Need a sleeping bag on the Le Puy route?

[Felix32]

G'day everyone. I'm walking the camino for the first time, starting at Le Puy on 16th August and finishing at St Jean, giving myself 7 weeks. I'll try the Spanish leg next year. I usually take a sleeping bag but from my reading it appears that you could get by without one if you try to stay at gites. What has been others' experience?

 

[KiwiNomad06]

Most places on the Le Puy route provide good clean blankets, though you need your own sleeping sheet/silk liner of some sort usually. And most places are well heated if it is cold. But I can't say that absolutely all places have blankets..... from memory, it is possible a few gites don't.
Margaret

 

[Deleted member 3000]

I was on the Le Puy route in the colder months of May and June with just a nylon liner. I found a blanket everywhere I needed one.

 

[gittiharre]

I took a sleeping bag on the Le Puy route, mainly because I was worried a silk liner would not give me enough protection from potentially scratchy or grubby blankets. Actually a silk liner would have been fine fom both these perspectives, I do like to stick my feet and legs out at night, which I could not have done with my liner. Food for thought...Gitti

 

[Kitsambler]

Walking from Le Puy on 6 Sept. It appears the consensus is that a silk sleep-sack is adequate? That I can leave the very lightweight sleeping bag behind? After all, to coin a phrase, "A pound's a pound the whole world round."

 

[jl]

If you are starting from Le Puy on the 6th Sept, I would be inclined to take a thermal sleeping sheet rather than a silk one. I would think that by that time the Aubrac Plateau might be starting to get a bit cool at night, and certainly by the time you get to the foothills around the Pyreenees it will be quite chilly. Most places have blankets, but if the gites are full you will probably only get one blanket, thus a slightly heavier sheet that is potentially 4 or 5 degrees warmer might be a better way to go.
Cheers, Janet

 

[Kitsambler]

I've just returned from walking Le Puy to Cahors. The silk sleep sack was quite sufficient (and warmer than the Coolmax sleep sack alternative). Every accommodation I used had one (or more) blankets in good condition, at the least. I was actually very comfortable.

One note on the silk sleep sacks. Do try getting into one before you leave home. The entry openings are a bit tight if your legs are long, and I spent the next morning with a pair of scissors, carefully letting out some of the seam to make entry/exit less contortional.

 

[jl]

I developed a method of getting in to my silk bag (when I needed to, as most of the time I slept on it, not in it) by sitting on the edge of the bed and slipping my legs in, standing up and quickly hoisting the bag up to my shoulders and then lying down enclosed in it. I did the reverse for getting out - keeping to the minimum with floor contact, and of course being careful where I stood. That solved all the contortionist problems. Cheers, Janet