Why I love France in seven easy lesson.

When I came back home I had an hours worth of video clips, 105 clips in all, on my flip camcorder and one of my youTube friends suggested that I turn them into youTube length movies (Under 10 minutes long) and post them on youTube. Well I just finished that little project and I've decided to put them all together here on my blog. There are seven little movies and they are basicly just the unedited clips joined together sometimes the video isn't great, sometimes the wind blocks what I trying to say and sometimes they are very funny like the scene with the three dogs or the Basque family out for a walk Mom, Dad, the Kids, the dog and of course the donkey or my two attempts at crossing a rushing stream with full backpack.

This first one is my arrival in cold snowy Paris on February first the train trip down south to Beziers and some of my travel in the south of France.



The second video is taken at the Acquarium at Montpelier and the start of the Le Puy walk.



The third video is mostly Wild flowers and walking through the national forest.



The fourth video was recorded March 30th, 2010 as I walked on a rainy day in the Basque country.



The fifth video is the last day of my walk, March 31, 2010 and the time in Saint Jean Pied de Port.



The sixth video was taken while I traveled around in France and my short trip to Brussels, before going to Paris at the end of the trip.



The seventh and last video you have seen before if you have looked at my earlier posts but I though I would put it here too so they would all be in one place, it's my river tour on the Batobus in Paris.



Well that's it I hope you got a kick out of them some of them really crack me up.

Beziers in February

DSC03924 Beziers, originally uploaded by fotoart1945.

As I said in an earlier post I'm making plans to do another Camino walk this time from Le Puy en Valey starting the first of March 2010. I hope to be able to average 20KM per day which will give me lots of time to walk the Chemin de Saint Jacques from Le Puy to the foot of the Pyrenees at Saint Jean Pied de Port , by the middle of April. I would like to do lots of practice walking before I start on the Chemin, as a matter of fact I started last week. The problem that I always have is our bitter cold winter weather in January and February some times for weeks on end it is just too cold and windy to get any serious walking done, so I started thinking about going over to France and renting a GÎTES or apartment for all or part of February to give me some time to get in a few practice walks. The criteria that I set for my location was snow free, reasonable temperature, in a small town or city, good transportation links by both train and bus, reasonably priced accommodations, walking trails in the area and in a good location for day or overnight trips to other areas of interest. After doing some research I have settled on Beziers in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southwest France. A small city of 69,000 very well served by both train and bus, you can take one of several TGV high speed trains daily leaving Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport direct to Beziers in under 5 hours. Once in Beziers there is good train and bus connections to other locations of interest in the area. I'm planning to stay at an Apart-Hotel which rents studio and one bedroom apartments called Le Fonserane I have been quoted a rate of 210 Euro a week for a studio in February so I will make reservations for the whole month. They won't accept reservations for 2010 until November. Beziers is only a few kilometers from the Mediterranean and short distances from Carcassonne to the west and Montpellier to the east. The Canal du Midi goes through this part of France connecting the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and there are walking trails that follow the canal both east and west of Beziers I'm not sure but I think the trails are the tow path along the canal. I hope to make this a two or three day walk at some point during my stay.