Paint marks on hiking trails
If you walk out in the woods or in the mountains your trail is often blazed with paint marks on trees and rocks. Most of the time you can see two bands of white and red paint. That means you are walking on a hiking trail.
The most reknown hiking trail in France is the GR5 that goes from the belgium border down to Nice.
Sometimes these trails split in two parts and if you go in the wrong direction you will see a red cross painted on a mark. It has the same meaning as a cross for trail signs : you’re going in the wrong direction
Kilometer markers, an old story
On the road, kilometer markers can show you the way : they are often on the side, they are square-like and white, covered with a red or yellow "hat"
- la-borne-romaine
The red hat means you are on the national road network. The yellow hat means you are on the regional road network.
You can also read some information on these markers : on the colored hat there’s the number of the road , below you can read the number of kilometers left to reach the next town.
However you should know that a long time ago, well before those kilometer markers, when France was called Gaul there was another type of markers. These roman markers were set every 1000 steps on roman ways. They were called military markers. You can still see a few on antique roman ways.
To go further:
If you want to go further you can read this article that’s more specific Trail blazing
