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Following in Others' Footsteps

Ancient Paths of Europe

What's your idea of a perfect Sunday? A lie-in followed by a drive into the country for a three-hour walk with perhaps a pub lunch along the way? It's easy to forget that just a couple of generations ago, walking was still most people's only option of getting from A to B, and to them the idea that in the future people would get in a car at the weekend and drive into the hills to walk for pleasure would have seemed absurd. (In less developed parts of Spain and Italy, locals still find walking for enjoyment's sake a strange concept.) It's also easy to forget that some of the paths that you walk along have existed for centuries, and that you are following in the footsteps of traders, shepherds, pilgrims and many more.

In Norway, one of the most panoramic routes on the Serene Hardangerfjord walk follows not in the footsteps of shepherds or traders but in those of monks. It was after settling near Lofthus in around 1150 that a small fraternity from York cut the 616 huge rock steps leading to the Hardangervidda Plateau. Although the spectacular views of the Hardangerfjord certainly make it worthwhile, it takes some effort to walk up the steps, and as you climb you can't help but empathise with the monks charged with laying them. Once finished, the steps would have been used regularly – the monks grew crops and hunted game on the plateau to supplement the fruit and vegetables that they grew by the fjord side for the monastery near Bergen.

In Mallorca, islanders accomplished a similar feat, though down the side of a narrow ravine rather than a fjord. Little is known about the path through the dramatic Biniaraix Gorge, though it is believed that the trail was established as a route into the mountains long before the arrival of the Moors or even the Romans. It is likely that it was cobbled in the 16th or 17th century after the creation of a monastery at Lluc brought an influx of pilgrims through the gorge. Nowadays it makes for a magnificent walk – by means of 1,932 steps the path descends some 800 metres as it zigzags seemingly forever towards the village of Biniaraix accompanied by the sound of the rushing water of the torrent and the singing of nightingales.

Of course, pilgrims established many important routes right across Europe, one of the most famous of which is the Camino de Santiago, which crosses northern Spain before eventually reaching St James' tomb in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Though none of our walking holidays specifically follows the Camino, you can walk along a short section of the route on the In the Footsteps of Pilgrims walk. On our Lake Lucerne holiday, the walk from Flueli-Ranft (a centre of pilgrimage in its own right as it was here that Switzerland's only saint, Niklaus von Flüe, spent much of his life in the hermitage) follows the Bruderklausweg, an early stage of the Camino for those coming from Switzerland, albeit in the wrong direction from Spain.

Just as important – if not more so in fact – are the paths trodden for centuries by people as they went about their normal business, be it farming or trading or both. Our White Towns & Rugged Mountains walk in Andalucia follows several ancient paths and drovers' roads that have linked the villages since they were first built, while in the Cerdagne, in the eastern Pyrenees, you can follow part of a centuries-old transhumance route on the walk from Puigcerda to Villeneuve. Nowadays the cobbled trails of the Canary Islands and the stepped pathways of the Amalfi Coast that criss-cross the terraced mountainsides high above the sea offer thrilling walking, but these were the only means of communication between settlements until less than a century ago and must have been difficult to negotiate when leading a mule loaded with provisions.

In southern France, a path known as La Régordane, part of an ancient route linking Paris and southern Languedoc, crosses the hills of the Cévennes. The route is thought to have been established by the Romans to transport locally mined metals, but it did not become an important trade route until the Middle Ages. Génolhac, the starting point for our walking holiday, is typical of the villages along the route in that the main thoroughfare through the village was lined with warehouses with large arched doorways, several of which still survive. A period of very good harvests increased traffic along La Régordane for a time but trade declined once more in the 14th century as a result of the Black Death and the Hundred Years War.

Another walking holiday that follows a long-established trade route is the Bologna to Florence walk. Here, in the hills of Emilia Romagna and Tuscany, ancient mule tracks wind through dense beech forests and along broad, grassy ridges. The route is called the Via degli Dei (Route of the Gods) not because it was of religious significance (though Bologna's position made it an almost obligatory stop on any journey to Rome, so the area did see many pilgrims and men of the cloth) but because many of the surrounding mountains and villages are named after deities, for example Monte Venere (Mount Venus), Monte Adone (Mount Adonis) and the village of Monzuno (a contraction of 'Monte Juno'). The sense of journey you experience over the course of the holiday is enhanced by stays in traditional wayside inns that in some cases have provided hospitality to travellers for generations.

Finally, if the fact that cobbled lanes and carefully hewn steps have survived the test of time is astonishing, it is even more impressive that much of the Roman-built aqueduct between the source of the River Eure and Nîmes still stands to this day. The most famous section of the 50-kilometre aqueduct is the Pont du Gard, which carried the aqueduct over the River Gardon. Supported by 35 arches, it is 273 metres long and 48 metres high, representing a huge engineering feat when it was built 2000 years ago. Not only does our To the Pont du Gard walk take you right to the bridge, but for the next three kilometres it follows the aqueduct, giving you an even better idea of the Romans' amazing ingenuity. As you walk alongside it, you can't help but wonder whether future generations will marvel at our communications systems in the same way.

At Inntravel we are committed to the principles of responsible tourism. By incorporating ancient paths into our walking holidays wherever we can, we help ensure that they remain open to the public.

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