Five Things You Should Know Before You Take Your Bike Tour Through France

Have you ever imagined doing a bicycle tour through France? Or are maybe planning one, either for next Spring or sometime in the future? Whenever we dream of travel, and especially a cycling adventure, we always have questions. How to choose a route? What’s the food like? What are the people like? When we posted our series France by Bicycle, we received a lot of comments and a lot of questions. In this video, we’ve tried to answer those questions from our viewers, to help you get a sense of what to expect from YOUR next bike tour of France. Enjoy!

[Laughter] Hello everybody now that our most recent video series France by bicycle have all been loaded onto YouTube ready for you to binge watch if you haven’t already we thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go ahead and do one last video dealing with some of the questions that have

Come up people have asked how do we pick our route or you know how expensive was it or how hard was it getting hotels what were the people like and I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and just do a video that would kind of cover

Off on some of those questions so here goes here’s just kind of a bunch of random facts about cycling through France and what we found in our trip last fall I mean let’s start with the whole route the route was really conceived by looking for the flattest

Easiest writing we could find we figure you know we don’t really we’re not really trying to kill it trying to do a lot of Hills we did avoid the Alps we did avoid the Pyrenees we avoided the massive Central but we found a really great route all

The way through France kind of a really nice little curl that goes from Nevada at the top of the Loire all the way and around to near Lyon and you could kind of think of it as being broken into five chunks we started doing the Loire Valley

A small section of the Velocity which follows the Atlantic coast the canal de dumer or the canal dugaron and the canal do midi which connects the Atlantic to the Mediterranean then along the Mediterranean and then finally afternoon Valley along the V Aroma overall I think we did about 1300 miles and probably

Something on the order of twenty one thousand twenty two thousand feet of gain which is not a lot but again we really designed it to be along rivers and and along canals it was actually a comparatively leisurely ride we were there for two months I think in that two

Months we spent about a little more than seven weeks actually writing and how we did it we flew into Zurich Juliana has a cousin there if you’ve been watching the videos you know Nadia and Nadia’s husband Victor they live in Zurich so we flew into Zurich at the end of August

And we had maybe five days to put our bikes together and then we took a train to Nevada at the beginning of the luar and Nadia and Victor joined us and then we began the section of the Loire and that probably took us I would say two

Weeks to follow the war all the way down to the Atlantic going slow taking our time but I recommend you guys do the same this is such a beautiful country to savor so much good culture so many beautiful towns and so many great cities along the way to just bang it out well

That would be something too I mean you know you could get on a road bike and just cruise and have a beautiful time of it but there is so much to see so two weeks is what we took for that section then Victor and Nadia left to go back to

Work in Zurich Juliana and I continued on we followed the velocity along the Atlantic coast then for maybe another week uh and then until we got to about Royale until we got the to the garan Estuary and then we went Inland from there following the canal to dumer and

That was probably a good couple of weeks as well I would guess and that took us to set on the Mediterranean we took maybe three days following the Mediterranean coast and then we got to aural and then up the road we went uh following the Via Rona to Leon and a

Little bit beyond before we caught a train back to Zurich the trains can sometimes be a bit more of a hassle than people sometimes suggest I hear people say oh yeah you know when you’re riding in Europe you can just roll your bike onto a train and

Away you go and you can skip that 100 miles where you really don’t want to uh Moon ah there’s Mooney how you doing Moon there’s your cameo there you go okay um it is a little bit harder than that I mean these French trains typically the

The train pulls in you’ve got to find the bicycle car has a little bicycle logo on it and then you roll your bike over there and you see that all the bike racks are taken so you got to find another bicycle car and then you finally

Find a place where you can get your bikes onto the train and you got steep little stairs that climb up and you got to get your panniers often when there’s four of you and trying to find a place where you can get four bikes onto racks

And then all of our luggage while the train is sitting there waiting for you to load it can be a little bit stressful so count on about three to five minutes of stress but you’ll figure it out even sometimes where we couldn’t find anywhere to put the bikes we made it

Work but it is it is a little tricky and it’s a little hard and you have to be kind of prepared for that you know people actually ask about the food and wine and that kind of thing and I mean I’ve never been a big fan of

French cuisine I guess but this trip completely opened my eyes to what an incredible experience eating in France can be we can start with the cheese I mean the cheeses every morning and sometimes actually for dessert you get cheese and and they have like a thousand to sixteen

Hundred different varieties in France uh it’s an amazing art form there in France the bread I mean the French bread that you get every morning for breakfast you know warm crunchy fresh oh it’s just Exquisite better than any french bread definitely I’ve ever had here in the states and then the croissants the

Croissants are flaky and buttery and exactly the way you want them and and you get them every morning and you get as many as you want and of course you’re riding so you can make it happen you can you can work off those calories and just

