France (local)

For our two-week tour we choose the little corner of France tucked in between the Pyrenées Orientales and the Mediterranean: wine growing country, rich in history, near the Spanish border. Having just recovered from a knee injury in early summer, I can now put my knee to the test with hills and a loaded bike.

Cycling along Canal du Midi and Canal de Garonne from Mediterranean sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Nice pics and travelogue.

For people living in the South of England this is an easy tour to get to and makes a perfect first cyclecamping tour. No days over 40 miles, easy terrain and lots of history and beautiful countryside. Though done in 1997 nothing has changed. Especially for those terrified by some of the tours posted here:-)

La Francia è un paese solcato da canali navigabili e ogni canale possiede almeno un'alzaia o un sentiero di alaggio. Da queste considerazioni è nato il progetto di un viaggio lungo un canale di navigazione.

Abbiamo scelto una via d'acqua breve e facilmente raggiungibile dall'Italia, il canale dal Rodano a Sète, prolungamento del più famoso e lungo Canal du Midi che da Toulouse conduce sino al Mediterraneo. L'alzaia del canale dal Rodano a Sète è completamente sterrata, con fondo a tratti mal tenuto. A volte corre su una sponda, a volte sull'altra della via d'acqua: occorrono un po' di esperienza, di intuito e di fortuna per non imboccare sentieri che si perdano nella campagna.

In cambio si ha il privilegio di vedere la Provenza e la Camargue da un punto di vista privilegiato e sconosciuto ai più.

journal + a lot pictures

Eine abwechslungsreiche Radtour durch das zentrale Südfrankreich über insgesamt 630 km, 7 Tagesetappen zwischen 64 und 120 Kilometer.

Eine reizvolle Radtour in 7 Etappen über insgesamt 829 km durch hügeliges Gelände, Tagesetappen zwischen 90 und 145 km. Die Etappenziele wurden nach Sehenswürdigkeiten und dem Angebot der örtlichen Gastronomie ausgewählt.

Eine Radtour durch die französischen Pyrenäen in 8 Tagesetappen über 760 km. Das Gebirge, wo Majestix der Himmel auf den Kopf gefallen wäre. Die Wolkendecke hängt vor allem im westlichen Teil der Pyrenäen so tief, daß man Mühe hat die Straße zu sehen. Obwohl nicht so hoch wie die bekannten Alpenpässe, haben es die hiesigen ``Giftzwerge'' in sich.

A bike circle within 8 stages over 760 km through the French Pyrenees. The mountain range where the sky would have been fallen on Majestix' head. Expecially in the western part of the Pyrenees, the cloud cover is so low that it is difficult to see the road. Although not as high as the well known passes in the Alpes, the local ``spiteful little devils'' are tough ones.

We had just finished cycling the South Island of New Zealand and instead of sitting back and relaxing on the flight home, we began planning our next trip, a month long self-supported cycling trip in France.

What better place to begin a trip to France then in Paris. From the 'City of Lights' we would dabble in a little art history by visiting Monet's gardens and then it would be off to the D-day beaches and a WWII history lesson. From 20th century history we would go back in time to the 11th century and visit Bayeaux and its famous tapestry. We would then check out life in a monastery, cycling across Normandy to Mt. St. Michel.

From Mt. St. Michel we would travel along the Brittany coast. At St. Malo we would leave the coast for the medieval city of Dinan and continue to the mouth of the Loire. We would then cycle through the land of chateaux and wineries ending our trip at Fontainebleau.

Our site includes lots of photos along with a daily log and an equipment list.

This is a description with lots of pictures of our August 2006 trip on tandem recumbent around Alsace with a few days in Bourgogne. We also did some traveling on the train, even with out very long bike. I also describe some of our planning work and how we built a box to take our 104-inch long bike on the airplanes from New York state to Mulhouse France. We camped part of the time and stayed in a great chambre d'hote (bed and breakfast) for several days.

