A Guide to Hiking the GR21 with Kids

In April, we set out to hike the GR21 from Le Tréport to Le Havre. It was to be our first ever thru-hike as a family, and we were all a little unsure of what to expect. Miriam was still eight years old, and Daniel had just reached six years old. As a family of four, we stepped off the train in Le Tréport, took a couple of pictures, and hit the trail. 11 days later, we finished at Le Havre, feeling very accomplished. I want to share with others how you might have a successful hiking trip with your children in France, and I believe that the GR21 is one of the best trails to hike as a family. It’s a beautiful trail, with lots of great views of the English channel, plenty of options to eat and rest, and it can be done during school vacation. There are even several convenient places along the way to stop the hike and go home if needed.

Planning

Two to three months before the hike is set to begin, you should start the planning. This gives time to locate gear, organize transportation, and ensure that you are ready for your hike. In order to ensure that money is not an issue, set aside a budget of 1000 euros for the trip. The actual cost may be a little more than half of that.

Before you start investing a lot of time and money into planning and preparation, test your family’s walking ability. You should be able to walk together at an average of at least three kilometers per hour on flat ground, for multiple hours. We found that this was quite attainable for our children, especially if we held hands. Once that has been assertained, you can be sure that completing the hike is a possibility.

Dates

The dates of your hike will probably be shaped by your normal work and school constraints. With children in France, you have several two-week holidays which are perfect for short hiking trips, in addition to the longer summer break. We did our hike during the spring vacation in mid-April. I recommend this period if your school vacation is not in early April, as it is less crowded on the Normandy coast. Being the beginning of the hiking season in this region, it can get a little chilly at night, and though we did meet some high winds, I was happy that we weren’t exposed to the higher temperatures of summer on our hike.

Travel

When you have decided on your hiking dates, I highly recommend buying train tickets. The GR21 is a hike between two train stations. I recommend starting the hike at Le Tréport and finishing at Le Havre. It’s better to finish your hike in a place with more frequent transportation options, and Le Havre is a big city with many trains. There are other good reasons to start in Le Tréport, such as following the FFRandonée’s Topoguide and saving Étretat for near the end of the hike, but it certainly also makes travel back home after the hike more flexible. If you are coming from Paris like us, it is easy to get to Le Tréport, with just one change in Beauvais. The train home from Le Havre was direct to Saint-Lazare with few stops.

Clothing

When it comes to clothing, it depends a bit on the season, but I recommend bringing rain jackets that also serve to keep warm in case of high winds. That is the heaviest piece of clothing. Otherwise, we were all wearing long sleeves and pants. Since it was spring, we brought some items to keep warm as well, such as a knit cap and sweatshirts. The main issue we had with the weather and temperature was cold winds, so long sleeves and pants were necessities. The children each had an extra layer to ensure they were warm enough, and I feel that they did need that.

Gear

It is useless to give you links to a bunch of gear that won’t be on sale when you read this guide. In addition, I don’t like proposing specific pieces of gear. Instead, I will just give you the basic strategy of any hiking family: share gear. I recommend sharing one four-person tent and one cooking set. The parents carry 35 liter backpacks, and the children carry little daypacks. It is important to have the children participate in some way by having a backpack, but it should be small.

I think the tent is the hardest piece of gear to find. There was only one 4-person tent that I could find at an acceptable weight for hiking (2.8 kilograms), for a decent price (150 euros). I had to have it shipped from a store in the Netherlands that seemed to be the only place that had it in stock. It served us well, and even though it was a little heavy for me to carry by myself, it allowed us to lighten everyone else’s backpacks, which is critical.

After that, most of the gear came from Decathlon. If you are in France, Decathlon is a great box store with some fairly lightweight gear for great prices. The gear we bought was a lot of Quechua (a French branch sold mostly by Decathlon) stuff which was super cheap. All of our backpacks, sleeping pads and iking poles were all shipped to us from Decathlon’s online store. I balanced good prices with lightweight items. Nothing we had was ultralight, it was simply run-of-the-mill box store hiking gear. Our adult backpacks were each 60 euros and less than a kilogram each. The children’s gear was extremely cheap. I highly recommend Decathlon.