Really enjoy it I I really like the chocolate croissants myself that was kind of my favorite you know they have dishes like escargot I’ve always thought escargot like who would want to eat snails I mean the escargot we tried it when we first got there and ordered it

Practically every dinner after that you know where it was available the duck they have duck a lot more than they have chicken so you know where you might order chicken here you would typically order duck and it was incredible every time just as good as it gets you know of

Course the coffee is just amazing I can’t go wrong with French coffee always always really good and then the desserts are ridiculous I mean you just get these incredible it is an art form I mean food is just in our form in France and as you

Go from Village to Village and town to town and you sample the different regions and the different ways that people prepare these Foods I mean you’re just going on a culinary tour I don’t know if you could find it anywhere else maybe in Italy you could get that kind

Of thing now the food wasn’t always great in the interior the food was amazing when you got to places like along the coast in in resort areas and touristed areas then the the quality of the food went way down and you know typically the prices kind of went up

It’s kind of what you expect I guess um so where you’re in a little bit more of the countryside and a little bit more in the remote areas that’s where you get the really really good stuff and we’re so glad that we spent so much of our

Time on routes that weren’t really you know the highly touristed areas but I just remember you’re looking for a quick place to grab a lunch you find some little nondescript Place some small little hole in the wall and have one of the best meals of your entire life along those lines

When you’re traveling through France you get to drink the wine if that’s your thing I’m not a big Wine Drinker at home here in Colorado here in the United States I don’t really tend to drink a lot of wine but there we had a bottle every night it

Was always a bottle of the local we are riding through the countryside and you’re seeing all these Vineyards and then at night you order dinner and you get a bottle of wine and it’s the local Cuisine and it’s really just this kind of wonderful way to really taste the the

Culture and get a get a different sense literally of the culture that you’re riding through if you were looking at a map of our route it would look pretty similar to the map of the wine growing regions in France we didn’t hit burgundy but we did hit you know the Loire Valley

And Bordeaux and especially along their own we loved all these wines the the sansaire and the pulido from May from the Loire these white wines that so good and the Bordeaux or a red blend and the kotaroans were just absolutely insane so good and so full-bodied and just complex and amazing and not

Expensive could not recommend it more it was just a huge part of the experience but what are the French like you know what are the what are the French people like because you hear stories and their stereotypes uh about the French being kind of rude and aloof we we didn’t find

That to be true at all wherever we went people welcomed us with open arms they were extremely kind very nice very interesting very willing to work hard at trying to speak a language that we could both understand as we did you know we would use the French as much

As we could they would use the English as much as they could and you know somehow we made it work and and it was an incredible experience we met some really really excellent people along the way and it was definitely one of the highlights of the whole trip is meeting

Some of these some of the locals and uh hearing their stories and One of the questions we almost always get on these kinds of trips is how much did it cost you and we don’t really do a very good job of going back over all the bills and the credit cards and all that kind of stuff to see how much we spent I

Mean it’s you know it tends to be a lot you’re gone for two months and you’re paying for every night so we don’t know how much it cost but we can give you a bit of a guide for the kinds of places we stayed the hotels and

The Inns and the and the airbnbs that we stayed in I’d say that we are probably averaging about 80 bucks a night probably a little bit less obviously in the cities it’s more and in the countryside it’s probably a little less typically but we found accommodations to

Be very plentiful very easy to find we used booking.com and that usually got us a room we’d book ahead like maybe three hours ahead we never had to book far out and Advance very rarely did that ever bite us I think once and not we had a

Hard time both Giuliana and myself and Nadia and Victor getting a room in the same Hotel because it was just booked up we had another night where we could not get a room other than this real shabby room there weren’t very many rooms at all available it got us this room here

At a seafood restaurant all four of us in one room the shower was Tiny filthy drain didn’t work full of mosquitoes and full of bugs but other than that two o’clock would roll around we’d start looking for a room we’d find it find these really nice places nothing like a

Five-star place but they were very warm and they were very inviting and charming and sometimes with really beautiful views and sometimes you know right next to the town center and that kind of thing so we did very very well with that now we were traveling in September and

October that’s the off season and so that could throw uh your plans off a little bit if you’re traveling in July or August I would guess that you have to be a little bit more conscientious about getting those rooms beforehand but we like having that flexibility we like

Playing it by ear and and just kind of going with the flow but overall I think you can plan on having nice accommodations for about 80 bucks a night but everyone’s different you know everyone has different tastes so uh and then in terms of expenses dining for the

Price of going to Chili’s you can get some of the best meals that you’ve ever ever had and that would include a bottle of the local wine so for maybe 40 bucks you know maybe 60 bucks typically wouldn’t you say 40 bucks yeah I’d say 40 bucks would include a bottle of wine

