Bilbao to St Malo 2 Week Trip

[timbob]

Thanks for the information. Will go over it this week.

As I'm going for two weeks I'm wondering about mobile pay as you go SIM. I have an unlock phone and just wonder about getting a French sim?

[timbob]

If you can give me more information about you Michelin map that would be great.

I can’t recommend any camp sites since I stayed in hotels.

However as I said the coast from the mouth of the Garonne down to Bayonne is almost literally one long camp site. I set out on 20th June and would have passed through in early July. On every site there was frantic activity preparing for the start of the French school holidays later in July (grass cutting, painting etc . Most appeared open but with only a few tents/ camper vans so I reckon you could just show up.

If you prefer to know where you are headed, I suggest you pick a likely spot for your stays each night & google camping in that village. They nearly all have Tourist Offices with lists of campsites.

Another tip:

Michelin maps show cycle ways - they are marked as dashed red & white lines.

These don’t appear on most maps but are really useful for avoiding busy roads.

The majority of my trip was on these. If you click the link below you can see an example.

Once the map is displayed , centre it on Bassin d’Arcachon and zoom in until the scale is 2 miles / 2km in the bottom right hand corner. There is quite an extensive network of these north of the Bassin d’Arcachon.


http://www.viamichelin.co.uk/web/Routes ... eConso=5.6


I planned my trip using the viamichelin website & took screen prints of the maps to take with me. I could up load an attachment with them in if you like.




Lastly, I found the website for the ferry from Arcachon to Cap Ferret which would mean you could avoid going into Bordeaux. The website is below. Click on Horarires to see timetable. If there isn't one running to suit you could still use cycle ways to skirt the BAssin.

http://www.bateliers-arcachon.com/TRANS ... Ferret.php

[timbob]

Does any one know what travel insurance to take?

[brianleach]

Just to update this one. I checked on line today (and yesterday!) and found that there were still no bicycle options. I therefore rang to get a quote and a cheerful lady told me that as the boat had limited bicycle space they could make more money in August and September taking other passengers presumable with cars. Consequently no bicycles are being accepted in those months. Happy to book Santander though. Just means arriving and leaving through same port.

[tom_cat]

If you're using a GPS, download the Europe or France map and then save the area you need into it (edit using a mapping programme like bikehike etc), was really useful on my trip for deciding ad-hoc how long to spend in the saddle and which campsites to aim for. They even have phone numbers embedded in the info for each one, so you can phone ahead if you feel the need (we didn't bother, only proved risky when we turned up very late one day)

http://www.archiescampings.eu/eng1/