Cycling UK Forum

Could anyone recommend a cycle friendly B and B near the start of the Canal du Midi in Toulouse.
We are a party of six . We would be looking to leave our bike bags at the B and B if possible.
We would stay there on the evening of our arrival and the evening before our departure.
We have already booked flights to Toulouse in June. Thanks.

Sorry to not directly answer your question, but are you planning to cycle the whole length of the CdM are just the portion from Carcassonne westwards to Toulouse?

The reason I ask is that, IMHO, there seems to be an undue amount of hype regarding cycling along the Canal du Midi. Only the 40 kms east of Toulouse is actually asphalted, and you need a bike with at least front suspension to ride the route east of Carcasonne to Sete which only leaves about 100km of what I would call reasonable cycling surface.

By contrast, the canal du Garonne from Toulouse to Bordeaux is beautifully surfaced, and there are quite a few pleasant Voies Vertes (greenways) both south and west of Bordeaux to the coast.

Just interested in your planned route - good luck with finding accomodation.

Tony

Thank you for your suggestion Tony. I shall certainly put this to the rest of the group.
We have made no firm plans so no reason why we couldnt consider cycling to Bordeaux instead.
In saying that think our cycles are suitable for the Canal du Midi. Living in this area we are
used to cycling on forestry tracks etc. The appeal was cycling to the Med.

Firstly I'd agree with Tony's point about the state of the CdM southeast of Toulouse. I think that there's a project to asphalt the whole of the CL and CdM from Bordeaux to the Mediterranean, but it's a work in progress. The cycle route on opencyclemap pretty much shows the extent of the tarmac. Having said that, there's also a bit that's been surfaced around Carcassonne and the route from Narbonne to Port la Nouvelle would be fine on anything other than a road bike.

Try having a look at the journals on Crazyguyonabike and if you're a CTC member try the CTC route sheets as well. You may find some hotel recommendations (or ones to avoid!)

Yhank you for these suggestions . Decisions Decisions!!

I have looked at the Canal to Bordeaux on Google Earth and it looks absolutely amazing.
I have decided this is definitely my preferred option. It also starts at the same place as the CdM.
Now I just need to persuade everyone else. My Thanks to Tony for pointing out this alternative.

Matt,

Open Cycle Map looks very interesting - more so than Open Street Map. There are vast empty bits in Tarn & Garonne though. I'll have to get riding and contributing tracks - working out how to do it's the thing though.

Barrach

I've ridden from Bordeaux to Agen and the year before last and a part of it last year. For us it was just one or two days of a longer tour, I'm not sure I'd want to make that the whole tour.

My pictures of both trips are here - they might put you off.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwpd/sets/ ... 641017406/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwpd/sets/ ... 516455063/

Many of last year's photos were taken with a camera mounted on the handle bars. I'm working through them adding geocodes, but I don't seem to have quite enough time on my hands.

matt_twam_asi wrote:Firstly I'd agree with Tony's point about the state of the CdM southeast of Toulouse. I think that there's a project to asphalt the whole of the CL and CdM from Bordeaux to the Mediterranean, but it's a work in progress.

When we cycled the CdM in summer '08 there were surfaced sections both at Carcasonne and Beziers, but the rest was very variable. The AF3V website at http://www.af3v.org/CarteAF3V/carte-detaillee.html has no current reference as to when the path will be properly constructed, but judging by some of the sections, quite a bit of work would be needed to make it easily rideable on a tourer.

Another canal that is underated is the Nantes-Brest canal in Brittany. The surface is gravel rather than tarmac but very rideable even with 32mm tyres. There's 360kms of it and it's a nice way to get to Nantes, the start of the Loire a Velo. Easier for you English to get to, I guess. There's a lovely little Voies Vertes - V7 that goes from Morlaix near Roscoff through to Cathaix Plouguer on the canal.

If you end up on the Canal de la Garonne there's a tourist velo map available from tourist offices: Bordeaux - Toulouse a Velo. It also includes some accomodation options and camp sites marked.

The greenway is also shown on some of the newer Michelin maps as well - shown as a red line.

I now live in Perth, Western Australia and I miss not being able to hop on a ferry and get in to France!

Happy holidays.

