When is the best time of year to ride across France?

[vernon]

I would be careful recommending 'every single village' it can be quite difficult nowadays to find an open restaurant in small towns and villages. In the last ten years a huge number of small village restuarants have closed down , if you cycle into a village at 11.30am to find one open I'd choose to eat there and not expect there to be something in the next village or the one after that. But you are right that when found they are generally good and cheap.

I cycled from the Channel to the Med in August starting at Calais and finishing up at Monpellier.

The route was largely one from the CTC:

CALAIS
Wissant
Marquise
Desyres
Beussent
Montreuil
Abbeville
Yzeux
Amiens
Roye
Noyon
Blerancourt
Soissons
Chateau-Thierry

Montmirail
Sezanne
Mesgrigny
Troyes
Verrieres
Ville Noyenne
Merry-s-Arce
Chatillon-s-Saône
Dijon
Beaune
Chaion-s-saône
Cuisery
Pont-de-Vaux
Pont-de-Veyle
Trevoux
Lyon
Pierre Benite
Grigny
Givors
Vienne (West Bank)
Tournon
Valence
Le Teil
Viviers
Pierrelatte
Orange

Then onto Avignon, Arles south to the med and turn right to ride through a chunk of the Carmargue.

The first bit of the ride was boring through a monocultural agriculturla lanscape with nothing to distract the rider from the emptiness of the lanscape. Rode along the Somme battle front and visited a few war cemetaries.

Campsites especially municipal camp sites were cheap and normally plentiful. I did a bit of stealth camping. Caped in vineyard. Smapled the grapes.

Things pick up around Chateau Thierry as far as visual appea. There's plenty of patisseries to tempt you to spend more than intended. SUpermarkets have cheap table wine which is quaffable at €1.5 per litre fruit and veg much better quality and more flavoursome than here. Plenty of cheap restaurants/cafes.

Riding through the Rhone Saonne gap toward Orange is very pleasant. Provence is very heady with the smells of resins and herbs when the sun is out. Orange, Avignon and Arles are very interesting places. The Roman amphitheatre at Orange is breathtaking. The pont at Avignon is a tad disappointing as a large bit of it is missing :-)

As for the weather - totally unpredictable. The week before my ride I was baking in Rhodes in 44C. There were severall nights in France including Provence where I had to wear a cap, cycle shirt and gloves to stay warm at night and the day temperature didn't exceed 32 C. Some of the locals were moaning about the rotten summer that they'd had. I found the weather perfect for cycling...

I used the Eauropean Bike Express to get to Calais and back from Montpellier. A painless solution to geting to the start and back from the finish.

 

[vernon]

Like all things it depends where you are going.

If looking for the classic Alps climbs, remember they are often/usually closed until MID JUNE.

On the other hand Provence can be a furnace (and full of tourists) in the summer - I avoid in July/August.

I was lucky - Provence wasn't on form temperatures never got above low 30s. Didn't find the roads too busy though some of the honeypots were such as Orange, Avignon and Arles.

I had palnned on doing Ventoux until it hove into view as I approached Orange. Put it off for later when i'm considerably lighter....

 

[gwhite]

thanks...so if I were to aim for the last week in June and the first two weeks of July say? ish...

Good luck as that's what I did this year. Dressed in my summer Lycra I was met by torrential rain and sleet showers for the whole of the way from Belgium to the Ardeche.

 

[vernon]

Good luck as that's what I did this year. Dressed in my summer Lycra I was met by torrential rain and sleet showers for the whole of the way from Belgium to the Ardeche.

The hapless riders on this year's Paris-Brest-Paris ride in mid-August nearly drowned during their endeavours.

When one picks a slot based on liklihoods of good weather one has to remember that weather can be unpredictable.

Last year during my JOGLE I found Somerset, Devon and Cornwall unseasonably cold mid-late August.

This year during the same time slot I would have drowned and the previous year going in the opposite direction I got a great tan...

 

[gwhite]

It didn't used to be like this. When I started touring in France thirty-five years ago the weather was pretty predictable and certainly south of the Loire, you could be confident of good weather.

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

..well after my baptism of fire in East anglia this summer (and the miles of subsequent wet and windy weather) I have promised myself never to ride on a tour without taking full waterproof winter gear in my panniers, even if I never use it, I'll take it.

