Vezelay Route GR654 or Traditional?

[Steven B]

Hi All,
I leave Australia on the 4th Jul 23 and start walking UK to Mont Saint Michel on the 8th July then travel to Vezelay. I am working on the Vezelay route and have downloaded guides and gpx files etc.

The GR 654 is the route mostly referred to and I have the gpx file. However some comments and text also refer to walking the traditional route as a better alternative to the GR 654, it is also more direct and this alternative is being further developed by associations etc in some areas.

I am having trouble determine the difference in the two routes. I cannot locate a gpx or kml file for the more traditional route or seem to find where it deviates from the GR654. Is this info available anywhere?

In any event I do have a tendency to often go my own way and ignore the GR path when I prefer another way. I.e. On the Le Puy The GR 65 often keeps you in the woods and in the hedge rows when I prefer to see the farms and villages so I switched to walking from Church steeple to the next church steeple when I could see in the right direction. Enjoyed this much more. I noted doing this there were many more stone crosses at intersections and suspect it was the same way the pilgrims of old navigated as well. I expect much of the more traditional route would now have a main road over it!

Thanks in advance

 

[OZAJ]

I used the yellow Chassain guide in 2010, which is different from the GR route. I am not sure whether the Chassain guide is still available and updated. It is in French, but there is a lot of info which a non-French speaker can understand and the maps, whilst old are worth having. I bought my copy in Vezelay.

Part way along I met a fellow pilgrim who had started from his home in Holland. He was using the GR guide. He quickly changed to my route. The main reason was that the GR was convoluted and unnecessarily lengthy, unless you wanted to climb the hill and see the view. He wanted to get to Santiago, preferably using a traditional route.

 

[jdpiguet]

The GR 654 is a hiking trail (GR means Grande Randonnée).
The route coming from the yellow Guide Chassain is the historical way, or at least as close as possible to it.
The main difference is that the GR654 is around 200 km longer.

The historical way is maintained by the "Association des Amis et Pèlerins de Saint-Jacques de la Voie de Vézelay" and the local associations.
For the practical information (including GPX routes and POI files), see the "Voie de Vézelay" site, which is regularly updated.

Buen Camino,
Jacques-D.

 

[OZAJ]

The GR 654 is a hiking trail (GR means Grande Randonnée).
The route coming from the yellow Guide Chassain is the historical way, or at least as close as possible to it.
The main difference is that the GR654 is around 200 km longer.

The historical way is maintained by the "Association des Amis et Pèlerins de Saint-Jacques de la Voie de Vézelay" and the local associations.
For the practical information (including GPX routes and POI files), see the "Voie de Vézelay" site, which is regularly updated.

Buen Camino,
Jacques-D.

Thanks!

This is good news. I thoroughly enjoyed this route, my third.

 

[Steven B]

The GR 654 is a hiking trail (GR means Grande Randonnée).
The route coming from the yellow Guide Chassain is the historical way, or at least as close as possible to it.
The main difference is that the GR654 is around 200 km longer.

The historical way is maintained by the "Association des Amis et Pèlerins de Saint-Jacques de la Voie de Vézelay" and the local associations.
For the practical information (including GPX routes and POI files), see the "Voie de Vézelay" site, which is regularly updated.

Buen Camino,
Jacques-D.

Thank You, I have downloaded the gpx and poi files from the "Voie de Vézelay" site. Will now try and download a gpx of just the GR 654 so I can have them both on the same map and see the difference. I can then also switch between them, or go my own way as needed while walking.

I like the security of having the gpx tracks just to double check I am following the correct red and white markers. Also when I have not seen a mark for a while usually when I daydream past a turnoff

 

[Steven B]

Thank You, I have downloaded the gpx and poi files from the "Voie de Vézelay" site. Will now try and download a gpx of just the GR 654 so I can have them both on the same map and see the difference. I can then also switch between them, or go my own way as needed while walking.

I like the security of having the gpx tracks just to double check I am following the correct red and white markers. Also when I have not seen a mark for a while usually when I daydream past a turnoff

I now have both tracks on mapsme the GR654 track and the historical way Via Lemovicensis track in different colours. Very useful.

 

[jdpiguet]

Thank You, I have downloaded the gpx and poi files from the "Voie de Vézelay" site. Will now try and download a gpx of just the GR 654 so I can have them both on the same map and see the difference. I can then also switch between them, or go my own way as needed while walking.

I like the security of having the gpx tracks just to double check I am following the correct red and white markers. Also when I have not seen a mark for a while usually when I daydream past a turnoff

Be careful:

• GR's are marked Red-White
• Voie de Vézelay is marked Yellow/Blue

See this link for more information.

Buen Camino, Jacques-D.

 

[JabbaPapa]

The mapy.cz app seems to be good at showing the major variants, and the GR 654 seems to diverge from the Vézelay Way proper quite significantly. And there's both a Via Lemovicensis trail and a different Voie de Vézelay one -- though they frequently converge with each other into a single trail, and with the GR too sometimes.

In spots, all three diverge anyway from what the historic route should be -- sometimes sensibly, just to take a better walking route than the tarmac, but at other times the routes do not pass through the villages/parishes but go around them -- which is a frequent annoyance on modern French hiking routes constructed around the old pilgrimage Ways. Still, it seems you already have a handle on how to deal with that.

I walked the Mont-de-Marsan > SJPP section of it on my 1994 from Paris, and at the time none of these things existed, but with some minor exceptions the waymarked route there follows the DIY route I found for myself.

It seems fairly messy between Limoges and Périgueux, one of the options even avoids Limoges entirely which seems crazy to me from any traditional perspective. And between Vézelay and Limoges you may find yourself choosing between routes and DIY on a day-to-day basis.

After Périgueux things seem to get a bit crazy, with some major divergences -- indeed one of the options seems to lead to the Le Puy route at Montréal !! IMO you'd really want to go downriver from Périgueux to Mussidan, then carry on from there via La Réole and so on.

Anyway, mapy.cz does seem to be pretty good for this route and its multiple variants.

 

[JabbaPapa]

Oh, and this old IGN map, made in the early 1990s, shows the pre-GR historic routes, though not in any detail :

https://www.ign.es/web/BibliotecaIGN/42-B-16_01.JPG

And this more recent one shows a good overview of the current variants :