Circular Walk, "Orange Footpath"---St. Guilhem le Dessert

It was sunny day with cool wind and perfect for walking.

On our 3rd day there, we decided to do "circular walk". Marcus told me he did circular walk here before. So, of course, I wanted to do it too. I didn't really think how long and how big the walk was going to be.... Anyway, "let's go for a walk!"

I wasn't quite sure what I expected, probably, nothing.

To started off, we walked to the Roman Arches/bridge. Then, we followed the orange footpath. We knew that if we followed yellow sun footpath, we would be ended up in Spain. We didn't want that....
He worked out somehow in his head, this "orange footpath" was going to be big circular walk, and that was what I wanted to do. 

This footpath leads to Spain...

There's no proper markings for "orange footpath"

Lovely footpath!

This is the first junction. left to Spain with white and red footpath, straight on to orange footpath & yellow footpath lead to Roman Arch.

Walk up to the arch, and top, just followed "orange marking". It was well marked up, Always either with yellow markings or orange on its own on some rocks. After coming out from the forest with a gate, there was big asphalt road went up or down. Orange footpath marked on the road to go up, so, we took left to go up. We just walked, walked and walked. 

Every time we came up to the top of mountains we were walking, the views were awesome. I was feeling nicely tired, as soon as saw the views, I forgot how tired my legs were.

We knew that, bit by bit, we were higher and farther from St. Guilhem. I didn't see the Chateau or the village. We now reached...

This place, only a few houses here, and it said something to do with goats, but no one to be seen at this point. We took the yellow footpath to get to the orange footpath, we were near to the telecom tower(I think). Now we were entering olive grow. It was about our snack time. And it was hot. 
We found some nice shady place under olive trees. We sat there, then heard bells.......
"shiiieeeee, Goats are near by!"
Then, suddenly, I saw loads of them coming down from upstairs. 
They stopped, looked at us with cute faces. I felt that we were on their way walking pass.
I couldn't get up, Marcus managed to get up before they came to us. I sat there, feeling not-sure-what-to-do, a nosy goat came and looked into my bag. I was licked by death by goats! Never experienced that before. They were cute. They wanted to follow us too. 

Look! cute smiley goats!

After the incident, we still carried on walking, walking and walking. We ended up walk to this telecom tower.

I took this photo from further down. By the time reached first big junction, it looked a lot closer than this.

It didn't look too bad to look at it from down stairs, but actually walking there was a bit of hike. This footpath go up and down in the mountains. I must say, the view from there was fantastic. It was the highest point in the whole area.

I thought it was a half way of the footpath.... no no no, it carried on and on and on.

Took us about 5-6 hours to get to the other side of the valley. Time to time, this orange marking started disappearing. Sometimes, we had to guess which way to go. 
We sometimes walked sandy road, like service road or cycling path.
One point, this footpath got blocked off with metal mesh fence, we could see people were still carried on under the fence, so we did. 

Now we were walking on the mountain top, rather like meadow. It was very pretty, didn't expect to see cute little flower like these on the top. Higher up, I saw lavender, honeysuckles and thyme. Never seen wild ones, very pretty. ( rosemary seemed to like to be little lower)

By then, we were wondering about how long more of this "orange footpath" going and "can we get back in dinner time?????"
We weren't sure how long, so, we decided to take yellow footpath to get down to the valley. We had feeling it was about another 4 hours or so to do whole thing, but we lost the orange footpath anyway. What happened to the guy and paint, orange paint run out??? It started well marked. We needed to finish another day. We took the yellow footpath from the above junction. 
This lead to where we came from , to the first junction.

We went straight on to circular walk, if you take the wooden gate path lead to roman arch.

 Finally after walking another 1.5hr or so, we finally saw our little chateau. From this point, probably another 1hour or so to get to the chateau, which connected to the other side of "orange footpath" In total that day, we walked about 8.5hours.

This day, we didn't quite do big circular walk, but it was more like "big figure of 8".
We walked to the square, and drunk lots of water. Dinner tasted yet again, delicious!

A few days after, we tried this "orange footpath" started from the other side, we walked about 5 hours or so, lost the orange markings, get lost a bit then went back to the valley. 
Later, our landlady Fanny told us it was long footpath, sounded even locals didn't do much of this footpath. Needed to start very early to complete this walk. Never mind, next time, we can complete this walk!

Found this cute church.

 Medieval. Only1 priest living there. Without gas, electrics, and Internet!!!!

 After the church, footpath lead to another forest.

Who's going to drive up here???