St Nazaire/Nantes area, easy dayrides?

[KEELIEDW]

We'll be visiting this area later this month. My wife prefers it flat, picturesque and as traffic-free as possible. We'll have the bikes on a car rack so we can drive to start points in a fairly wide radius. Any ideas and suggestions gratefully received.

[vernon]

What you need to do is google for voies vertes and use google translate to get the information in English.

Voies vertes are green routes using abandoned railway track beds and little used roads so they are quite flat. You will also find route marking at Nantes for Eurovelo Six which follows the Loire eastwards.

Hope that helps.

[T]

I recently passed through St Nazaire while touring down the coast. This means I know very little about day rides in the area, but I can tell you there's flat easy cycling along most of the seafront east of St Nazaire in the direction of Le Croisic, and the Marais Salants de Guerande (and other marshes) is of course flat and was pretty much completely free of traffic when we went through. Plenty of Egrets, Herons and Sacred Ibises to look at. There are also various signed "Vélocéan" routes (mixture of tracks and small roads) in the St Nazaire area, which might be worth looking up.

[al_yrpal]

...and Guerande itself is a lovely medieval walled town. Well worth a visit. The marshes and picturesque thatched houses are charming too.

Al

[T other Dave]

The other side of the bridge has cycle paths/routes along the coast linking the towns from Mindin heading South.

[T]

..and the bridge itself is cycle-able (cycle lane both ways), though I'm not sure it qualifies as flat.

[KEELIEDW]

Thanks for all the above advice, we're back home after a successful week's touring. The Loire is excellent for easy cycling. We found that the velo-routes are not always reliably documented, so grab all the brochures you can. For example a tourist velo-map issued by Maine et Loire Dept tourist info showed official bike paths on both the North and South banks running West from Saumur. Saumur's own 2011 cycle-tourist info map fails to show the North bank route, a shame because it's a superb route mostly along levees with great views of the river.