A great thing about staying in the greater Pezenas area, north of Beziers and southwest of Montpellier … are the walks from one little town to another.

The town we are in (year-round population of less than 600), is about 45 minutes from another little town in a variety of directions.

I have done two of the walks, with the help of Google Maps for the latter — which showed how a dirt path behind the home where we are staying led almost directly to a town north of us. Thanks, GM!

The same website seems to suggest I could walk over a ridge and to the town to the west of us, but I am beginning to think the Google Maps people are promulgating a fictional path.

So far?

I tried the path Google Maps outlined, to the western town. But after 290 minutes I ran into a “entree interdit” sign while approaching a really un-pathy path and gave that up. Saw some interesting stuff, including new (to me) bits of the town we are in, but that was that.

Then I blew up the Google Maps area north of the house and studied the pathways … and lo and behold I could depart in a different direction and hook back up with the path Google Maps had told me about earlier.

First attempt: Reached the point where the path I found on Google Maps intersected with the route GM had proffered originally. Great. However, I was doing this from memory (no map on a phone kinda stuff), and by the time I got past a water station up on the plateau, I was no longer sure of the next connection, and also it was a weekend, and we could hear hunters blasting away … and turned back. Still an interesting walk (including a creepy woman wearing florescent green walking, slowly, through the bushes of the plateau), of about 80 minutes.

Second attempt, I focused on the spot where the path (and nearly all of these, from semi-road-like to rocky-and-dirt-pathy are for vintners to get at their fields) did not appear, on the previous attempt. Past the water facility on the plateau, a slight turn left and then a quick right and an immediate left. Got it.

So, we got to the same spot, and nothing resembling a path doing what Google Maps said I ought to do, could be found.

Followed the same road south, but it was not going where we needed to go.

Tried to cut across country on something that had could have been a path, at one point in time, but that ended in a “propriete privee” sign behind what might have been a barn, not to mention a tumble into brambles.

Went back to where the map wanted us to do a left-right-left … and there was nothing there.

A rough dirt road, clearly rarely used and little maintained, took us a bit nearer the goal, but it eventually turned into a northern path — when we needed to get east. Saw someone’s abandoned red coat hanging on a bush (“Where is the body?”), but no path to where we wanted to be.

Thus, having had eyes on the ground twice in three days, I am prepared to say Google Maps is Just Plain Wrong about this one.

The cross-country, no-motor-vehicles path they have laid out … is notional. It requires a leap-of-faith connection of perhaps half a mile — through underbrush, towards a site not visible — to get to something that looks like a real vineyard road and, thus, back on an observable grid.

I do not use GPS often, but have on this trip, looking for distances and best routes on walks … and I was beginning to think Google Maps was infallible, even when it came to low-grade paths not near any inhabited place.

Nope. Google Maps is just spit-balling when it comes to some of their stuff … more of “we hope maybe you can find something there” or “this is the way you would go, if you can find your way” — than actually knowing. Which is kind of fun, given that the machine is reduced to hope, same as I am.