...and thus I'll make my pilgrimage.

Long-distance footpath number GR65 runs from Le Puy in the centre of France, south and west to the Pyrenees, and over the pass of Roncesvaux into Spain. It recreates the main route taken by pilgrims heading through France to the shrine of St James at Compostela in north-west Spain.

( Two reasons for walking it, neither of them mine )

Not me; I'm just on holiday. I enjoy seeing the country close-up. And I admit that I enjoy the historical associations of the route, the sense that for hundreds of years, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, with all their mixed motives and different modes of travel, have travelled along these paths or others nearby. I enjoy, too, the physical evidence of their passage, the pilgrim churches and hostels, the evidence of place names and scallop shells and statues of Saint James (usually depicted dressed as a pilgrim, that is, someone making a pilgrimage to his own shrine, which is only odd if you stop to think about it). And on a hot day, it's pleasant to be welcomed by the shade of an old barn to which the villagers have contributed cast-off furniture to provide an informal shelter, or the water-tap on the corner of a lawn, against which the owner has propped a scallop shell as an invitation to the thirsty.
( A couple of pictures )

And I suppose that if I feel welcomed by these things, then at some level I am, after all, including myself among the pilgrims.