>>Generally the French OpenStreetMap community is pretty good at assessing roads by their traffic volumes and purpose,
great, but how is this indicated on OSM-based maps?
>>That sounds like a great reason to plan 50km days to me.
Yes, until you end up in the middle of a Landes forest at 10pm some night and the only nearby village has a three pharmacies, two opticians and an undertakers but no shop, pension or hotel.
But Les Landes has some of the fastest cycling and emptiest roads in France/ you can just blast onto the next place. Plus a bit of advanced planning would mean you’d know where to be aiming for for somewhere to stay the night. I don’t miss the days pre internet where I’d turn up to a small town only to find the campsite closed.
Do you really aim to finish cycling at 10pm at night- I must do much shorter days than you and I definitely aim for more than 50km.
MrsHJ wrote: ↑10 May 2022, 9:57pm
But Les Landes has some of the fastest cycling and emptiest roads in France/ you can just blast onto the next place. Plus a bit of advanced planning would mean you’d know where to be aiming for for somewhere to stay the night. I don’t miss the days pre internet where I’d turn up to a small town only to find the campsite closed.
Do you really aim to finish cycling at 10pm at night- I must do much shorter days than you and I definitely aim for more than 50km.
Not intentionally! But maybe if I spent too much time on the D-roads finish time might be 10pm which is pretty useless in rural France because everything bar the local kebab shop will be fermé! And ending a day of cycling through bucolic fields with a kebab and coke is not exactly always ideal.
jacobean wrote: ↑10 May 2022, 5:31pm
D-roads in France represent the archetype of rural France.
Sunflowers, wheat or indeed artichokes provide an idyllic landscape which to cycle through.
However, here is the thing. Planning a trip on D-roads can be tough because sometimes the D-roads can strength sapping. A lot of D-roads have loads of little hills which ironically seem to be more tiring than big-let's-get-it-over-and-done-with big hills. Some are more sinuous. What looks like an easy 50Km cycle can actually take a whole day. Whereas on a RN (route national) road you'll cover twice the distance.
So, on D-roads your cycle will be more peaceful, you actually might not make it to your planned destination. Route national roads on the other hand, can have really annoying levels of traffic but at least your day's cycle becomes a lot more predictable. There's a good chance make to make it to your planned destination at a reasonable time.
What's your take on this? Should D-roads be avoided for the sake of predictability?
When I take a bike to France I seek out the quiet roads and only use busy roads to fill gaps between quiet roads. If I were sticking mainly to busy roads I'd take a car instead. Quiet roads, chosen carefully, can take you over many miles of interesting terrain. In the south they often take you up interesting canyons, along precipitous ledges and through short tunnels, with the only motor vehicle around a postie doing the rounds. Or over small cols with their own mini sequences of hairpin bends. That is my cycling heaven. I don't understand just getting loads of characterless miles in, as if that is an aim in itself. Give me fifty miles of memorable D road over a hundred miles of busier road any day.
This lovely, quiet road formed part of our route one day//www.google.com/maps/@44.2336609,6.25578 ... 6?hl=en-GB
We spent hours with only the very occasional car passing. The road climbed steadily over many miles, no needless ups and downs, and the main sounds were birds and the river cascading over rocks. Perfect. A town at the start (Digne) and a town at the end (Seyne) and a packed lunch in between. Water top ups possible in the villages. I think there was a flatter main road that we could have taken but we went there to enjoy the landscape, not to avoid it.
MrsHJ wrote: ↑10 May 2022, 9:57pm
But Les Landes has some of the fastest cycling and emptiest roads in France/ you can just blast onto the next place. Plus a bit of advanced planning would mean you’d know where to be aiming for for somewhere to stay the night. I don’t miss the days pre internet where I’d turn up to a small town only to find the campsite closed.
Do you really aim to finish cycling at 10pm at night- I must do much shorter days than you and I definitely aim for more than 50km.
Not intentionally! But maybe if I spent too much time on the D-roads finish time might be 10pm which is pretty useless in rural France because everything bar the local kebab shop will be fermé! And ending a day of cycling through bucolic fields with a kebab and coke is not exactly always ideal.
I suggest researching your daily ride so that you crop it to finish at a convenient time. I'd make a route that sticks mainly to nice quiet roads, and I'd not make it so long that finishing in time to eat in a relaxed way is in doubt. Unless you have a self-imposed rule about having to do 250km+ each day, you are allowed to choose a slightly shorter route that has a higher quality cycling experience. In warm climates I like to be on the road by 8am and finished with the bike by 3pm, with most of the cycling done in the first four hours. The pace drops after lunch. Late afternoon and the evening are for chilling, camping, eating and more chilling. And probably a bit of a stroll with some sight seeing.
