Any French residents care to comment on finding trails to ride especially dept 18 it seams i live in a forest but its nearly all private and guarded by “Guard de chasse” who are quick to chase you off if you wonder in to the forest. how do you find places to ride

Much more land seams to be private than in England.

Gr are marked with red and white paint.

More local paths are marked in yellow.

Department 18 is le Cher. Have a look on Velovert.com in region sub menu if there are any local people.

As Chris said, check the regional forum on velovert. Then look up the local randos on vetete
The hunting season ends on Feb 29th, here’s hoping that the gamekeepers calm down afterwards for your sake 🙂

@edukator will hopefully be along, I’m not resident but here a lot – 92 so a vtt desert 😥

Try uttawagavtt.com and their facebook page also there is another site single.fr ? Will try and find it. vttfrance.com Is there a tourist office vtt map ?

tourist offices have the more boring stuff I was hoping to ride in the woods not just bridleway type stuff and that seams hard to find.

around here road riding is very popular but I am not seeing mtb in any amount local knowledge must be the key but the bike shop was not helpful.

whats a “GR” marked in red?

strava heatmap ?

This was the other site I was thinking of linky but does not cover 18

GR = grande route: The major footpath network across France.
I’d check the strava heatmap too, but because it doesn’t exactly have the most dense population around there, I doubt that there will be much activity.
Any local clubs around there? The ones that are ufolep are more informal and leisure orientated than the ffc affiliated clubs if that is of any importance to you.

2nd uttagawa for finding gps logged routes others have put up.

Try Wikiloc – a very useful resource.

Thanks, some very helpful info here.