Eine anspruchsvolle Radtour in 8 Tagesetappen über insgesamt 549 km durch das südliche Korsika, Tagesetappen zwischen 40 und 109 Kilometern.

A demanding bicycle tour over 8 days and 450 kilometers through southern Corsica. The daily stages were between 40 and 109 kilometers.

Photos and video of the more scenic and quiet backside ride up to Alpe d'Huez, Col de Sarenne, in the French Alps.

The canyon of the Tarn is one of the obvious highlights of the Cévennes National Park. Another landmark landscape phenomenon are the so called 'Causses'. Causses are the bleak and barren high limestone plateaus of the Cévennes National Park.

This site deals about a short but fascinating cycle trip that Willem Hoffmans and I undertook through the gorges, plateaus and volcano landscapes of the Massif Central. Cycling in the autumn means there are gew facilities but also few tourists, which gave us a whole new perspective of life in the French countryside.

A historical look at Alpe d'Huez plus written and photo reports from the Marmotte and Etape du Tour events. Both events finished at the top of Alpe d'Huez this past July.

This bike trip in France, from Metz to Nice in July 2006, was our annual club event.

The Lafayette Riders (Cavaliers) started in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, where a cardiologist noted the poor condition of the miners and determined to do something about it. Bicycles seemed the answer. Eventually, the mining group encountered American riders and it was decided to form a group with the Marquis de Lafayette being the symbol of enduring Franco-American friendship.

The Lafayette Riders alternate between France and the United States each year, and next year (2007) the club will get together in northern California.

Un tour par les petites routes et par des cols ni très hauts ni très connus pour arriver sur une montagne vraiment unique.

Taking small roads and riding over passes neither very high nor well known to climb to a really unique mountain.

Kleine Strassen und wenig bekannte, nicht so hohe Pässe, die zum einem einzigartigen Berg führen.

Freda White in her classic travel book on this region said that a visitor to this region of South West France would cry 'Now I know why they say ``la belle France''!. It is truly one of the best parts of France with beautiful rivers, rugged cliffs and gorges, spectacular cliff top castles and more than its fair share of the ``plus beaux villages'' (prettiest villages). It is a region that has been popular with tourists for years and during the peak holiday season from mid July to mid August, the roads, hotels and campgrounds are packed with holiday makers. Avoid this time of the year and you will have quiet roads to pedal along and a wide choice of accommodation.

This is truly one of Europe's best cycling regions.

We had eaten breakfast on board the ferry from Portsmouth, but shortly after setting up our tents in the campground in the old citadel at St. Malo, Alan and David walked down to the town to look for a boulangerie to buy bread for another breakfast. They had seen people walking about with fresh baguettes, but after wandering around for some time, they hadn't found the boulangerie. They stopped on a street corner thinking that there had to be one somewhere. They turned around and found that they were actually standing in the doorway of the boulangerie blocking the entrance. Armed with several baguettes, croissants and confiture, they started on their way back to the campground, only to be waylaid by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee from a waterfront café. Eventually they returned to the other members of the group who quickly devoured everything. This pre-occupation with food was to set the tone for this tour through Brittany and Normandy.

We caught the ferry from Newhaven in southern England to the French port of Dieppe from where we planned on cycling through Normandy. Because of bad weather, the ferry was diverted to Boulogne, 120 kilometres further north. Well that was the official reason given by the captain after we had left Newhaven. One of the crew told us that the real reason was that work on the ferry terminal in Dieppe hadn't been completed so the large hydrofoil ferries which had only started operating the route couldn't berth properly. Most of the people on board were taking advantage of the cheap fares to have a day shopping in France and provided there was a hypermarché nearby, they weren't worried where they ended up. For us on our bicycles, it meant a rethink of our plans.

Zwei Wochen gemütlichen Entlang der Loire radeln. Kleine Hotels, gutes Essen, nette Dörfer und natürlich viele Schlösser. Dazu ein wildes Fluß wie ich ihn in Europa nicht erwartet hatte.

