is that its routes are designed for hiking straight across country in four- or five-hour stints, with no doubling back. But with a good map and a little courage, you can create your own circuit. Fumbling along this way, I learned the GR system—how it marks the correct route on a building or tree, with short strokes of red or white paint (sometimes both, looking like an equal sign); how turns are indicated with elbowed arrows and wrong turns warned off with an X; and how the trail leaves you in suspense until about one hundred yards into the new path, when the sight of a red mark blazing ahead relieves your mounting anxiety. There is also an ancillary system resembling the GR signage but marked instead in yellow or orange. The yellow signs mean an attractive local pathway, which might or might not eventually join the GR but which is worth a detour in its own right. It was years before one of my hiking friends revealed that the orange signs were for bridle paths—no wonder they seemed squishy under foot! When I set out on the marked trail, I am seeking what every walker walks for—the physical pleasure of moving through fields like a fish through water and the fascination of discovering what people have done with the land, which is often as curious and as graceful as nature itself. My walks in Périgord have never failed to de1 7 2 D O R D O G N E D AY S liver these satisfactions. Wanting to share these riches with Michael, who is more of a stroller than a hiker, I took to adding a challenge to the morning’s walk. While wandering to my heart’s content, I would occupy my mind by designing a half-hour’s walk for him that would capture the best features of the day’s jaunt in the fewest possible steps. At some prime hour—four on a cool June afternoon or eight on a warm July evening—we would stroll out together to review my finds. Our first such walk took place during our house hunting near Sarlat, when we climbed all over the ruins of the bishopric of Temniac. On another day when we had spent a tedious afternoon examining badly restored town houses, I led Michael to a fallen-down château I had discovered just off the GR 6 near Sirey. Its exquisite fifteenth-century Renaissance grace renewed our determination to find a house that had kept something of the spirit of old Périgord . It was Michael who pointed out, after we had our offer in for the purchase of the house at Castelnaud, that there were GR markings all over the village. What could this mean? We stopped in at the Mairie and asked the mayor’s secretary, who laughed, saying “Mais, oui—we are practically standing on the GR 64. It passes the Mairie on its way down the hill to the...

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