Via Podiensis

The Via Podiensis, known in France as the Chemin du Puy and numbered GR 65, runs 750 km from Le Puy-en-Velay in the Haute-Loire to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port at the foot of the Pyrenees, where most pilgrims continue onto the French Way. It is the busiest of the four historic French routes and among the best documented, with a departure recorded in 951 when Godescalc, bishop of Le Puy, travelled to Santiago.

The starting point is the cathedral of Notre-Dame du Puy, built on a volcanic outcrop and reached by a stair that climbs directly into the nave. From there the path crosses the Velay and the Margeride before the Aubrac, a treeless basalt plateau grazed by cattle and marked by the ruins of the medieval Domerie d’Aubrac, a hospice founded for travellers exposed to its winters. The descent reaches Conques, whose abbey church of Sainte-Foy holds a Romanesque tympanum of the Last Judgement and a reliquary statue covered in gold and cabochon gems.

Beyond the Lot valley and Cahors, with its fortified Pont Valentré, the terrain softens into the causses limestone country and then the farmland and vineyards of Gascony, passing Moissac and its cloister of 76 carved capitals, Condom and Aire-sur-l’Adour. The final stages cross the Basque foothills through Navarrenx and Ostabat, historically the meeting point of three of the French routes.

Several sections were inscribed by UNESCO in 1998 as part of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France. Accommodation is dominated by the gîte d’étape system, and the culture of the route differs noticeably from its Spanish continuation.