Unterwegs waren wir meist auf ruhigen Strassen - der Radweg befindet sich noch im Aufbau. Nur bei Tours war der Autoverkehr unangenehm.

``For prehistoric man who sheltered in the many caves, for the catholic heretics who defied the Church, and for resistance fighters, war-time refugees and downed WWII pilots who eluded the Nazis to escape over the mountains into Spain,'' the Ariège Pyrénées have a long history of serving as a refuge. Today, this unspoiled region attracts those eager to escape from the stresses of modern life, and cyclists wearied of persecution by vehicular traffic.

Although we found the High Pyrenees a spectacular and historic place to cycle, we enjoyed the Ariege Pyrenees as much or even more. We never thought, in advance, that the two areas would compare, but after tallying all the check marks from our exhaustive field testing and crunching the numbers through our proprietary, mathematical bike tour formulas... we can declare a virtual dead heat. Now I'm left with the difficult task of explaining to the humble reader (that's you) how such a conclusion can be drawn. If you sat in for the two-part High Pyrenees show aired earlier this month, then you'll note immediately that the Ariege isn't quite as spectacular, and perhaps doesn't rank as high in the “friggin', jaw-dropping, gorgeous” category. But here's where it does top the charts: The region has countless, quiet, picturesque, one-lane, rolling and often challenging country roads extending in all directions, and sprinkled with charming villages. The main roads follow the valleys and are sometimes almost flat, but it's easy to find routes that branch off and over steep cols. The roads are in terrific shape; I don't recall a single pothole.

In September 2003 a group of 14 cyclists rode over most of the major cols of the Pyrenees including of course the mighty Tourmalet. The majority of the group had never cycled in mountains, were not 'sporty' cyclists and with an age range of 32 to 65 were a pretty mixed bunch. To make things interesting the group cyclecamped without any motorised back-up at all, everything was carried on the bikes.

The trip was an adventure that in the end raised over £12,000 for the Charity ITDG. In the fortnight it took there was triumph and tragedy; laughter and tears. What follows is the account of that ride

Wir wissen von vorigen Reisen, dass Frankreichs dichtes Netz an Campingplätzen sich für Sternfahrten vom Zeltplatz optimal anbietet. Dazu kommt die einmalige Infrastruktur an kleinen, wenig befahrenen Landstraßen in Frankreich, die Fahrradwege überflüssig macht. Unsere Tour ist kürzer ausgefallen als geplant, aber sie bietet doch einen kleinen Einblick in die Möglichkeiten des Radreisens in Frankreich.

Découvrir la Bretagne, ses paysages, ses traditions, ses légendes, sa culture en vélo avec une cycliste bretonne.

Landschaften, Traditionen und Legenden, Kultur: Die Bretagne mit einer Bretonin auf dem Fahrrad entdecken!

Unrelenting switchbacks, beautiful rugged peaks and the history of the Tour de France. 27 photos and movies (movie) by Steven Hill and Rebecca Heald.

The formidable reputation of the French Pyr´n´es is what intrigued me most. That the best cyclists appear to suffer like mere-mortals each year during the most crucial stages of the Tour de France is a sadistic lure of this great mountain range. Of course, I also wanted to check out, first hand, the beautiful, rugged scenery. My quiver of cycling climbs would be incomplete without the legendary Tourmalet, Ausbisque and so many others.

A self-contained cyclecamping tour of Brittany in September 1999, lasting eleven days and 600 kilometres, with photos.

``The payback for the long uphill stretches came later on, when the last ten kilometres of the day's run to Carhaix was very fast indeed, down superbly smooth highway. Thus it was that I made good time in getting to Carhaix-Plouguer, stopping at the Intermarch´ supermarket to stock up on foodstuffs, toilet rolls and wine. I had been forewarned that the supermarket stood at the top of a very long hill which led down to the Les Hyères campsite, where we would be setting up camp that night, and so it would be wise to stock up there before heading down to the campsite. The bike made a comical sight when I had managed to stow the toilet paper (see picture).''

