Newbie: Cycling north-south France, route ideas & Qs?

[Simon_m]

This is my French route, we are going van supported in July. Cheating I know, but much more enjoyable for us

 

[itchybeard]

You will be fine cycling across France.
If you only done around 30 miles max then that's it, momentum will keep you going.
Camping is fine, plenty of campsites, even better municipal campsites.
a mobile phone is enough to do google maps, contact your mobile provider to ensure free to roam abroad.
Share the load with your with wife, take a stove and pan. Sleeping bags, water etc. Don't over do with food, just enough to keep going during the day, plenty of Lidle, aldi around.
Keep to west France if flat, it relaxing being by the coast.

 

[jay clock]

You will be fine cycling across France.
If you only done around 30 miles max then that's it, momentum will keep you going.
Camping is fine, plenty of campsites, even better municipal campsites.
a mobile phone is enough to do google maps, contact your mobile provider to ensure free to roam abroad.
Share the load with your with wife, take a stove and pan. Sleeping bags, water etc. Don't over do with food, just enough to keep going during the day, plenty of Lidle, aldi around.
Keep to west France if flat, it relaxing being by the coast.

he did it last year! It was my fault for resurrecting it!

 

[itchybeard]

fair enough

 

[StuartG]

a mobile phone is enough to do google maps, contact your mobile provider to ensure free to roam abroad.

Three do 'at home' on PAYG for France. Get a free sim. Putting £10 on it will give you 150Mb data. Activating as add-on will give you 100 minutes to phone home, more texts than you can ever use, and another 500Mb data. All last for 30 days. The 650Mb data should be sufficient for GoogleMaps but you can also download and store the maps before you go on wifi and it works fine with your GPS so you can always find out where you are even if you have no coverage or in danger of running out of allowance.

But ... but IMHO real folding maps cannot be beaten for route planning. The 1:100000 and above don't show contours but if you follow roads alongside rivers or train tracks then you will avoid most nasty climbs. Important when you are packing panniers.

 

[ActiveCampers]

Ha! This thread still going?! We did complete it and really enjoyed it, full details http://www.doyourdream.co.uk/cycle-tour-north-to-south-france/

Funny that I was just searching again as we plan to do similar next year but a different route (more quiet roads than canal/river paths). Just got new bikes ready for it - so looking for new routes.

Ironic I found this thread!