Shall almost definitely be moving to Paris as of September and I am wondering whether it is worth taking a mountain bike? I know they are all big roadies out there however are there any hills or trails near Paris? If not how far am I likely to have to travel? I won’t have a car with me, so train?
Any help appreciated…

bump? anyone?

There are some woodland/forest extensive areas up on the Hauts de Seine, which is the south-west side, outside Paris, in a sort of arc between Versailles and Massy.
These should be rideable from Paris itself.
I don’t know what it was like, in detail, because I only had a road bike over there.

To get to a REAL forest – the Fôret de Rambouillet is big and has all sorts of mountain bike trails. Rambouillet is a easily accessible by train from Gare Montparnasse.

I’ll have to give my memory a shake to give you more details.

cheers man, i shall have a look see on the maps at those areas, i seem to have managed to download an ign app for my ipad which had the whole of france on it for free :S not bad eh.
do you live over in paris?

I only worked there for a couple of years.

Here are some indications from the locals . . . .
>> tu as de quoi t’amuser un peu partout en Region Parisienne : Mongé, Meudon, Cheptainville, Cormeilles, Domont,…

>> Moi aussi je suis nouveau sur paris (enfin depuis qq temps maintenant). Je roule à Meudon le soir. A moins de 20 mn du 15eme tu peux commencer à rouler sans voir de goudron (à part qq routes à couper). Au debut je trouvais le coin plat et monotone, mais plus j’explore et plus je decouvre des sentiers sympatiques (y’a meme des portage !).

Hopefully, that you help you to decide whether to take the VTT (mountain bike). Once you are out there you will be able to report back your findings.

ah thank you, so doesnt sounds toootally crap anyway. i have a yeti asr-sl i was thinking of taking and maybe a street/dj bike.

it’s pretty good from what I can gather. The biiig forest out past Versaille (west) has some good singletrack and there is even more just to the south of Paris from what I’ve been told (sorry don’t know any names).

How about . . . .
http://www.parc-naturel-chevreuse.fr/velo-promenade.html

. . . best to get searching on google.fr

. . and scan maps.google.fr – the satellite views will show all the promising green stuff.

We’re taking our caravan here in August…
http://www.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=48.913355,2.733772&spn=0.002348,0.004528&t=h&z=18
Scanning the area there looks some woodland but no idea how flat it is. Debating taking bikes, but more for riding with the kids really. Picked due to proximity to Disney. 🙁