In 2003 I attempted Paris-Brest-Paris. I didn't finish due to knee troubles, but had a wonderful time nonetheless.

This report covers my first tour of the Alps with three other people, starting in Grenoble and ending in Nice- including my first-ever mountain: l'Alpe-d'Huez. A beautiful 10 days' ride in beautiful weather, over a beautiful landscape.

In September 2003 I organised and led a charity ride in the Pyrenees. A group of 14 braved the elements, and gravity, to raise £12,000 for Intermediate Technology Development Group. The two-week trip involved tears and blood, food and wine, 2000m cols and 50 mph descents. What follows is the record of that trip.

A self supported relaxed bike tour along the beautiful Loire valley. Pretty villages, nature, castles, delicious food, nice hotels - a report of a nearly perfect tour.

Additional infos about travel by train in France.

In September 2005 my wife Carol and I returned to France with our bikes for our 17th cycling trip in that wonderful country where the food is great, the wine is great, the cycling is varied and interesting, the roads are good and the weather is warm and sunny ..... normalement! Because we have criss-crossed the southern half of the country so often it had become difficult to find a route that we had not traveled before. But the Auvergne was an area as yet undiscovered by us so I planned a route that would take us through this lightly populated rugged region that makes up a large part of the Massif Central. Although we had done little training for this trip I was not concerned because I assumed, from the map at left, here, that we were essentially starting at the top and going to the bottom so it should be basically downhill all the way. It turns out that there is absolutely no correlation between north/south and up/down. As usual this trip report is far too wordy, dull, uninteresting. I need to develop a more concise, readable, enjoyable writing style. And you will find interspersed in the travelogue asides in which I attempt to educate the reader, my career in the classroom forcing me to seize every ``teachable moment''. Finally, I wrote much of this as we were experiencing it. I have tried to make the verb tenses coherent but there will be times, I'm sure, when ``rode'' slips into ``ride''. Please accept my apologies for all the above.

>Viewing the Pyrénées stages of the 2003 Tour de France inspired me to choose this itinerary. I knew that replicating the actual TDF stages would be much too long (as the stages are not interconnected) but at the end of the day, I rode 2,488 km which is more than 2/3 of the actual length of the Tour: 3427 km! Having said this, my general average was 82.7 km/cycling day, a very small number by TDF standards.

The general game plan for the demi tour was sketched on a map of France (1/2,000,000). The trajectory chosen as I rode was varied, never dull, grandiose in the Pyrenean cols and valleys, and sprinkled with a number of spectacular towns and cities (Bourges, Toulouse, Poitiers, Chinon, Blois, Chartres, Versailles to name only a few).

Stayed in hotels (generally 2* which is admittedly pricy!), B&B’s and in a Youth hostel (10 Euros/night). Travel can be cheap in France, even without camping. I carried 17 kg of gear.

This trip, our 16th in France en vélo, was quite different from our usual. My wife Carol and I shared a gîte (a fully equipped lodging that can be rented by the week) with three other couples for the first week in l'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue near Avignon. After our stay at the gîte we all headed by train to Italy. We left our bikes in Nice where we picked them up after our Italian experience to finish the trip with 9 days of cycling in the Alpes-Maritimes and the Lubéron. The others, who had not brought their bikes to Europe, did not come back to France with us. We had some glitches getting to the gîte due to incompatible flight schedules. I won't bore you with the details. Typically, as in all my other cycle trip reports, there'll be plenty in this report to bore you without adding travel difficulties.

That being said, I must report an end of trip occurrence that had, in retrospect, a significant bearing on this report. As we were leaving Aix-en-Provence for the Marseille-Provence airport on the last day of the trip I got a puncture in my rear tire just outside the city. We stopped at a bus stop where I could lean my bike and I set about removing the rear wheel and the delinquent inner tube, replacing the latter with a new tube. I pumped it full of air and then prepared to re-install the wheel. Carol held the bike frame while I negotiated the chain, the derailleur and the rear cassette. Surprisingly, it went in easily, but then Carol let go of the bike. I reacted, of course, but she was yelling ``MY BIKE IS GONE!!'' Sure enough, in the 60 seconds we were focused on the installation of the wheel, some jackal had seized the opportunity to make off with her bike, including her purse which was in the handlebar bag. Within the purse were her credit cards, some cash, her driver's license, her birth certificate, some other identification papers and a vehicle registration - AND HER PASSPORT!!

