Cycling along French Canals

Hi amb1713,
We live in the french side corner between Germany,Switzerland and France (Belfort) and this last fall, we pedal from Belfort to Dijon, Lyon, Avignon,and Nimes following the Doubs river, the Saone river and the Rhone river along the canals or the rivers tow paths. It's a good way to avoid the traffic and discover a quiter landscape. We found two main problems:
1- the cycling roads are often discontinous , in construction or badly maintained and we must return in the traffic, and there is no standard cycling path signs , or no signs at all.
2- the pavement is uneven and often not suitable for roadrace bikes (We have mountain bikes with fenders and panniers)
The tourism offices of the different towns you will reach can provide you their local cycling maps .
It was a good experience we expect to renew.
jeanMarc

Are there any websites/directories that include the canal routes that one could look up to plan an itinerary? Thanks!

Powerful Pete,

To built an itinerary, we use our local 1/100000 MICHELIN or IGN maps, where we can see the rivers and canals. When our journey is defined, we mail a request to the different tourism offices which are on the way a brochure of their local cycling paths.
You can find some informations here:

voiescyclables.free.frvoiescyclables.free.frOpen ↗ (in french and english)

An exellent swiss guide we used between Lyon and the see:

www.dulemanalamer.com
There is no tow path along the Rhone river, and this guide describes an almost quit road as close as possible of the river, avoiding the heavy traffic.

jeanMarc

JeanMarc,

Merci! I will check out the sites you suggest and see what I can come up with. I am just south of the border (in Rome) and with my wife we have been thinking about a family tour along the canals along with our children... so we are looking for relatively short stages, little traffic, and lots of small towns and bakeries for our... stops!

amb1713 said:

I would be pleased to hear from anybody who has experience of cycling along French canals. I am planning a trip in the summer from Calais to Grenoble - approx 600 miles - and want to investigate the advantages/disadvantages of using the waterways as opposed to the roads. I would like to find out if it is likely to take longer along the canals for example. Does anybody have any experience of this?
Thank you.

Two French canal cycling adventures that seem quite popular are the Canal du Midi and along the Loire. There are a quite a large number of possiblities along the Loire in either self-guided or escorted tours, or using the Bike & Barge formula, which is my personnal favourite.

Cheers,
Ronald

Thanks Ronald, I will check out the Canal du Midi (not that far away from Italy, after all).

Powerful Pete said:

Thanks Ronald, I will check out the Canal du Midi (not that far away from Italy, after all).

Here is a nice web site with a lot of information about "Le Canal du Midi"

Enjoy the discovery,
Au revoir,
Ronald

Au revoir et merci encore!

For the northern part of France, I can recommend you to have a look at

cyclo62.comindex.phpOpen ↗

The map is clickable and leads you to a lot of local tours. Maybe you can copy some of this information on your own map.

Unfortunately, my own tours starting or ending in France will bring you not to the south but to the north. But as they are all based on towpaths along rivers and canals and old railway tracks, they may be quite of use for other cyclists touring the northern part of France :

Belgium - Valenciennes - Cambrai - Saint-Quentin

Belgium - Armentières

Bergues - Belgium

Belgium - Roubaix

Belgium - Maubeuge - Hirson - Guise

For the French Ardennes, there's good and brand new information for those want to join the river Meuse :

La Voie Verte Trans-Ardennes

Good luck,
Fietslogies

For the whole of France :

af3v.orgaf3v.orgOpen ↗

As you will notice (confirmed by Jeanmarc), the number of "Voies Vertes" is still rather limited. The site is partly in English.

Hi
My husband and I just did the canal du Midi, Toulousse to Agde, was and incredible trip, fantastic cycle but you definitely need to have a GPS . We are looking at doing it again next year but a different route, cycling along the canals is great very flat, but so scenic and beautiful.