Going to head to France towards the end of September. Like the look of Colmar as a base for 5 days or so. Never been that way before, so if anyone has any hints and tips or reports good bad or indifferent I’d be keen to hear it. Riding wise I’m looking at 50-70 miles with a few lumps and bumps along the way, preferably on traffic free roads. Then perhaps a few winery tours to aid recovery. Merci.

An under-rated gem of road riding in Europe imo .. passed through once and loved the area, went back, going again soon. The Ballon d’Alsace and Grand Ballon are classic climbs and there’s loads of good riding in the area SW of Colmar. PM me if you’d like some rides I logged there, all are point2point during tours and head up the bigger climbs, might give you an idea or 2.

Colmar is very nice as is Riquewihr. Lots of gentle riding in the valley visiting wineries. Basically in the Rhine valley it’s rolling small hills but if you want to get out of the valley you have to climb over the big hills.
It’s easy to cross the Rhine into Germany too (much more organised but more traffic) and Freiburg is also very nice.

+1 for it being an underrated area (to us tourists, anyway). We did 1 night there on the way back from the Alps to Belgium and rode a nice circuit with Grand Ballon/Markstein. Stopped off at a mountain top war memorial/museum (Vieil Armand) which was quite impressive too.

We chose the route after reading Mountain Higher, and bizarrely the picture we took (months after doing the research) was of the exact same milestone they’d used in the book 😯

(the Chien Perdu reference is to me rescuing a dog that had done a runner from a camper van leaving the owner hysterical, it’s not another must-do climb!).

Thanks, that all sounds pretty positive. I’ll drop you a PM jameso, always nice to have a little inspiration but I’m already having fun mapping out likely routes.

jameso – Member
An under-rated gem of road riding in Europe imo ..

Totally this.

I’ve been going back every year for the last .. oh 12 at least. It is quite spectacular. Stay off the main roads, go find the single track lanes up and over..

I’ve a place in 88400 Xonrupt-Longemer, a Ski lodge in the winter and hiking/road bike lodge in the summer and autumn.

Keep this place quiet please, ta.

@bikebouy – do you rent it out to house trained STWers?

@ElShalimo I do hope so- if I could live anywhere in the world it might well be there.

@Bikebouy you must have impeccable taste in location- I’ve spent a few weeks in that valley and never want to leave!

One thing this thread has missed is the endless off road possibilities the area has. Mostly XC type riding with plenty of rocks and roots if you go looking, but it’s possible to do 100s of Kms off road without trying too hard.

Ohh.. plenty of gravel/fire access trails to play on. You really can get lost in the forests so remember a route back. I took the CXer 3 years ago and got lost. I’m no local obvz, but I know the roads pretty well now but I shot off on the CXer and ended up near Le Valtin (that’s quite some way away).. luckily I recognised the church spire in the town .. The trees are so thick and cover over the trails it’s like it’s midnight 😆 but oh so stunningly beautiful. A good rideout is around the lake Lac de Longemer and the top end is a large campsite with very very friendly owners who have a massive restaurant and BBQ open area..
But, take spares and many a puncture patch.. the pine forests are way more spiky than the FOD 😆

Great stuff fellas. I’m toying with idea of taking the crosser, but with only 5 days or so to play with I’m probably better off covering a bit more ground on the road. And hopefully getting lost less!

I’m off there next week 😀 Staying in a chalet between Gerardmer and La Bresse. This will be a return visit as we enjoyed the area so much a couple of years ago. Last time we camped on the site mentioned above at the end of Lac Longemer (the municipal one, there are sites on either end of the lake). Last time I only had the road bike but this time I’m taking both road and mountain bikes and have downloaded some GPS tracks to try and follow. (got lost on probably).
Road riding we did before was mostly to the north and NE of Longemer, really nice quiet scenic roads and plenty of hills. Around Lac Blanc and Lac Noir was very scenic. Lac Blanc has a bike park but I’m not sure what sort of level its aimed at. The climbs seemed to be less ‘pointy’ than the Alps or Pyrenees. After the ascent you tended to follow an undulating ridge road for a while before descending. This time I want to try the area south of La Bresse, and have plotted some routes based on the 3 Ballons Sportive. http://www.grandtrophee.fr/epreuve.php?C=22

Take the mountain bike! The area is great, particularly around Mollau where they hold the Cannondale Enduro Tour.

Route des cretes would be a nice one although its sadly gonna be far from traffic free in this time of the year. Or a challenge up Ballon D’alsace do it from all its three sides. Balon the servance closby is harder and used to be very quiet but I haven’t been on that one since I got myself properly lost around there aged 14

Damn I’m not going this year (family are there) and this thread is making me miss the place something rotten like.

I was staying at Lac Longemer a few days ago, beautiful area, did a few shortish MTB rides plus some hikes above the Col d’ Schluct. Potential for road riding looked awesome, massive network of tiny roads steep in places but never quite Alpine.

Didn’t see another UK plate for 4 days, hidden gem of a region could easily stayed another week.

Lovely area. Work Eguisheim into a route if you can for a lunch stop in medieval loveliness 🙂