After missing a year [...], my wife Carol and I were back in France in 2003 - the 15th cycle trip there. Inspired by the ageless Norman Ford, the 80+ year old Welsh born Texan who does annual strenuous solo European tours, we decided to try the mountainous Mediterranean island of Corsica. Norm, 20 years my senior, had done it 3 years before so we thought if he could, we could. We decided to go in June, before the really hot weather arrived. That strategy didn't work - we spent 2 weeks in 35°C/95°F temperatures. [...] having now experienced the patchy uneven pavement in some regions of Corsica, I'm tempted to recommend a mountain bike (with road tires) instead of a road bike. As usual, we travelled unsupported, staying in hotels and eating our evening meals in restaurants. On the days we cycled we averaged just over 60 km of cycling and we did just over 1100 km for the trip. If you've ever seen Corsica, you'll find that impressive. As always, I am not very good about reining myself in when I'm writing this stuff. Bear with me. There's good stuff included. You just have to be patient and look carefully.

Qu'est-ce que le cyclotourisme? C'est de l'amour ambulant dont la nature est l'objet. Nous devons cette définition à Henri de la Tombelle , dans son manuel du cyclotourisme édité en 1943, et je n'en connais pas de plus satisfaisante.

Pour ma part, même si le cyclotourisme demeure une activité ayant ses exigences d'effort et d'endurance, il n'est pas question de devenir esclave de la moyenne kilométrique. Dans la pratique du vélo, je vois essentiellement une façon agréable de se déplacer dans la nature, de découvrir des paysages, des régions, de réviser sa géographie en allant sur place ressentir la profondeur d'une belle vallée ou l'altitude d'une montagne.

Le Pyrénées, lorsqu'on habite Toulouse, sont l'objet de nombreuses conversations entre amoureux de la nature. Très nombreux sont les adeptes des randonnées durant l'été, et du ski durant l'hiver. Pour notre part, peu attirés par le ski et occupés à bien d'autres activités en été (du vélo par exemple), ces montagnes, pourtant si proches, demeuraient étrangères à nos pérégrinations et du coup globalement méconnues.

We encountered not one hint of anti-American feeling or negativity. Just as last year, the French people were wonderful. People repeatedly went out of their way to help us. One small example: Early in the trip, we were passing through a very small town with almost no signposting on the various intersections. On our third pass through the downtown trying to find the right road, we stopped to ask directions of two ladies talking in to main square. After some discussion, one of them went and got her car and drove to the edge of town just to show us the right way.

Summing up the trip, we had a wonderful time, ate lots of really great food and rode enogh miles not to gain weight in the process. What more can one ask from a vacation?

We are David and Suzette Welch, a nurse and librarian living in Chico California. Even though we are longtime cyclists and tandemists, and took a two week tour for our honeymoon thirty years ago, neither of us had been to Europe before and our total touring experience over the years has been pretty modest. But with age advancing upon us (total team age at the time of this trip was 111 years) we decided it was time to start doing some of those trips we had dreamed of for years.

With an eye to this trip, we had acquired a coupled tandem, which makes the non-cycling parts of the travel ever so much easier. Determined not to be more gauche than necessary, we put a certain amount of time into the study of French. Suzette, with more background and more free time did rather better at that than David. We did lots of pre-trip research online. Particularly helpful were the trip reports posted on the Trento Bike Pages and the generous and expert advice of many of the folks on the Tandem@Hobbes listserve. We dedicate this journal to all those people whose advice helped us, in the hope that this information may help someone else and encourage others to make similar trips.