Cycling UK Forum

Apologies if this has been asked (many times..) before.

Planning to take ferry to Dieppe and follow the western arm of the Avenue Verte, with a diversion to Giverny, to Paris.

We will be travelling light on Bromptons - we need to do a lot of UK train travel and return by Eurostar so big-wheel bikes are just too inconvenient for us.

The Avenue website is very helpful but quite a few sections of daily routes say the surface is inconnu/unknown.

Are we going to be happy or unhappy Brompton riders on the Avenue Verte?

Thanks in advance for advice.

I haven't done the whole thing, but I covered the stretch from about St Germer de Fly to Paris a couple of years ago. Most of it was very smooth indeed, but there were some bumpy sections between Chaussy and Sagy (not sustained, but just multiple instances of a few hundred metres of gravel), where I might have been inclined to stick to the road if I'd known what was coming up (I was on a road/touring bike). The section through the wood (just after Conflans) might also be tricky if it were wet, I think. I don't think there's anything that would be impassible on a Brompton, though -- just maybe bits where you'd need to take it a bit slow...

(The only place I got punctures -- two in quick succession -- was the final stretch down the towpath of the St Denis canal; watch out for broken glass round there.)

Have you found the cycle.travel write-up of the route? It has (inter alia) some good suggestions on tweaks to avoid the roughest sections: https://cycle.travel/route/avenue_verte_france

Thank you, that's very helpful route information.

I had not found the website you suggested, it's very good, thanks for that too.

Hello MaccPaddler
I've just completed AV. The official site states that the road surfaces are generally good, with little rough spots..... uumm.
In my recent experince the last 20% in the UK were far from what any normal person would call roads. Grass fields would be more accurate. On the French side, the first 75% was very good, with paths though villages, ex-rail tracks very well tarmaced over (as RAVeL is in Belgium). But surprisingly, 75-90% in, so about 30K in total, was gravel track. Loose but tight packed gravel. If it had rained, I would have been very unhappy. Instead, it was dry and therefore dusty.
With Marathon tryes, all doable on a Brommie.