planning a ride from le havre to barcelona via paris

hw4

Anyone out there with experience of cycling around europe?? me and a friend are planning a monumental ride (for us anyway) to barcelona hoping to do aprox 75/80 miles a day over a period of 12 to 14 days...
i am just concerned about planning the best route, i have checked google maps etc and have noticed its difficult to get anywhere in france without ending up on a dual carriageway...
Does any one know of a good site suggesting the best roads for cyclists in europe? or the best route we should take trying to avoid the busy roads and preferably too many hills.....

appreciate all your advice


Hedley

cycladelic

This is a start. Type a couple of place names - then go to options and select 'bicyle' and wait for it to load.

The max route can only be 200km a time...

http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichelin/ ... apHomePage

xilios

hw4 wrote:

Anyone out there with experience of cycling around europe?? me and a friend are planning a monumental ride (for us anyway) to barcelona hoping to do aprox 75/80 miles a day over a period of 12 to 14 days...
i am just concerned about planning the best route, i have checked google maps etc and have noticed its difficult to get anywhere in france without ending up on a dual carriageway...
Does any one know of a good site suggesting the best roads for cyclists in europe? or the best route we should take trying to avoid the busy roads and preferably too many hills.....

appreciate all your advice


Hedley

Hi, we use microsoft autoroute express, there are options in the program to avoid dual carriageways and limited acces roads. Just type in point A and point B than you can just fill in the rest, like adjusting the route according to campsights and/or places of interest.
When we do decide on the route we carry maps scaled 1:200.000 give or take a bit, any biger you dont see the smaller roads and any smaller you need too many of them.
Now if you look hard enough you can find this program on the net for free but for obvious reasons I cannot say how/where.
For our next tour we will download all our maps and the ANWB camping select cd on our mini pc tha Asus eee 901 and see how that works.
You can also check out http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichelin/ ... mePage.htm I havn't looked into it yet but I hear its good.
There are a few more tips on our page (link below), hope it helps you out some.
cheers

harrywolper

Try www.bikeroutetoaster.com - very good for planning routes and now has avoid highway option. I used the viamichelin site to get the overall route (using cycle option) and then fine tune with routetoaster.

If you can afford one buy a Garmin Edge 205/305 - they are a bit cheaper now the 605/705 are out. You can download all of the day routes onto one of these and avoid carrying maps and stopping every so often - PS make sure you take a charger! I used my 305 on a C2C through France with no worries.

suggest a day stop half way for rest and more rest.

Regards, Harry.

hw4

thanks for all your advice, i am using these sites to plan our journey, will keep you updated about the ride....

h

El Gordo

Or, take the low tech option and buy a French road atlas for a few quid, mark on the places you intend to stay and use a highlighter to draw a wiggly line along all the smaller roads (of which there are plenty in France) to join them together.

That way, when you're done, you can cut it up and take it with you.

I've tried planning tours using various websites before but nothing is so easy and reliable as a bit of paper.

cookiemonster

I did pretty much that route a couple of years ago by motorbike, with only 50-100 miles on major roads just to skip round the cities. The rest was farm tracks, forest roads, and country lanes. It was stunning.

For planning I used a road atlas and mapped the route into a garmin gps using mapsource, that way I could follow the silly little roads which have no sign posts without fear of getting lost or wasting hours and hours going in circles trying to find where i'd got to on a map

pneumatic

El Gordo wrote:

Or, take the low tech option and buy a French road atlas for a few quid, mark on the places you intend to stay and use a highlighter to draw a wiggly line along all the smaller roads (of which there are plenty in France) to join them together.

That way, when you're done, you can cut it up and take it with you.

I've tried planning tours using various websites before but nothing is so easy and reliable as a bit of paper.

Strongly recommend this technique. We also used it when crossing Belgium France Spain from Zeebrugge to Pamplona. We hardly used A roads, let alone dual carriageways except when near/in big cities (which wasn't often).

Try and get the smaller version of the Michelin road atlas: the pages, folded in half, fit perfectly into an ortlieb or similar bar bag mounted map holder and you get about half a day's ride per view.

zonc

i go with the map option - in the olden days of pre sa tnav and websites a map book was best. Once used you can send it back with notes and you will have a great souvenier of your trip.
the paper way gives you more options to deliberately go wrong.....and discover more.....

Go for it.....

Zonc

rouleur23

you will have no problem in France. The network of roads all the way from Le H south are plentiful. I used to have a channel to med tour and know you can do this on quiet lanes and roads for 95% of the way.

If by any chance you pass near the centre (limoges, La Souterraine) I would be pleased to be able to join you for half a day for say 40 miles or so. I live there.

Either way...enjoy the trip. It is a great way to see the place.

R23