And a really really great dinner and the best wine you ever had too but we found that dining was not expensive and the Tipping of course is included you know people typically don’t tip there or if they do you know when it’s uh 39 Euros

Give them 40. we would give a 15 or one would give like a 20 tip people would look at us like what what are you doing like why are you giving us a 20 tip it felt kind of frowned upon so watch your tipping lunches were inexpensive as well

I mean typically we would probably grab cheese and meat and bread and fruit and that kind of thing at a market and then we would just make a little picnic along the way or we would drop into little places sometimes and breakfasts were included in a price of the hotel you

Always had these incredible buffets uh with croissants and chocolate croissants and French bread and all kinds of different cheeses and different kinds of meats you’d have yogurt you’d have eggs it was a full meal full of variety you never walked away hungry and you always

Had plenty of fuel in the tank for your ride for that day so you know you can kind of do the math yourself I mean if you’re looking at uh 80 bucks a night a hundred bucks a night for hotels 40 to 60 probably for dining it’s definitely

Less expensive than traveling in the United States of course you have the flight to consider but the expenses once you get to France not a problem France is very affordable so people also ask about the weather and we were there like I say in September

And October uh when we got there I guess the end of August along the Loire yeah we were dealing with some 90 degree temperatures it was hot and humid but we’re not used to that humidity coming from Colorado but it was still very tolerable and it was unseasonably hot

For them you know by the time we were halfway through the Loire I’d say the Autumn temperatures kind of really came in and we were dealing with 70 degree temperatures pretty much the rest of the time got some nice cool rainy days got some kind of drizzly days but we love

That kind of stuff and so the weather was great the wind was kind of a problem of coming down the Loire we were going downhill towards the Atlantic on the Loire and like I say that was about two weeks and we had probably headwinds the entire time sometimes they were fairly stiff

Nothing outrageous but uh you know constant and I’ve heard people say that they like writing from the Atlantic up and actually going uphill it’s so flat you can barely tell but that Tailwind would really help you out a lot we’ve encountered some really brutal wins along the Atlantic heading into the wind

God this has been such a slug I hate wind oh my God just cross winds and you know it just depends on the direction that your Trail is taking you typically they come from the west and then when we came up the Rhone we had the mistrals they call them

And they come from northern France and they push down towards the Mediterranean and those were in our face we took the counterclockwise route following our route but if you were to take it clockwise I think you would find that the winds would typically be at your

Back and it probably would be a little bit more of an enjoyable ride Tailwinds are usually going to be behind if you’re going down the Rhone river and if you’re going up the Loire it’s not going to make much difference on the Atlantic because it was going to be Crosswinds

Coming from the West I always love that question because there’s no way to answer it every day you had highlights that you know you would look back and say wow what an amazing day that was that was incredible so it was constant and it was many but I

Don’t think either of us have a favorite like we don’t prefer the Loire to the canals to their own to the Atlantic and they were all very cool in their own different way the things that stand out I would say on the Loire sancer was a

Hill town that was very much worth the climb the old town of Orleans longshare and the caves of Samoa and these were troglodyte caves that are you know just ancient that people are still using and then the trail takes you in this Subterranean space beneath the medieval Church complex with wine caves

And all this kind of stuff and the trail just goes down through and all and it’s just crazy it’s so cool the beaches along the Atlantic were really wonderful and The Harbor at La Rochelle that was along the Atlantic coast what a beautiful little town that was and you

Know kind of just felt like it was right out of Game of Thrones or something just really magical it was this Promontory kind of a citadel that was in a place called talmon sir Garand I think oh my God and we had no idea it was there and we just

Kind of stumbled into it again some of these things you just stumble into as that was fabulous uh the wine tasting and Bly that was a great experience that we kind of stumbled Into The Vineyards above Bordeaux were really really outstanding the plane trees that line

The canals on both the canal get on and the canal do me the such peaceful dreamy riding Carcassonne is a must-see and that’s right off of the canal the midi the historic cities of aural and Avignon and the whole via Rona was was really a outstanding route took you through some

Great great little places and over these old bridges and then the energy of the bigger cities like Toulouse and nant and Lyon and of course the people the people were a real highlight it just seemed like every day was another beautiful experience that was just unfolding and

Took you by surprise and took your breath away foreign well anyway that’s our wrap up for our trip to France and hopefully that answers any questions that y’all might have obviously if you have any more go ahead and drop a line and you know we’re happy to always engage and uh you know

If you would see to it to just subscribe if you subscribe and if you like and if you share YouTube will get this stuff out to more people our goal is to get more people out there off the couch and onto their bikes not just seeing the world but really experiencing it one

Pedal stroke at a time so if you haven’t seen the videos you know start here with sansare and you can just kind of run through them people call them binge-worthy I think you’ll find them very entertaining and very informative and a great way to spend an evening Happy Trails everybody bonjour