anyone taken the D56 from Dieppe to Neufchatel??

deswahriff

..looking for a more interesting route (compared to the river cycle path thing) for the first (French side!) leg of our Paris trip in May - seems to me there's three roads (D920, D56 and D1 from north to south), the middle one (D56) looks to travel through some forests and villages and takes our fancy, despite a "two chevron" climb at the start...

...don't suppose there's anyone out there who's travelled this road and can offer an insight?

many thanks.

andymiller

Until someone who can give you first-hand experience comes along...

One tip for route planning in France is that Michelin maps highlight scenic roads in green. I've always found these reliable.

You can also consult the viamichelin.com website which gives you access to more detailed maps.

Google Maps will give you satellite pictures and a terrain view (and usually, Google Streetview) which will give you a pretty good impression of what the route is like).

drrastapopulus

i have indeed done this ride, the d1 was a chore, fairly tedious and frustrating when we realised that we could have followed the river for the first (knackering, woefully unprepared) day!

would def recommend taking the more interesting route

neufchatel is a lovely town, enjoy! also, work out your route into paris, we had a bitch of a time negotiating the shitty sprawling suburbs!

deswahriff

..thanks guys, that viamichelin site is good - hadn't come across it before, cheers.

..drrastapopolus, any parts of Paris you suggest we avoid?..we've not started on that part of the route, but we'll be coming from the north, Chantilly.

cheers.

drrastapopulus

we ended up doing laps of CDG airport, also coming from that direction, im guessing that there are few ways to get to the nice bit of paris without going through some shit, just try not to spend as long doing it as we did getting there is all! (this was mainly North west suburbs)

if you are camping we stayed in a campsite in champigny sur marne (cant remember name, sorry) in SW paris, was nice campsite and had decent rail links to centre of town

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/22094408 (not sure if youll be able to access it but this is the route we took, not the most scenic way to paris but fairly quick)