“I hike because it fulfils a need, that very normal need for freedom, to be out there, to use my legs, to be able to walk where I want, take a walk out in nature whenever I want. To me that is one of the cornerstones of my life, it means my life is okay,” says 57-year-old Laurent Chauvet.

Although the avid hiker has called South Africa home since the 1980s, he was born and raised in France, where he spent much of his childhood in the country’s northern towns. “I was maybe eight years old and already walking to the woods next to the little towns where I grew up in France, without my parents, just walking in the woods and through the fields, because it was fairly countryside back then, in the north of France. I always remember how satisfying those moments were, walking, looking at the clouds and enjoying nature.”

School holidays were spent visiting his grandparents in Deux-Sèvres in the western region; “very countryside, a farming kind of area with beautiful fields and small forests and little pathways and small roads for tractors and bicycles, with lots of different grass and cows everywhere. I was always out there walking, picking up blackberries or blueberries,” he recalls.

Unsurprisingly, he has chosen the little hamlet of Hogsback in the Amathole mountains in the rural Eastern Cape as home, where together with his life partner, they own and run  Touraco accommodation as well as a restaurant, The Touraco Table, on their property.

Among many relatively short hiking trails in the surrounding forests and mountain range, Hogsback also marks the end, of the six-day long Amatola hiking trail. “I walk every week, and then I do about two or three big hikes a year,” says Chauvet.

His limbs have taken him through the Amatola trail a number of times, they’ve taken him to the top of Mount Fuji in Japan, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the Leopard’s trail hike in Baviaanskloof, the Rim of Africa trail in the Western Cape, among many other paths.

“I love being on my own. I’ve never had a problem with that, and when I’m on my own in nature, that’s a plus. Yes, sometimes, when you’re on your own, you might think of the bad things in life. That happens to me and I start rambling in my head, but at some stage, I’m able to stop, put myself back on track and focus on the beautiful natural surroundings. Hiking in nature is a bit like cleaning your brain of all the bad stuff. You deal with things, get yourself back on track, you focus on nature and the positive and beautiful things,” says Chauvet.

The route is recognised as a Unesco World Heritage Site, as well as one of the three great Christian pilgrimages after Jerusalem and Rome.

To mark the year of his 50th birthday in 2015, he embarked on a hike that would be his “big midlife … not crisis, let’s call it a midlife event”. He would leave the Eastern Cape to spend nearly two months walking the South of France and Northern Spain, hiking some 1,400 kilometres on the famous pilgrimage, the Camino de Santiago, known in English as “the Way of St James”. The historic route has roots that go as far back as the 9th century when a tomb believed to be that of the apostle Saint James the Greater was discovered in the Spanish cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

A hiker on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, passing Galicia in Spain. Image: Unsplash.com / Jorge Luis Ojeda

It is made up of a network of different paths, all leading to the shrine of the apostle. Today the route is recognised as a Unesco World Heritage Site, as well as one of the three great Christian pilgrimages after Jerusalem and Rome, believed to have been declared so by Pope Alexander VI, back in the 15th century.

Beginning in September 2015, “late summer, early autumn”, Chauvet spent a little under a month walking his way across the South of France, from Carcassonne on the southeastern side towards the southwestern side, mostly on his own, sleeping in his tent. “And the beautiful thing in France is that you can pitch your tent anywhere, on side of the road, in a field, even in somebody’s garden if the garden is huge and nobody’s going to bother you and you’re not going to bother anyone, or you can even ask for permission. I slept in my tent every night for the first month; somewhere beautiful and almost always all on my own, it was amazing,” he says. Every few nights along the route he would book himself into  “fancy camps, with showers, washing machines, that sort of thing”.

Laurent Chauvet camping on the side of the road in Durban-sur-Arize in France. Image: Laurent Chauvet

Which route to choose

The most popular route to Santiago de Compostela is the Camino Francés, also known as the French Way. It begins at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, on the Pyrénées mountain range, which straddles the border of France and Spain, approximately 400 kilometres from Carcassonne, where Chauvet began his walk.

This would also mark the end of nights spent in the solitude of his tent, as tents are not allowed along the pilgrimage on the Spanish side. So he packed his tent and posted it to his mother in Toulouse. However, even though he thought the path would be quieter because it was late summer, “when I arrived in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to do the classic French Camino, there were so many people there that I decided to cancel,” he says.

“I actually wouldn’t recommend the French Way. I’ve heard horrible stories about problems with accommodation. Because it’s so crowded, a lot of people book in the same ‘albergues’,” he says, referring to the backpacking hostels on the Spanish side of the route, which are set aside for pilgrims. “It’s first come first serve, and if you don’t make those first albergues or ones that are convenient for where you want to stop, you have to work further to find the next one, and so on and so forth.

“Some people book ahead, then wake up early and race to make it there on time. The experience changes, it’s no longer about communing with nature, or communing with whatever it is if you’re religious, or communing with your body or with your mind, none of this is happening. It becomes a rat race where everyone is competing to get there first. It’s not fun,” he explains.