For the sleeping gear, normal 3-season sleeping backs which are rated to be comfortable at 5 degrees Celsius should be fine. That was as low as the temperature got at night in April 2024 on the Normandy coast. I wanted to share sleeping pads, but couldn’t find anything affordable. I ended up going with cheap foldable foam sleeping pads, and they were fine.

For cooking, I invested in a large Toaks pot and pan set, and an alcohol stove. Many hikers prefer to use fuel cannisters with gas, and I’m sure that would work fine as well. I just prefer being able to go to refill my fuel at any grocery store if needed. The downside of sharing cooking gear is that it can take a lot longer to cook for four people. I consider this to be a sacrifice worth making, as we have more time in camp with younger children who can’t hike for long hours every day. To compensate, I carried other things for myself to eat that didn’t need to be cooked.

The other things that we brought were two headlamps, a trowel, tissues, a small microfiber towel, phones with charging cables, and the Topoguide. These items were all extremely light, and each more than earned their place in our packs. We really limit extra things, but many small lightweight items are very useful on a hike. Your list may vary, but it will probably be quite similar to ours.

Most importantly for the children, we brought a few things to make the experience fun. Cheap little cameras that they could take pictures with (although they soon found the cameras could play games and we had to limit their playing time). Tiny playing cards were a lightweight option to pass the time in the tent.

Test Hike

About two or three weeks before the real hike, take your family out for a hike and camp together in the tent. This is invaluable experience if you have never camped and hiked together, and even if you have, I would still do it to be sure to be prepared. Our test hike was much more difficult than the GR21 due to months of rain leaving high water and heavy mud along the section of the GR1 that we hiked. We learned what worked for us, how the children liked to hike, and what strategies to use to make the experience fun.

Hiking

When it comes to the actual hike, my advice is to plan well in advance the daily distance and give yourself plenty of time. I meticulously planned stopping points which were close to twenty kilometers each day, allowing us to complete the trail in 11 days. Each day, we tried to find good spots to take long breaks of at least thirty minutes. The only real obstacle to this was strong winds and chilly temperatures which made stopping for long uncomfortable for us. Our children loved playing on the many beach playgrounds found along the trail.

By getting up and starting our hike between 8 and 9 in the morning, we had plenty of time to do twenty kilometers at our own pace, with long breaks included, and arrive at a good spot to camp by dinner time. Some days, we didn’t take long breaks, and ended up finishing our hiking by early afternoon. I still insisted that we stop at the planned point in order to give our children a break and not wear them out.

During the day, we kept our children motivated by feeding them with a steady stream of snacks. In this way, we make hiking more enjoyable by presenting it as an opportunity to eat all the things which are usually more restricted at home. Oreos, candy, lollipops, crackers, and all sorts of snacks were constantly being handed out while we walked.

Camping at the end of the day was the favorite part of hiking for our children. It was important to pick out possible spots ahead of time, as there aren’t too many good spots to stealth camp on the GR21. The trail is constantly near a village or on a road, so the best spots for camping are near the cliffs or near farm fields, if possible. Having one tent for all four of us to share was key. In the tent, the children laughed together and relaxed after hiking. They ate noodles and other snacks, I wrote in my journal, Alex cooked, and we all organized our things. Occasionally we would play a card game, and the children might be allowed to play with their cameras.

The children found things that they enjoyed about the hike as well. Both kids enjoyed looking for the next blaze and calling them out, especially Daniel. Following the path of the trail with its turns, and looking forward to the next milestone were simple ways that our children stayed engaged.

For myself, planning everything for my family kept me busy. There weren’t a lot of great opportunities to filter water from a good source, so I planned where to buy large bottles and how far they needed to last until the next opportunity to refill. I was able to balance our nights camping in the tent with a few nights in rented rooms in town. Dieppe, Fécamp, and Le Havre were the places we paid to sleep in comfortable beds and relax for a night in town. I recommend these town stops, because it gives opportunities to take more time in the cities to wash clothing and resupply.

Together, we supported each other through the various little challenges of thru-hiking, and we got a first taste of hiking together in France. It was a memorable experience for all of us, and it introduced the idea of doing more hikes together. I hope that the GR21 can be that for other families looking to get into hiking together as well.