Provisional St Malo - Med route. Any top tips?

[boink]

Well here goes. Not in mega detail as yet but 10 days in July going from:

St Malo to Chateaugiron: 56 miles
- Beaupreau: 70
- Chantonnay: 43
- St Jean d' Angely: 66
- Listrac medoc: 78
- Marmande: 72
- Auch: 71
- Mazeres: 71
- Homp: 61
- Sete: 55

Travelling back to Paris via Corail Lunea night train, then, hopefully Eurostar to Ashford.
The plan is to camp and to deviate from our plan when/if necessary - but to try for 10 days with an additional day in Perpignan before return
which should allow a bit of flexibility. We want to avoid major Cities. I know NOTHING about this part of France so any must sees and top tips gratefully seized upon.

Detailed maps have been ordered but any heads up on canals and cycle routes would be great. My route distances are based on viamichelin cycle routes.

Thanks,

Mike

[lukepinkhandbag]

Camping in Sete!! We opted fro a cheap hotel down by the ferry port. This stretch of Med coast is not the nicest I've ever visited and we felt we should have left going there to the very last minute. As it was we were there for a couple of dusty, expensive days.

[boink]

That's the kind of thing I need. I would like to avoid hideous spots obviously. So where to finish/dip my toes in the water? I can get the sleeper train from Narbonne or Montpellier.

[b1galus]

not sure if this is helpful or not but in november i rode from edinburgh to gibraltar i went from calais to perpignan but the best day in the saddle was on the d117 d118 from carcassone to perpignan through the pyrennees orientales it was absolutely stunning and that was in the micturating rain > i think in summertime it would be unbeatable

[Barrenfluffit]

From Dinan (dinard?) there's a "voie verte" cycle route south which later hooks up with a canal and ends up in Rennes. Its good but not fast. The boat from St Malo Harbour across the bay is the nicest way of picking it up but if you have to cross the barrage you can pick it up there. It runs next to the D266; pick it up by the underpass immediately after the roundabout; its harder to get on thereafter.

[lukepinkhandbag]

Just looked on a map and TBH I think I'd head further south and dip in the med at Argeles sur Mer. There is a really nice camping muncipal in La Roque des Alberes in the hinterland.

[boink]

Great stuff. Like the sound of the rennes canal, argeles sur mer and the ride form carcassonne. Keep it coming please.
Think I might be sliding a little too far west for no good reason and may come in towards Limoge.

[boink]

Heres a link to the latest route, changed by a friend. I'd like to drop down a little to Carcassone and hit the coast further down too,
at Argeles sur Mer. Might help me get rid of that nasty gradient spike at the end?

[b1galus]

don't worry about the gradient spike , when you get there you will be ready for it
i went over the pyrennees one afternoon and i was just going to stretch my legs

[Robert]

We're riding to South West France in July starting on the 16th, when are you going? We're not going all the way because we've got a house relatively near the canal between Agen and Moissac. It's a coincidence that two of your stops on nights 1 and 3 are in exactly the same towns as we're stopping. I've put my planned route here. This will be the third time we've done the trip and you can see the route I used in my other journals.

I've never seen the point of getting a ferry across the Rance, and it seemed a difficult option with a tandem and trailer compared to just riding on the east side of the estuary for a while, which is very scenic. You can cross the rance on the D366 at Port Saint Jean, which is a quiet bridge that runs next to and below the main dual carriage way. I'd agree that the rance canal is quite slow, and it's not direct, although it's very pretty. We rode the top half of it the first year, and last year a long stretch into Rennes last year. We then carried on through Rennes on the Villaine, which had some fairly poor surfaces in parts, so again wasn't fast. This year I'm planning to ride on the small roads that run parallel to the N137, I presume that they might have been the main road before that one was built.

How are you planning to get from Listrac-Medoc to Marmande? We went through Bordeaux and it wasn't too bad as there's a really good cycle path that follows the river on the north half of the City, and of course from Langon south you could always get on the canal, which would take you all the way. If you fancied seeing Toulouse, it's a good way of getting into the centre and through it.

[boink]

Hi Robert.

Thanks for the tips. we start out on the morning of the 15th, after an overnight ferry from Portsmouth. Our routes been modified a bit since.
It's now:

1: Janze (62 miles)
2: Ancenis (47)
3: Breissure (55)
4: Ruffec (73)
5: Riberac (62)
6: Villeneuve Sur Lot (70)
7: Bruniquel (63)
8: Castelnaudury (64)
9: St Paul de Fennouillet - via Carcassonne - (65)
10: Argeles-Sur-Mer (38)

The last bit is down to legs and heat. If we need an easier way through it'll be the canal from Castelnaudury to Bezier. Still haven't finalised rail travel back,
so any tips on perhaps using a slower train from Paris to Calais gratefully accepted. One of my team mates (3 of us) is very worried about campsites/lack of.
Maybe you could offer a few words of reassurance? Shame we're a day apart - though you might well catch us up!

Cheers

Mike

[Robert]

You'll be two days ahead of us, we're riding to Portsmouth on Friday 16th and we won't be catching you up, not with your schedule. Good luck. Villeneuve-sur-Lot is quite near where we live - and Bruniquel's lovely - and scenic, I was there on Tuesday.
If you've had enough of the hills after Villeneuve you could always hit the canal at Agen. I find it quite boring in long stretches, but it's flat and shaded and there are plenty of other cyclists which can be nice.
You shouldn't have problems finding camp sites. I tour with my partner and she's concerned to know that everything's booked up and that she'll will have somewhere to sleep - we camped last year, but had a good idea of where we were going to stay. If you have gps - archies france (I'll look for the url of it when I'm home) is a good resource - it has about 5000 campsites on it and so I loaded the ones on the line of our route onto it in case we didn't get as far as we'd planned. Polly also had a list of hotels in case she'd had enough of camping. On those occasions it wasn't a problem to find a hotel - either ones on the list or ones we just found. This year we're going in hotels on the basis that the tour is our annual holiday and why not.

[boink]

Thanks again Robert.

The campsite resource would be great. Doesn't look mega hilly around Villeneuve. Hope it's nothing like Cornwall and Devon on lejog!
I like the sound of the canal du midi. two of the more serene stretches I've cycled along in the UK are the Bridgewater/avon and caledonian canals. I've heard that Toulouse is worth avoiding, but how is it to cycle through? I have a good recommendation for a cheap and memorable hotel in Riberac, but any other recommendations from your travels near our route?

[Robert]

It's not mega hilly around Villeneuve - and between there and Bruniquel I don't think you'll go over 250 metres, but the landscape is ridged with valleys that go east to west. We've always taken the cowardly way and steered more towards the west coast.

Toulouse is a lovely city and you can cycle all the way in and out the other side on the canal. I've never cycled there though, so that's not based on experience.

[frank9755]

I'm off tomorrow - last minute decision - and will be starting from Dieppe, having got the overnight ferry from Newhaven.

Not planned the route in detail but have a few general ideas in my head (and Edward Enfield's book in my pannier!). Will be camping, and shall rely on the often-expressed view that there is a decent campsite in most French towns, and stop when I'm ready. Am aiming to do it in about 10 days but going solo so may push on a bit as I feel like it.

Plan is to end up in Montpelier and come back on Easyjet. I flew back from a Pyrenees trip from there last year and it went very smoothly.

This thread has been helpful in supplementing my ideas!