Get off those French cyclepaths!!!
Every week there seems to be a new cycle-path opening up – a repurposed railway track, canal towpath, a section of lane opened up just for cyclists. How lucky are we – miles of safe, traffic free cycling, generally on the flat or easy slopes.
But… but… There’s a downside. For 35 years we’ve been running cycling holidays in France – mostly in Brittany – and the majority of our routes don’t use cycle-paths. That seems counter-intuitive. True 35 years ago cycle-paths were far fewer, but it’s more than that.
The trouble with these established cycle routes is that many, by their very nature don’t go to the interesting little French villages and towns that make a cycling holiday so interesting. Railway lines didn’t go to these places in the past and when converted to cycle-ways the same applies. So you often find yourself going a long way and only linking larger places. They also, because they have to be relatively flat also miss out great swathes of countryside in order to avoid hills between these larger towns. In the past small ‘halts’ may have grown up around the railway stops, especially the smaller rural lines like Brittany’s narrow gauge network, but as the railways closed 50 years or so ago often these are deserted, though ironically the number of cyclists does mean some now have a cafe at least. Canal towpaths suffer a similar fate. They followed big rivers, not naturally linking those oh-so-French villages.
So let’s look at our immediate area in Brittany. Our base at Breton Bikes is right on the crossroads of the three most important cycle-ways in Brittany, the Nantes-Brest Canal, the V6 (old railway), and the EV1 ‘Vélodyssée’ (railway and sections of canal) which goes right down to Santander and eventually Portugal. Of course these are brilliant resources and we use sections of all three for our holiday customers, but we use them selectively and combine them with routes on small country roads – here’s why.
Let’s look at the Nantes-Brest canal first. We’re pretty much smack in the middle of it. This actually works really well from us travelling East, most of the canalised sections have been made from major rivers so have been important transport routes for hundreds, if not thousands of years. This means towns have grown organically along its length. Thus from the little village of Gouarec you go Mur-de-Bretagne, Pontivy, Rohan, Josselin, Redon, Nort-sur-Edre and Nantes. These stops pretty evenly spaced every 20 km or so and with all the cyclist needs. Go West on the other hand and once you leave the oasis of Gouarec the next large village actually on the canal is Chateauneuf-du-Fou 72 kms further on! To reach the centre of that village is 500m and very steep climb. Yes there are the odd creperies and couple of bars along this section and a few B&B’s catering for cyclists but that is it – no towns, no campsites, no bakers. Beyond that the next stop is Chateaulin 40 km further on. Now one of our routes takes cyclists from us to Chateaulin but it doesn’t use the canal towpath. Rather we use smaller roads to take you through the countryside where you go through a village every 10-20km where you can buy bread, have a beer and get something to eat – and of course get the feeling of being in France…
Then take the Vélodyssée. There are long sections of this, lasting days where you are going down straight ex-railway lines in forest with very little to see. Just go 10km inland from this coastal run and you can ride country lanes that will take you from village to village – for us there’s no question which is the better option. BUT because of the huge publicity these major cycle-lanes get it’s become the ONLY option for many cyclists who don’t consider going ‘off-piste’ and exploring as they would have 20 years ago. That is the unforeseen consequence of providing all this wonderful cycling infrastructure – it means that the very cycle-friendly infrastructure that has been available to cyclists for decades gets ignored. Worse still some people even become fearful of going on roads because they feel they are not theirs – they have to stick to the paths. This is tragic. 35 years ago we fell in love with simply wandering through little French country lanes and turning a corner to discover another little gem – a village from some picturebook, a tiny village restaurant, the towering church totally out of proportion and the fabulous smell of today’s baguettes straight from the oven.
But I’m scared of traffic!
Breton Bikes has now been going for 35 years. In that time we’ve averaged about 400 customer a year, each probably averaging 150 km in their week. That’s 60,000 km a year. That’s well over the circumference of the planet. Times that by 35 and our customers have cycled 2,100,000 km… That’s over five times the distance to the moon. Of course there have been accidents, perhaps ten that required hospital treatment, a broken bone, stitches, that sort of thing. Thanks heaven we’ve never had anything really serious. BUT none of them involved a motorised vehicle. The most common cause is where one rider in a group had not been paying attention and rode into another, a couple of others have been caught out (ironically) by gravel on cyclepaths. We’ve been lucky of course, but in France drivers are careful, traffic density is generally low and accidents with cars very, very rare – in fact during that period we’ve had three people ride into the canal, two people fall off because of dogs but none from a motor vehicle. Of course riding on the road is a risk, but that risk is so minimal, perhaps less likely than an injury on a bike-path and by not daring to leave the path cyclists are really missing out on what makes a cycling holiday in France so very, very special.
So there you have it – cycle-paths are great, but they are no substitute for exploring the countryside on a maze of delightful country roads – please don’t sell yourself short on your next holiday...