Marking The Way

We have walked close on 500 miles now and, apart from a couple of exceptions recently, have had no problems finding the way. So how do we do it without having a separate rucksack full of maps?

The secret is that we follow the red and white blazes which now, mark out GR footpaths in Europe. In our case we are following the GR65, which is, in France, more commonly known as the chemin de Saint Jacques or Compostelle.


Up until this week, every hundred metres or so, we would see a white stripe on top of a red stripe, reassuring us that we are on the right path; and a red and white cross at junctions, indicating directions which are the wrong way to go. This week, however, the blases have been few and far between, which means the potential for getting lost increases considerably.

Putting a marker every few metres, on a path running for 500 miles in France, is quite a tall order and checking and refreshing the signage doesn't just happen by chance.

This year, knowing that our minders were due to do the walk, Bears Unlimited very own French bear, Gilbert, tendered for the way-marking contract and, being the shrewd business bear he is, got it.

Since Gilbert is rather an urbane and chic bear, he didn't fancy doing the job himself, but he did know exactly who to sub-contract the job to.

He consulted his list of B.U. Contacts and found a team of Polish bears ready and willing to check and refresh the blazes. Gilbert does have rather a fine brain and we hope you will understand why he chose Polish bears for the route.

Firstly, and most simply, Polish bears are very hard workers and take great pride in their craftsmanship.

Secondly, he reasoned that as the white and red stripes resemble the Polish flag, the best thing he could do would be to employ workers who were passionate about Poland and who would seize every opportunity to adorn the countryside with mini Polish flags. This would allow him to ensure that enough blazes were being painted, as too many would not be a problem for walkers, whereas too few would.

Mind you even Gilbert didn't reckon on this level of enthusiasm from the Polish bears!


It's a fair bet that no-one has got lost on that section of the route over the Aubrac plateau!

Quite often the red and White blazes appear in conjunction with other chemin de compostelle markers. These occur in all shapes and sizes and we'd like to model a few of them.


Here George models one of our favourites. The blue plaque with the yellow scallop shell gives the distance from Santiago in kilometres. The first one in Le Puy said about 1550 km and we haven't seen one for several days now, but the last we saw was about 932 km. Unfortunately many have been vandalised by, we presume, unscrupulous pilgrims, who prize off the blue plaque as a souvenir. No doubt the same ones as the grape and fruit scrumpers!


Then you have much simpler signs, of which we model two examples: the disadvantage of the first is that you have to know which way you are going as the arrows point both ways - in theory you should recognise where you have just walked!


We think we will have to stop this post after one more example otherwise this post will take forever to send. We're sure you'll have got the gist by now anyway.


There was one particular department, Gers we think, which included the red and white stripes on a metal plate with the scallop shell emblem of the camino/chemin. We particularly liked these and also the yellow information boards which gave times to places and told non walkers/cyclists to keep off the paths.

We have some more fine examples of camino signage for another post, if our readers would like to see more.

Love from the Camino Bears xxx