In the summer of 1996, my then-to-be-future-in-laws (i.e. my wife’s parents before we got married) were camping on a caravan site near Port Grimaud in the South of France for three weeks. Their son Neil (now my brother-in-law) had thought about cycling down for a couple of years; after a few discussions, we decided we’d do it.

For convenience, we would set out from my grandparents’ house near Chichester, head to Portsmouth and catch the ferry to Caen / Ouistreham. From there, we would pick out the route that was the best compromise between direct and scenic. The aim was to get there as quickly as possible. First estimates on the map suggested about 720 miles from Ouistreham to Port Grimaud.

Equipment

We wanted to be as self-reliant (cheap!) as possible, staying at municipal campsites and cooking our own food. We’d have to carry all our own food, clothes and camping gear. I also wanted to take my “new” Olympus OM10 to take photos of the trip. Plenty of luggage space required!

I had an old Peugeot Super Competition racing bike adapted for light touring—36-spoke wheels, a Blackburn rear rack and a lowrider-type front rack. I removed the mudguards for the trip, but retained the Profile aero bars. Neil had a new Saracen mountain bike with rear rack; he fitted bar ends to give more hand positions.

Training

I had done quite a bit of cycling prior to this trip, but no long journeys for quite a while beforehand. In particular, this would be the first time I’d break 70 miles since a knee operation a few years ago. I did a four-day training ride about two weeks before the trip, from my grandparents’ in Chichester, stopping off with my then-fiancée Sam during her medical training in Salisbury, and continuing to my other grandparents’ house in Bristol before retracing my steps. Four consecutive 60-mile days, and I didn’t feel too bad. Encouraging.

Neil had also done long rides in the past, and prepared with a couple of longish trips around his home near Birmingham. Once he came down to Chichester, we tried a 30-mile ride with the bikes loaded up to make sure everything stayed on.

The ride

All my photos from the ride are on Kodachrome 64, taken on an Olympus OM10 with a Sigma 28mm f2.8 lens and a polarizing filter (often overused—I was a beginner!); and scanned in, some using a Minolta Scan Dual IV, some with a cheapo UMAX flatbed scanner, compressed to suit low-bandwidth modem conncetions that were common when I first published this article on my old web site. Quality is generally terrible, and now I’m more into photography, I’m ashamed of these shots!

Day 1: Chichester to Caen

This was a bit of a warm-up day, riding from home base to the port as Portsmouth, then spending nine hours on the ferry, then riding to a campsite just outside Caen before dark. Saw HMS Britannia from the ferry. Total ridden distance was just under 50 miles.

Whilst waiting for the ferry, a couple on a tandem started talking to us, then started criticizing our bikes, saying we’d never make it on one bike with racing tyres (23mm) and one with tractor tyres (1.5″ slicks)! It turned out they were just pottering around Brittany for a couple of days. If that was you: we made it easily with almost no trouble—see below.

Day 2: Caen to Sées

A very boring day—fighting our way south on big rolling dual carriageways. At least we had a tailwind and sunshine. Neil was suffering from a stomach upset, which made his day even worse.

Day 3: Sées to Vendôme

Bad start to the day—about 10 miles out of Sées, I thought I’d left my passport behind at the site. I was just about to turn back for it leaving Neil to wait when an intensive search of my panniers uncovered it.

Better roads and scenery. Discovered that France closes for lunch, so if you want to eat, buy in the morning! In Vendôme, we’d stopped to look for the campsite, and a friendly Frenchwoman in a Fiesta drove up and asked if we were OK. I explained we were looking for the campsite, and she beckoned us to follow her. 30mph through the suburbs after 85 miles isn’t funny; she did get us to the site though. Friendly Belgians gave us some chocolate. After a day’s hot cycling, half a bottle of cheap table wine each was enough to make us very unsteady on our feet! Total distance: 87 miles.

Day 4: Vendôme to Vierzon

Sunny with some clouds, tailwind still going strong. Very pleasant day, including crossing the Loire at Blois. Nice campsite by the river; hot showers! Phoned Sam to let her know we were still alive and enjoying ourselves.

Day 5: Vierzon to Montluçon

Today we had the only headwind of the ride, crossing open cornfields. Plenty of slipstreaming. Hot sun and plagues of locusts (or maybe just crickets) all over the road.

I had flat tyre problems on this day—not punctures, just an old inner tube letting go. Tried to repair it a couple of times, but had to replace it in the end. Other than a dried-up chain needing oil, this was the only bike problems we had.

About halfway through the day, France started to get a bit hilly. Nice but nondescript ride. Campsite at Montluçon was horrible, thanks to large numbers of “gypsies” (not true Roma) making lots of noise all night and being generally messy.