Tony

Tony
A few years ago we were touring Provence using the EBE. We got dropped off at Orange. We met an English cyclist also doing Provence using EBE who had come back to England on holiday and had taken 10 days or so to tour in France. He also lived in Australia. Was it you. Suppose its too much of a coincidence. Thanks for your input anyway . I have read more reports of the Canal Lateral a la Garonne. Apparently there are very long boring flat stretches. also read of someone cycling to Narbonne from Caen down the west side of France in May who got rain for 7 days out of 10. Going towards Med is looking a wee bit more attractivenow. As I said, decisions, decisions!

Robert wrote:Matt,

Open Cycle Map looks very interesting - more so than Open Street Map. There are vast empty bits in Tarn & Garonne though. I'll have to get riding and contributing tracks - working out how to do it's the thing though.

You can actually get the cyclemap layer in openstreetmap - just click on the + sign at the top right of the map.

Am I right in thinking that you have .gpx tracks from your travels in France? If you upload your tracks (you need to create a username to do so), I would be happy to map them for you. Or if you want to try it yourself (again, you need a username) then there's a variety of options. I use JOSM, but there's an editor built right into the web interface. Click 'Edit' up the top to get to it.

If you do get into it, the wiki page on cycle routes will be useful for tagging purposes. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

I fear we're taking this thread off on a tangent. I've got loads of .gpx tracks around Moissac Agen and surrounding areas. I will have a go at mapping them. On the Luddite/Techie spectrum I'm nearer to Luddite. Downloading OSM onto my partner's Etrex took me a long time. I understand from what I've read on yACF you can put the contour layer on top of Mapsource within the unit, but a lot of what I've read left me baffled.

BARRACH wrote:Could anyone recommend a cycle friendly B and B near the start of the Canal du Midi in Toulouse.
We are a party of six . We would be looking to leave our bike bags at the B and B if possible.
We would stay there on the evening of our arrival and the evening before our departure.
We have already booked flights to Toulouse in June. Thanks.

Did you manage to solve this problem? I am looking for a similar arrangement for a tandem box (cardboard) , preferably near Toulouse Airport, from early June to mid July. Would prefer not to leave it till the end of the trip and then start scouring bike shops for two bike boxes.
Thanks.

We did the CdM about 4 yrs back - flew into Toulouse with our bikes - Can't remember which B&B we stayed at on the first or last night but all B&Bs and small hotels for the whole of the trip were bike friendly including even the city ones. Some provided storage for the bikes in sheds, others opened up function rooms and invited us to wheel in our muddied, oily steeds - the bikes seemed to get more attention than we did !

A word of caution - When we were there; getting to and from the airport couldn't be done by bike - seemed like it was all motorway access. We had to get a taxi - but again taxi drivers all rallied round - identified a suitable sized vehicle amongst their ranks- lifted bikes in, took control of securing them etc - they couldn't have been more helpful.

As for the surface of the CdM route from Toulouse - Carcassone, the unsurfaced sections were no problem to our 700c touring bikes and the most enjoyable. There was certainly no need for off-road bikes when we were there.

Have fun.

Hi, Barrach. IMHO I would agree with Sue on the issue of whether you need more than a decent tourer to cycle along the Canal du Midi. I saw plenty of loaded-up tourers heading towards the Med, and I'm not a big lover of asphalt anyway (the 20km or so I rode was mainly mud, gravel and cobblestones). However, in Carcassonne last week I saw a warning sign that (er, I think) urged users of the canal path to be cautious for a 3km stretch. I didn't actually ride that bit (we turned off on to a road to return our hire bikes), but looking at it from the bridge above the 'towpath' looked about four to six inches wide with a steep bank to the side of it. Still, I can't help thinking about it for next year. Did you persuade your friends to change route? Did you really persuade yourself?

Anyway, some words and pictures from our little ride here:

http://cycleseven.org/cycling-canal-du-midi

Uh, no I didnt manage to persuade rest of party I'm afraid. All wanted to head to Med for good weather. Just need to see how we get on. I am the only one of party with a tourer, rest are using mtbs. If not rideable I can just get off and ride on roads instead using mobile to keep in contact with rest of party. We have booked a bed and breakfast in Toulouse about 10 mins from Canal. B and B has garden so we are hoping there is somewhere there for storing bike bags. Havent plucked up courage to ask landlady of B and B if its feasible for bike bags to be left. However she knows we are bringing bikes and has already told us about leaving them overnight in her garden, so heres hoping. We had already decided to take a taxi from airport and assemble bikes later on in the evening . B and B is called ANJALI and landlady speaks good English. Also booked the last night of hols with this B and B so hoping that goes in our favour. Will let you know how we get on.