My other half disapears for half the summer to France taking our car with bike rack with her.

I fancy cycling over to France to join her, the shortest route avoiding the autoroutes/motorways/dual carriageways would take me from Warwickshire to Portsmouth and then from Saint Malo to our place in the Vendee, a route of about 330 miles.

Now I’m a slow old pootler and normally average the typical sort of 14-15 Mph rather than blasting along at silly pace.

How many days do you reckon I should be planning for and would Bivvying or credit card B&Bing be the way to go?

I do around 300 miles a week touring – but thats stopping for beers, having days off and carrying full camping kit. 60 – 70 mile days suits me

If you’re going light then anything around 80 miles will be fine. Depends on how much you want to stop en route. Personally, if it’s good weather, I’d rather be riding into the early evening than arriving somewhere and mooching around.

i do about the same as teej over a week.
50 or 60 miles a day is nice and unrushed.

oh, and can i join you please…………. 😉

You can save some B&B money in Pompey by giving a local member a shout…

Ton you’d be more than welcome, I can sort flights back out or you can ride back again.

Taff, I’d be looking at taking the Portsmouth-Saint Malo ferry which is normally an overnight crossing so take sleeping bag and kip on the floor, (it’s what we normally do when crossing with the kids on the Portsmouth to Le Havre crossing anyway.

yeah that’s fine. Offer is there if you [and ton] need it.

Taff,Thanks for the offer, that’s very kind of you, but I snore like a pig and prefer not to put anyone else in pain 🙂

Been looking at Via Michelin for the routes, as it provides full european mapping and does cycle routes as well as car and Motorbikes routing.

Only slight difficulty is it will only allow you to do 124 miles per route when on a bike.

But if I break it down into days, then it won’t matter about the overall route too much anyway.

Grab a map of the canal network – no cars nice tow paths 😉

Canals are an option, but I reckon I can’t spend more than 5 days travelling otherwise I’ll get it in the neck from my other half, shortest route avoiding main roads ive found so far is 251 miles so I could do that in four days nicely.

Second the canals. Did a little touring a few years ago with the S/O.

A little map work is a good thing before going to France as if travelling light and you are in the sticks(and you want to eat in the middle of the day) you have the following paradox – you can’t buy food becuase the shops are shut for lunch – so you need to go to a cafe / bar etc. However if you want your lunch cooked for you and you are later than 1.30 / 2, forget it as food has finished or the places are shutting.

Timing is everything.

But if you have a place in France you will likely know this. But I shout it out as we knew this – and forgot everything we knew when we got on our bikes!!!!