The Nature of the French by Annabel Simms
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I’ve enjoyed country walks for most of my life in England without ever worrying about getting lost. It was only when I started seriously exploring the countryside around Paris with an American friend that getting lost became an all too familiar experience. Using the Michelin map (we were unaware of the existence of the IGN large scale maps) and desperate to get off some horrible road, we would follow a promising path that would end in barbed wire or a fence. Occasionally we did notice inconspicuous little red and white or red and yellow stripes painted at eye level on these paths and were puzzled by the ones in the form of a St Andrew’s cross. We assumed that they meant ‘take this path’, but following them invariably led to grief.
In the course of researching my book on the Paris countryside I eventually discovered that the stripes were a national system of markings put there by the Fédération Française de la Randonnée Pédestre, the French version of the Ramblers Association. A horizontal white stripe over a red one meant ‘take this path’, a white left or right arrow underneath meant that the path would soon fork left or right. Red and white stripes meant we were on a GR (Grande Randonnée), a major footpath crossing France. Red and yellow were for a GRP (Grande Randonnée de Pays), crossing a department or region, and yellow meant that it was a PR (Promenade et Randonnée), a shorter circuit for local walkers. In every case the horizontal cross meant ‘do not take this path’.
I triumphantly put this information into my book and started using it myself, with gratifying results. Once you become aware of these signs, you start noticing them everywhere, even in central Paris. I was amused to discover that a friend of mine who has lived in Paris for 20 years thought that they indicated an area where mobile phone reception was good. I smugly put her right, but even so, we still had trouble with the signs. What was one to make of a short slanting line through some of them? And in spite of our new-found knowledge, some were so discreet that we missed them altogether, some GR routes indicated on IGN maps no longer existed, and others flaunted their existence even though they were not on the map. Clearly, there was a time-lag between the way-marking of a new route and its depiction on the map. And how did these new routes get approved anyway?
So when I saw an FFRP brochure entitled "Devenir Baliseur" I decided to find out by becoming a volunteer trail-blazer myself. Easier said than done. You had to join an accredited two-day residential course first. It took 18 months before I succeeded in pinning down the organisers to a date on which a course would definitely be happening and then I had to persuade them to charge me 16 rather than 92. The lower charge applied if I promised to use my skills only in the Seine et Marne department where the course was being organised. In return I was expected to maintain the signs on a 15 km stretch of footpath in the department for life – unless, of course, I decided not to. So that was all right.
The first morning was, of course, devoted to theory. I discovered that the FFRP had started in 1946 and that it was run by volunteers who worked closely with local communes and landowners as well as government ministries to designate and maintain public footpaths across France. The organisational structure seemed incredibly complex. The first day ended with everyone cutting out a template of stiff plastic so that the signs we were to paint the next day would be mathematically uniform and precise. I nearly cut my thumb on mine and almost gave up. But the mystery of the slanting line through some of the signs was explained: they were diverticules (deviations). I decided not to do those, as cutting them out was even more of a challenge.
The course came into its own on the second day when we were split up into small groups and assigned different parts of the forest to practise on, accompanied by an experienced baliseur. We were each issued with a square bucket containing a brand-new file, wire brush, little paint pots and brushes, the famous template, even pencils and a clean rag. Within five minutes we were in pleasurably heated argument. Some were in favour of putting the distance in km next to our first sign but others argued against this on the grounds of ‘discretion’, one of the principles mentioned on the course. These were that the signs were supposed to be uniform but also aesthetic, helpful, discreet and respectful of the environment – in that order.
But in reality there are as many different ways of painting signs as there are different baliseurs. I was tickled that ‘aesthetic’ came before ‘helpful’ and argued passionately in favour of showing the distance. Over-ruled. A tall man in shorts called Christian nicknamed me ‘l’Angleterre’ and never stopped teasing me about my English sloppiness in having made my template slightly crooked. He painstakingly and good-naturedly painted over all my wavy lines to straighten them out. His own template was geometrically perfect, so I retorted that he was typically French, obsessed with form over content. We had a lovely time slanging off each other’s countries, and in reality enjoying the hard physical work of filing off tree bark, the convivial pleasure of painting on trees and stone and the silence of the forest in the dappled morning light, far from Paris and the workaday world. Two walkers out early greeted us with respect and appreciation when they saw what we were doing and I felt a glow of altruistic satisfaction.
The most instructive episode came last. A new sign needed to be painted and the consensus was to put it on the tree with the softest bark. But it was also the tree furthest away from the path and, as I knew from my own experience, might easily be overlooked. The nearest one had the hardest bark and no one wanted to touch it, especially as we only had 20 minutes left before rejoining the others for a picnic lunch. ‘Right,’ I said, ‘I’ll do it’, and seized the file. Five minutes later, having made almost no impression on the bark, I was regretting my high-minded decision but refused to give up. Luckily, Christian the long-suffering perfectionist appeared, having been delayed by painting a dead straight line on the last sign. ‘Aha’, he said triumphantly, ‘c’est l’Angleterre en difficulté?’ and with French gallantry he took over and finished the job in ten minutes. Nor did it matter that we were late, as the others were later still.
I returned to Paris by train and metro with my bulky bucket of tools and my overnight bag, gratified to have decoded some of the mystery of the GR signs and proud in the knowledge that one useful mark in the Forest of Fontainebleau is forever England. Well, with a little help from France.
For more information about walking in France, go to: www.ffrp.asso.fr or see our selection of travel writing about walking and trekking.