Hence he opted for the less popular Camino del Norte, also known as the Northern Way. Instead of joining hundreds of hikers traversing the Pyrenees into Spain along the Camino Francés, he carried on south-westerly on the French side towards Hendaye, a tourist resort town that crosses the storied Basque Country — which itself is spread across France and Spain, and is home to the Basque ethnic group on both sides of the border. From Hendaye, he would make his way across the border to the northern Spanish town of Irun, and continue along the scenic northern coast of Spain.

Meeting fellow Belgian pilgrim in Espelette (Basque Country-France). Image: Laurent Chauvet

Socialising with fellow British and Spanish pilgrims in Bilbao (Basque Country in Spain). Image: Laurent Chauvet

Where to sleep along the way

Without his tent, he had to book accommodation as he walked across the French Basque country and “that was a bit painful, because by then it was late September, and with the summer season over, many of those pilgrim places on the French side were actually closed. Unlike the pilgrim accommodation, the available tourist accommodation was quite expensive.”

Still, he managed to find accommodation in some camps along the way. “I complained to one lady who rented accommodation. I said, ‘you know, I really can’t afford this because I’m on a budget.’ Right next to her place was a camping site, so she offered to lend me her son’s tent so I could rather book there for 10 euros, rather than spend 50 euros at her accommodation. She really saved my life that day,” says Chauvet.

Scenery along the Camino del Norte in Spain. Image: Flickr / Ramon Bacas

As he had hoped, the Northern Way was far quieter than the French way. “I must have met a maximum of three hikers altogether while walking French countryside. You bump into people, but it’s like they fall out of the sky. Because you were all alone all this time, and they just appear out of nowhere. And although they’re also doing the Santiago, everybody’s got different patterns, so you don’t stay that long with people. But it’s different once you get to Spain. That is where it’s all happening,” he says.

Scenery along the Camino del Norte in Spain. Image: Flickr / Ramon Bacas

Scenery along the Camino del Norte in Spain. Image: Flickr/ Ramon Bacas

On the Spanish side, where tents are not allowed, accommodation would be strictly in the form of albergues. But fortunately for Chauvet, even though the Spanish part of the route was busier, as he walked the last few weeks of his 59-day hike along the greenery of Spain’s northern coast it was still much quieter than the path through the Pyrenees: “You do actually form a little hiking community with some people you meet regularly along the way. I met a lot of Germans, I met a Finnish guy, I met a Norwegian guy. Depending on the days, moods and how people feel, some want to be left alone, but sometimes they want to socialise or whatever. Same with you as well. So sometimes you walk the whole day with one guy, and then the next day, you will walk with that woman, and the third day with another guy, and the fourth day on your own. Everybody’s always respectful when you want to be left alone.”

The greenery of Spain’s northern coast in Asturias. Image: Laurent Chauvet

The end of the trail in Fisterra, Spain. Image: Laurent Chauvet

Laurent’s tips for a successful hike

“For me, the biggest thing is learning to control your pain on the hike,” says Chauvet, whose weekly hikes include the steep mountain trails that surround Hogsback. 

He often advises people that he takes on hikes to do this by maintaining a regular breathing rhythm, to keep a constant flow of oxygen. “It’s about controlling your breathing, your emotions, your psyche, your pain, everything. So when I walk uphill I do think hard about it, I’m focused and I ask people who walk with me to rather not talk, or not expect me to answer if they do. Because that’s the killer, talking while walking uphill is a killer,” he explains.

You can’t take on a long hike impulsively.

Out in nature, he says, there’s a lot that might destabilise you, be it rocks, steps, or grass; and a certain amount of focus and control makes sure that your breathing rhythm is not disturbed, which helps you to carry on without getting tired or discouraged.

However, long before one takes the first step, especially for a big days-long hike, the name of the game is preparation. Says Chauvet: “Prepare in your head, prepare your equipment, your food, your everything.” Part of that preparation includes understanding the weather patterns that come with each hike and the equipment you will need to protect yourself. “For example, no matter what time of the year, you have to expect at least one day of rain on the Amathole trail,” he cautions.

It’s also important to research solutions other people have used to protect themselves from bad weather. He explains that on the rim of the Africa trail hikers often bring cheap “dishwashing gloves to protect themselves from the rain and cold. If you use a fancy pair of gloves, leather or otherwise, the kind you would use on top of Kilimanjaro, they might you keep warm but not dry, unless you pay a lot of money for the waterproof kind. But the dishwashing gloves for 20 bucks actually work.”

Most importantly, when it comes to making a decision to go on a long hike, he says: “You can’t take on a long hike impulsively. Don’t do that, because you will forget something important. Even when I choose to go on a hike with friends, we’ll spend a whole year thinking about it, excitement builds up as we plan, and the month before, we really get chitchatting and packing. So we’ve had all this time to plan, we know we can do it, and we’re prepared.” DM/ML

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