La Velo Francette (La Rochelle to Ouistreham). Opinions?

[simonhill]

For a short June break, I have decided to fly out to Bordeaux and cycle back. I booked the flight and then started to look at routes. Normally I just work out a route following small to medium roads, but I came across the La Velo Francette long distance cycle route which pretty much goes where I want to go. I don't usually ride designated paths as I am not a lover of the few that I have tried (mainly NCNs in England) which seem to go to unnecessary lengths to avoid 'hazards' I am quite happy to cycle. Plus, all their little deviations tend to make them slow going.

I've ordered a map so can see the exact route, but will probably keep my options open and dip in and out. Before I get too excited, I thought i would ask if anyone had any experience of it. Has anybody on the forum cycled it? Just wondering what its like (surfaces, signage, etc).

Riding an LHT with (slick) Supremes not credit card style as I have to carry my electric kettle and porridge. I will be staying in hotels, I'd like to say cheap hotels, but they seem scarce away from big towns.

[teamonster]

Rode a lot of this last year - Tended to look at the route and then the map each day and work out if we wanted to stay on or not. A lot of the route is on quiet roads well surfaced roads, up towards Caen, you hit some old railway track, but from memory that's smooth as silk tarmac ! Where there is compacted gravel towpaths, there's normally an easy workaround. There was just one long section along a canal where the surface wasn't brilliant, but that was more to do with 3 weeks of heavy rain, which had reduced the path to a very nice grinding paste for the gears ! You can see various pics on the blog https://journeyswiththetank.wordpress.com. We had pretty bad weather, but was still great fun, certainly recommend as a rough route to follow. Signage was pretty good, but it helped that I could access the route on the web, to double check sometimes as occasionally signs would disappear.

[ossie]

I did Ouistreham to Domfront as part of this route before veering off onto EV4

It was well signposted and consisted of quiet roads and railway line. Its the V43 I believe.

Having previously come up from Spain via Niort (through that area from La Rochelle up to Cherbourg peninsula ) accommodation and camp sites were in short supply so may need to pre plan in that regard.

That said, since then booking.com and airbnb have come on leaps and bounds.This is the link down to La Rochelle

https://en.francevelotourisme.com/cycle ... ic-by-bike

ps French cycle routes are quite risk averse so do tend to deviate. As you say just use it as a guide.

[simonhill]

Cheers chaps, very helpful. Nice pics teamonster - well done for putting up with all that rain.

[toadoftoadhall]

Hi teamonster, I just saw you used Komoot. Never heard of it before, but looks pretty good. Just done a small route Bristol to Bath, and it seems to be very good. Do you like it?

[teamonster]

Hi teamonster, I just saw you used Komoot. Never heard of it before, but looks pretty good. Just done a small route Bristol to Bath, and it seems to be very good. Do you like it?

Yep really easy to use and the clincher for me was that you can adjust the route really easily on your phone by adding in extra waypoints, then I can bluetooth to my Garmin. I use it a lot for planning routes to work locations locally as well, it's pretty good and always seems to give good estimates timewise. On the tour it would occasionally take you onto tracks to avoid a bit of road that was fine, but overall it found lots of great routes. Can't remember how much the world mapping costs but it was a small one off feee and well worth it IMO.