Day 6: Montluçon to Thiers

Started with a steep hill out of Montluçon. Scenic but uneventful. Nice campsite near Thiers—took a little while to find, though! Discovered that even McDonalds don’t sell a substantial breakfast in France.

Day 7: Thiers to Solignac (Le Puy en Velay)

Neil’s hands were giving him trouble—the lack of riding positions on the mountain bike was playing havoc to the extent that he couldn’t touch his fingers together. Lent him my gel-padded mitts which seemed to help a bit. The problem lasted for several months after the ride.

The day ended with a descent into Le Puy en Velay past the very bizarre church on the rock, then the shock of finding that the campsite at Solignac was up another huge hill. Yellow Michelin maps don’t show terrain too well…

Day 8: Solignac to Lanas (Aubenas)

Solignac-sur-Loire; Chadron; Saint Martin de Fugeres; Salettes; Aubenas; Lanas

Pleasant rural start. Very strange huge curved brick bridge out in the wilds near Chadron (below, map); couldn’t work out what it was for. It turns out to be the Viaduc de la Recoumène, built in 1925 as part of an unfinished railway project called La Transcévenole: more information at Structurae. Thanks to Valérie Valette for this information!

Lots of climbing—first time over a mile high on a bike. Met a German cyclist who’d been biking around Europe for 3000 miles and planned to finish that day, meeting his girlfriend in Aubenas.

In the afternoon, we came down off the Low Alps onto the coastal plain. This descent was the most fun I have ever had on a bike—perfect road surface, nearly a mile of vertical descent over about twelve miles of road, cruised at over 30mph most of the time. We named the experience “Alptastic”! Stopped a couple of times to admire the view and let our rims cool down.

Halfway down the descent, we met the German, stopped with a despondent look on his face and a flat rear tyre. “It is finished”, he said. We thought he was being a bit melodramatic—was this his first ever puncture?! Then he pointed to the section of his rear wheel where the brakes had worn through the rim… He had phoned his girlfriend and she was coming to pick him up, some ten miles short of his destination after several thousand miles.

Aubenas nearly killed me. It was very hot with stifling exhaust fumes: after the clear air of the mountains, I felt very ill indeed. Then I ate 3½ choc-ices for lunch (Neil only wanted 1½, and we’d bought a packet of five!) which made matters much worse. I don’t remember much of the ride to the site at Lanas.

Day 9: Lanas to Aix-en-Provence

Lanas; Pradons; Ruoms; Vallon Pont d’Arc; Salavas; Barjac; Saint-Gervais; Bagnols sur Céze; Avignon; Cavaillon; Aix-en-Provence

An awkward decision—we had 190 miles to go, and we felt like we wanted to do it in two days. However, we didn’t want to arrive at the campsite too late, and Neil knew that there was a big ridge before the coast. We decided to try to put in a long day and push for Aix-en-Provence, some 115 miles away, leaving us a mere 75 miles for the final day.

This was probably the most scenic day to start with: the Ardèche valley was really pretty, and we crossed the river at Vallon Pont d’Arc. Stopped in Barjac for the mid-morning break to find a large bustling market. Popped into a supermarket for more choc ices.

We had the only rain of the trip on this day: coming into Avignon on the main road, it started to get really hot and oppressive. We stopped in Avignon for lunch, and the heavens opened. Had to shelter for about twenty minutes, then it all stopped. The next section was all industrial main roads, and was very unpleasant.

We made it to Aix, covering 115 miles, and descended into the town at over 35 mph. The woman at the campsite asked where we had come from that day, and would not believe our answer of “Lanas, near Aubenas”. She made me write it down—turned out she commuted from Aubenas every day and couldn’t believe anyone would cycle it.

Day 10: Aix-en-Provence to Port Grimaud

Aix-en-Provence; Saint-Maximin; Brignoles; Besse sur Issole; Vidauban; Les Arcs; Le Muy; La Garde Freinet; Grimaud; Port Grimaud

This day was a breeze—a relatively low mileage with the knowledge that this was the last day. Simple route, too: we just followed the route nationale that runs parallel to the autoroute as far as Le Muy, then turned south over the big hill through La Garde Freinet (which sounds as though it’s a warning about brakes, aptly).

Neil found a burst of energy and I struggled to keep up over the ridge. Very hot day—we stopped for a drink at La Garde Freinet before the exciting descent through the old village of Grimaud.

Arrived at the site at about 3pm, having covered 74 miles. Family not yet arrived: we met up with some family friends and ate chips. Sam and parents turned up the following day, surprised to find us there already. We had covered a total of 720 miles in France (i.e. not counting the Chichester to Portsmouth to Caen mileage) over nine days—an average of 80 miles per day.