Touring Northern France, plus bike hire?

sibx

Hello,

This might be a bit of a disjointed post as this is very much an early idea.

Myself and my friend are thinking of doing a bit of riding in northern France in the summer, getting the ferry to Calais and then hopefully cycling from there. At present, the only place we are planning on going is Paris, and the rest of the time we will just see where the road guides us.

We are going to use hostels/B&Bs for most of the trip to keep costs down.

The main point I think we could do with help on is bike hire. Does anyone know of or recommend any places in or around Calais that would hire out bikes to be used through other parts of the country for about 2 weeks? Its not really feasible for us to buy or use our existing bikes I don't think. Oh and we don't need anything too fancy, we'll be doing this at a leisurely pace, maybe 30-40 miles each day.

Any help/suggestions on this and anything else will be greatly appreciated. I intend to read through as much of this forum as possible, but I just thought I'd ask as well in case a kind soul can help

Many thanks,

Simon

cycladelic

I can't really help, but would guess that renting a decent bike for 2 weeks will set you back a bit - even a basic one won't be too cheap. And that's if you can find any. Why not take your own - which I presume are simple - bikes if you are just doing about 30-odd miles a day?

sibx

Not exactly. I ride about 300 miles per week through summer although my friend doesn't. I have a road bike and a mountain bike. The roadie wouldn't take the weight of lugging around clothes etc, and I'm not sure a mountain bike could take panniers if required?

As I said this is still early stages so we will see. Might end up doing just a week of touring on bikes and the other week on public transport perhaps if it proves too expensive.

andymiller

sibx wrote:

I have a road bike and a mountain bike. The roadie wouldn't take the weight of lugging around clothes etc, and I'm not sure a mountain bike could take panniers if required?

I don't think either assumption is correct.

There seem to be plenty of big (I6-stone or so) blokes happily riding about on road bikes so unless you already weigh 20 stone I suspect you're probably being overly pessimistic. After all if you're not camping then your luggage should come in at well under 10kg. If you do already weigh 20 stone you could consider using a trailer.

A hardtail mountain bike would take a pannier rack without too much trouble - even if it doesn't currently have the right fixings on the frame. Have alook around on this forum - this is a question that comes up regularly. It would definitely be worth doing some research on this as it's likely to be your cheapest alternative. If you've got a full suss then things are a bit more tricky.

sibx

I wouldn't trust my road bike with the wait, and as I use it for racing I'd prefer to keep it a bit more stress free.

Good idea about the mountain bike though, I will look into getting panniers fitted for that!

I did some research into the rental and cheapest I found was 210 Euros for 14 days!!

Stuck on a Giant

Put a rack on the MTB, fit some slicks and you'll be fine, especially if you're only carrying clothes rather than camping gear the weight shouldn'y really affect the handling.

Tedx

Stuck on a Giant wrote:

Put a rack on the MTB, fit some slicks and you'll be fine, especially if you're only carrying clothes rather than camping gear the weight shouldn'y really affect the handling.

This pretty much sums it up. People travel the world on old converted MTB's, I think you're worrying too much. Too much advice can become a bad thing, you end up thinking you're going to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a heap of collapsed twisted metal because you didnt by top of the range parts. Get the racks on, buy some slicks and get pedaling!