 

[Henry Quick]

Wow..what a question and almost impossible to answer..!! It has become a bit of a tradition with me to spend a week cycling across and around Normandy every September, usually with different mates, depending on who fancies it that year/ or who can get the time off work.( I am retired now,...YES!!!!)( Now know Normandy and the WW2 sites like the back of me 'and) The weather there can be as different as chalk and cheese( (or cheddar and camembert, if you prefer).I always go the 2nd week of the month...this year was fantastic..sun all the way..but last time the rain just pelted down. Also three of us drove down to Bordeaux in the middle of May 2007 to leave the car, due a 450 mile loop and end up back at the car ( south along the coast, east thru' Gascony, north and then west back to Bordeaux) I expected to melt...after all we were 1000 miles south of Stockport..but the weather was cold, gloomy and wet for the whole time except for two days..try doing the Channel to the Med..like I did in May 2006...you are bound to get SOME good days...!!! Henry Q

 

[vernon]

Wow..what a question and almost impossible to answer..!! It has become a bit of a tradition with me to spend a week cycling across and around Normandy every September, usually with different mates, depending on who fancies it that year/ or who can get the time off work.( I am retired now,...YES!!!!)( Now know Normandy and the WW2 sites like the back of me 'and) The weather there can be as different as chalk and cheese( (or cheddar and camembert, if you prefer).I always go the 2nd week of the month...this year was fantastic..sun all the way..but last time the rain just pelted down. Also three of us drove down to Bordeaux in the middle of May 2007 to leave the car, due a 450 mile loop and end up back at the car ( south along the coast, east thru' Gascony, north and then west back to Bordeaux) I expected to melt...after all we were 1000 miles south of Stockport..but the weather was cold, gloomy and wet for the whole time except for two days..try doing the Channel to the Med..like I did in May 2006...you are bound to get SOME good days...!!! Henry Q

Another indicator of the variability of French weather is the Le Mans 24hr motor cycle race weekend - usually around Easter. I've been to three events and have suffered from exposure, trench foot and sun burn though not all on the same weekend.

That reminds me, it's about time I paid another visit to Le Mans...

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

...does anybody have a good source of French campsites and hostels contact details/maps etc?....also it's looking like I'll need to go in the last two weeks of July...after bastille day...is it really thatt crowded on the camp sites then??

 

[domtyler]

BTFB, if you want to take in a bit of the countryside around Limoges my parents own a small holiday property near here that you would be most welcome to stay in for a night or two (or three or four or etc....) FOC. The roads around there are magnificent, not a pothole in site and no other traffic apart from the odd pootling old Renault.

Also, I believe Asterix from off here has a place near there, so maybe you could hook up with him for dinner too?

 

[Brock]

Why don't you leave in April BTFB? We might cross paths then, we could cook each other our Trangia specialities and meander down together
Do you have a route in mind?

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

BTFB, if you want to take in a bit of the countryside around Limoges my parents own a small holiday property near here that you would be most welcome to stay in for a night or two (or three or four or etc....) FOC. The roads around there are magnificent, not a pothole in site and no other traffic apart from the odd pootling old Renault.

Also, I believe Asterix from off here has a place near there, so maybe you could hook up with him for dinner too?

That is a very kind offer and i thank you very much. I dont know exactly where I'm going yet though.

Why don't you leave in April BTFB? We might cross paths then, we could cook each other our Trangia specialities and meander down together
Do you have a route in mind?

.... restricted by Holiday dates to after july10th

..otherwise we could have ridden down together inApril!

When are you going? Which way?

..... still planning the route at the moment ...I want to cross France avoiding as many hills and towns as possible in two to three weeks. I had intended to follow the CTC route suggested earlier in this thread...but I can vary that .

I need to get down to some nitty gritty route planning soon though.

...what i need now is a GPS system to arrive free of charge in the post!

 

[Brock]

When are you going? Which way?

Looks like we'll probably leave mid April, no idea which way, but most likely Southish from Calais.

...what i need now is a GPS system to arrive free of charge in the post!

Yeah I'm certainly in the market for one of those now too


The CTC route Vernon posted looks interesting, I'll feed that into autoroute later and see what it looks like.

 

[vernon]

...does anybody have a good source of French campsites and hostels contact details/maps etc?....also it's looking like I'll need to go in the last two weeks of July...after bastille day...is it really thatt crowded on the camp sites then??

There's lots of campsites, Chanbre d'Hotes and Gites that you'll come across on your ride. I had no lists or guides but relied upon my recollection of just about every town having a municipal camp site or privately owned campsire nearby. I only had to resort to camping sauvage on two occasions and the two campsites that were full that I turned up at found a spot for me.

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

...Thankyou.

Has anybody ridden a route this way around?

Calais,normandy, bretagne, les landes, down to bordeaux going east from there, north of the pyrenees to montpelier/nice etc

I'm thinking it may be a bit more scenic ...

...any good routes for these areas?