It doesn’t make any difference what you call this long-distance walk. The Robert Louis Stevenson Trail, The Chemin Stevenson, The Cevennes or the GR 70. It has become a travel classic because of Robert Louis Stevenson. The Robert Louis Stevenson of Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fame. The Scottish writer left Monastier sur Gazeille, France on foot, September 22, 1878 with his donkey, Modestine, on a long distance walk from the Auvergne to the mountains of the Cevennes. It took 12 days, and 220 kms/136 miles to complete this epic trip. Stevenson later wrote a book about this journey called Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes and it became his first successful book.

Walking in the footsteps of R. L. Stevenson has become a very popular moderate-to-challenging walk in France with many options. You can:

- Walk a portion of the trail, or the entire length;

- Go alone or with a group;

France area of the Robert L. Stevenson walk
- Organize a self-guided trip with your bags transported between stops;

- Make your own hotel or gite reservations and carry a heavy backpack; or

- Actually hire a donkey (perhaps one of Modestine’s descendants) to carry everything on the trail for you! It runs around 430 Euros for two weeks.
I surfed the Internet and found the Chemin-Stevenson Organization website all in French, but when I e-mailed and asked if they had information in English, the organization responded by both e-mailing and mailing a detailed flyer with the route, hotels, contacts and more in English.

There are many tour organizers that do the entire trail or portions. I specifically wanted a self-guided Stevenson trip and could only find three operators who organize this for you: Sherpa Walking Holidays, a French company, La Pelerine, and BelleFrance. Adventure Center (see side bar and one of my favorite operators) didn’t offer this same exact itinerary but does offer many other escorted walks. I recommend them all the time because we have used them on 16 different occasions, and have first-hand knowledge of their expertise.

The Stevenson route through France
We selected La Pelerine whom we used for Walking in the Alsace Region of France. They arranged the hotels, transported baggage, and gave us maps and trip notes. Very satisfied, I contacted them again. La Pelerine has a boilerplate itinerary broken up into two sections. You can hike/walk for one week or two but always gung-ho me selected the 12-day portion.

Let’s plan the rest of this trip…