The project
In greater Occitania (14 départements), the Region and SNCF provide a network of stations and bus lines open to everyone, but no tool systematically matches these starting points with the hikes published by the départements and by the national and regional parks. Hikers who want to avoid the car work it out case by case, station by station.
For each station and each selected bus stop in the 14 départements, Caminada gathers the hikes that start, finish or pass through the area reachable in 45 minutes on foot (IGN isochrones). The walking time shown on each hike page is measured by an IGN route calculation to the start of the hike: it can exceed 45 minutes. Bus stops on the liO network are only published if they allow a day return at the weekend — the criterion is detailed further down, with the sources. The hikes come from 6 official Geotrek instances (national parks, regional nature parks, departmental councils), 2 departmental PDIPR datasets (Gers and Hérault, as open data) and OpenStreetMap for additional coverage. Official hikes come with a detailed description, a high-resolution track and a downloadable GPX file.
How it works
route=hiking relations).A hike is linked to a station if its track passes through the walking isochrone, not only its starting point. This makes it possible to include trails that are reached by a link path from the station. For each hike, the original source, the native description where one exists, the high-resolution track and a generated GPX file are kept.
Station-to-station hikes
Beyond the usual loops, Caminada identifies linear routes linking two different stations: get off at one station, walk one stage, then leave from another station without retracing your steps. These links are calculated in advance when the start and the end of a track each lie near a different station.
5,178 station-to-station stages are currently listed, mainly sections of long-distance footpaths (GR) from OpenStreetMap (ODbL licence). This is the most natural way to combine train and hiking, and the one existing platforms serve least well.
Data sources
6 public Geotrek instances and 2 departmental PDIPR open data sets are currently integrated. Geotrek is free software developed by the Parc National des Écrins and used by more than 100 trail management bodies in France; each instance exposes a standardised public API. The PDIPR (Plans Départementaux des Itinéraires de Promenade et de Randonnée, the departmental plans of walking and hiking routes) are published by the departmental councils under the Licence Ouverte 2.0. All the data is gathered again from these sources every month; the date of the last update is shown on the map.
The numbers below are the hikes actually linked to a station and shown on the site, not the raw size of each source catalogue.
These sources are joined by routes marked "✓ Tested by Caminada": walked and described personally by the site's publisher, outside any managing body. They are flagged separately on their hike page and can be filtered with the "✓ Caminada" button, precisely because they do not go through the same validation as an official trail — see the liability section of the legal notice for details.
Rail, bus and map data
- Région Occitanie — liO network Stops and timetables of the liO intercity bus network — transport.data.gouv.fr · ODbL licence. Only stops that allow a day return at the weekend are kept.
- List of French stations SNCF Open Data — ressources.data.sncf.com · ODbL licence
- Walking isochrones IGN Géoplateforme — geoservices.ign.fr · Etalab 2.0 licence
- Forest cover BD Forêt® V2 (IGN), 2007-2018 editions — geoservices.ign.fr/bdforet · Etalab 2.0 licence
- Map tiles Plan IGN v2 (default) · OpenStreetMap (option) · Etalab and ODbL licences
Limitations
The times shown are estimates based on length and elevation gain, using Naismith's rule. The difficulty is the one declared by the source; it can vary from one body to another. GPX files are generated from the raw tracks and do not always include altitude.
Some départements are not yet covered by an official source, whether Geotrek or PDIPR open data: Ariège, Haute-Garonne, Lot, Hautes-Pyrénées, Tarn-et-Garonne and Lot-et-Garonne. For these départements, only OpenStreetMap coverage is available. If you know of an open Geotrek instance or a departmental PDIPR dataset not listed above, please report it.
Built with
No JavaScript dependency apart from Leaflet, no client-side framework. The site is a static file of a few hundred KB that can be hosted anywhere. The pipeline that generates the dataset is fully reproducible in Python; it can be run again to add new sources or refresh the existing data.
The interface and the data collection scripts were developed with the help of Claude (Anthropic).
Legal notice and licences
The data shown on this site is distributed under each source's own licence, which is strictly respected. The departmental PDIPR (Gers, Hérault) are under the Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0; the Parc national des Cévennes publishes its data as open data (data.gouv.fr); the data of the Conseil départemental de la Lozère is under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (non-commercial reuse, attribution on each hike page); the other Geotrek instances are reused under their producer's conditions. SNCF Open Data and OpenStreetMap data are under the ODbL. GR® routes, owned by the FFRandonnée, are excluded from the site. The data may be reused freely in accordance with the conditions of each licence (credit to the source, distribution under the same licence for works derived from OpenStreetMap).
The code of the platform and its pipeline remains the property of its author (© 2026 Paul Janisson) and is not published under an open licence. Only the data can be reused, under the licences of their respective sources listed above. The photos shown come from the bodies that manage the trails and are published on their public Geotrek portals; they remain the property of their authors (credited on each photo).
This site shows no advertising and sets no cookies. Visits are measured with Matomo, installed on our own server: no cookies, no collection of personal data or advertising profiles, no transfer to third parties, and configured to work without a consent banner. Apart from this measurement and the initial page load, your browser contacts, depending on what you do on the site: the IGN Géoplateforme (base map, each time you move the map); Open-Meteo (forecasts shown on hike pages); the Geotrek servers of the relevant managing body (points of interest of an official hike); the OpenStreetMap tile servers, if you choose that base map; Supabase, the account host, if you use the optional account; and, if you click the booking button, SNCF Connect, which the link opens directly. Train times, on the other hand, go through our own server: the SNCF API never sees your IP address. Outside the account, none of these requests carries any identifier relating to you.
How Caminada is funded
Caminada is free and will remain so. Keeping it up to date — station and trail data, hosting, new features — takes time and involves some recurring costs.
Where the money comes from, exactly. Caminada receives no commission: the "Book on SNCF Connect" links on hike pages and in the timetable calculation open the SNCF site directly, with no affiliate link. The site shows no advertising. Donations through Ko-fi, offered until then, have been suspended since 5 October 2026.
Stay informed
To follow how Caminada develops (new hikes added, new départements, new features), leave your email address. The newsletter is in French. No spam, no cookies, no resale. You can unsubscribe at any time.
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Contribute or report an issue
If you spot an error in the matching of stations and hikes, an inconsistent track or a missing description, or if you know of a public Geotrek instance not listed here that this project should include, your feedback is welcome. The same goes for suggesting features that could make the site more useful.
Contact: contact@caminada.fr.