D roads vary widely in their busyness. Some D roads are major trunk roads and are fast and heavily used by large vehicles. Others are little more than meandering lanes through the countryside. C roads also are very varied. They range from a very narrows road with grass growing down the middle of the road to roads that would benefit from being in the D classification.
If unsure I always open Google Street View to get a better idea.
When I had my first holiday in France I didn't realise that a D numbered road was a departmental thing and the same road number is used in other departments. I was used to the UK where A1 would be used on just one continuous route.
jacobean wrote: ↑10 May 2022, 9:00pm
>>Generally the French OpenStreetMap community is pretty good at assessing roads by their traffic volumes and purpose,
great, but how is this indicated on OSM-based maps?
Using the normal road classification colours - whatever that particular map uses. On cycle.travel, for example, it goes from green (the busiest, 'trunk' routes) through red, orange, pale yellow, to white.
>>That sounds like a great reason to plan 50km days to me.
Yes, until you end up in the middle of a Landes forest at 10pm some night and the only nearby village has a three pharmacies, two opticians and an undertakers but no shop, pension or hotel.
That wouldn't be "planning" then
cycle.travel - maps, journey-planner, route guides and city guides
francovendee wrote: ↑11 May 2022, 8:21amWhen I had my first holiday in France I didn't realise that a D numbered road was a departmental thing and the same road number is used in other departments. I was used to the UK where A1 would be used on just one continuous route.
I remember the moment that I realised the same!
But that should read GB rather than UK... there are two different roads labelled A1 in the UK...
Isn't the main point that in France - the subject of the thread - that D indicates what we might call the traffic authority for the road. N = national, and perhaps is the equivalent of what used to be called trunk roads here as in A1(T) on (older?) OS maps. A French D road may be anything from a detrunked (denationalised?) N road to some newly-built local road. Perhaps an easy mistake to make for Brits used an AB classification is to assume that D is way down the hierarchy.
jacobean wrote: ↑10 May 2022, 9:00pm
>>Generally the French OpenStreetMap community is pretty good at assessing roads by their traffic volumes and purpose,
great, but how is this indicated on OSM-based maps?
Using the normal road classification colours - whatever that particular map uses. On cycle.travel, for example, it goes from green (the busiest, 'trunk' routes) through red, orange, pale yellow, to white.
Thanks - I never know about the colour coding on cycle.travel.
Actually, talking of colour-coding, one great thing about the Michelin maps was the "green" line depicting areas of outstanding natural beauty. Does OSM do anything like this?
It's a bit too subjective for OSM - generally OSM tends to focus on observable facts, whereas scenic quality is something where two different people will have two different opinions. cycle.travel does give a bit of a scenic weighting to different routes but this is only in the route selection, not in the cartography.
cycle.travel - maps, journey-planner, route guides and city guides
IGN maps (the TOP100 or Green serie, 1/100 000) use colour codes to distinguish roads by their traffic or at least by their function:
red ones are main roads aimed at providing means to link major axis and the regional main towns.
yellow ones are main local roads which may have a fair amount of traffic depending on time of the day. The departement local authority keeps investing money (depending on budget) to cut corners, dig a hill through to avoid going around it etc. to let cars drive on them as close to the speed limit (80kph now) for as much time as possible, with a few 70kph, because they are used by locals to get to work, shop, hospitals and to the main regional centres efficiently. They are politically visible.
white ones. They are the rest: D roads and C roads linking villages, alternate roads to the yellow ones. They tend to have less traffic although car GPS know them, unfortunately. Rally drivers wannabes know them too... They are fun to ride on and drive on too...
Of course, I MUCH prefer to use the white ones. They are often more scenic, less wide (which is important to me; my pleasure of riding a road seems to be inversely proportional to the width of the road) and will let you ride more "inside the countryside" that "by the countryside". I admit: yellow ones are the fastest for cycling. Performance-oriented cyclists and Strava aficionados love them. It's usually not a problem to ride on them with a carbon bike fitted with 23mm rubber pumped up at 8 atm whilst white roads are best with 28-32 mm tires or wider.
cycle.travel does let sponsoring users select IGN Classic maps for planning their trips in France.
As mentioned by other members, colour codes used to be used for distinguishing N (national) roads, D (départementales) Roads and C (communal) roads on maps. It is still the case on background colour for signs on the roads (with the number) though.
"A cycle tourist doesn't have a track record. Simply memories". Jean Taboureau
