I’ve reached the stage of life where doing stuff I enjoy while I’m still able feels important, and so each summer I take myself and my bike somewhere in France where lovely countryside is crossed by quiet roads.
Why cycling, why on my own and why in France?
Cycling can be wonderfully meditative; combining fairly serious physical activity with a feeling of gentle self-sufficiency, and travelling alone heightens that. No drama about where or when to stop or to press on.
And France has such varied landscapes, which through the summer months sit habitually beneath blue skies. In July the nation is host to le Tour de France, and while in recent years lack of home rider success has lessened its hold on the French, it’s still a major spectator draw and shines a helpfully favourable light on cyclists – whatever their nationality.
Each year I head somewhere different where the French rail network will take me, and in 2025 that was Le Puy en Velay in the Massif Central, with the Haute Loire, volcanic landscape of the Auvergne and Monts de l’Ardeche to explore. Some planning is necessary – I was travelling with my pride and joy disassembled in a bike box - like a giant suitcase on wheels.
This takes some forward booking on Eurostar (where bookings open eleven months in advance), and general forethought in order to make stress-free progress through stations and underground, and on the trains beyond Paris. Bike boxes are big beasts – I’ve been asked “is that a double bass?” which indicates size – and heavy when full of bike and associated equipment. Steady pace, and tactics for escalators. My remaining luggage is pretty minimal – a rucksack with two sets of cycling kit and evening clothes along with other essentials.
The remaining train travel bookings are straightforward and made as tickets become available – for my July dates this means sometime in March. Trains between York and London, TGV between Paris and the nearest TGV station to my destination (in this case St.Etienne) and TER regional trains for the remaining journeys. Ensuring you book on the upper deck on the “duplex” TGV is very definitely the best way to enjoy the view.
I should say it loudly and plainly that fast train travel through France is wonderful – the gradual change in the landscape; the first vines, the plunge from the rolling hills into the Rhone valley, the change in the intensity of the sunshine. TGVs are majestic things – they are in a different league to UK long-distance rail - there’s something about the power they embody at touching 300kph which is a bigger thrill than a plane’s dash down the runway. If you fancy a little more elbow room then first class isn’t outrageously more expensive than standard. Okay – I’m a solo-travelling grumpy old man, but as a once-a-year treat, it makes me happy.
Travelling from York, I also book an overnight stay in London on the outward leg to enable an early start, and to give me an evening catching up with my London-based daughter. Without naming names one chain of hotels have half a dozen within a short walk of St. Pancras and while not budget options, you’re pretty likely to get the good night’s sleep you’d want ahead of a day’s travel and advance booking keeps it affordable. I’m required to drop the bike box into the luggage depot 90 minutes prior to departure, so it’s a 5:30am alarm, a brisk trundle to handover at the luggage depot and departure from St.Pancras around 8am. On arrival at Gare du Nord my journey is just two stops on the RER underground to Gare du Lyon. Parisien travellers have been unfailingly helpful, even when trains have been rammed full, parting uncomplainingly around the inconvenient bulk of my bike box.
My ultimate destination each year is the result of gloomy winter days digging into railway network maps and testing journey feasibility via the booking websites. I stay in simple holiday rentals where I can make the most of the outdoor urban life that comes with French summers.
In Le Puy my accommodation was a lovely simple apartment above an antiquarian bookshop at the foot of the final climb to the cathedral. There were local shops and dozens of restaurants within a short evening walk. Both the bike box and the bike itself lived in quiet corners of my apartment; over the years owners have occasionally suggested a shed or the cellar “pour le velo” but I quietly ignore this. They clearly don’t know its cost or its value to me!
A chunk of those same winter days was spent with the wonderful Outdooractive IGN mapping onscreen – exploring the region and plotting some 90-100km routes out into the surrounding landscape. The geology of Le Puy’s region makes the landscape really varied – there’s some fairly serious up and down but also long gentle river valleys; there is pretty and there is bleak.
Lots of quiet roads, but even in rural areas like this there’s still a good smattering of restaurants and bakeries. Essential refuelling is the pleasure it should be in France and restaurant owners are generally accommodating – a well-overlooked parking slot or popping the bike in the garage while I eat. I always plan an easy ride out for a really nice Sunday lunch as a mid-holiday recovery day – from Le Puy this was a gentle 35km pedal to Le Chou et Chevre at Le Monastier and an even more gentle pedal back loaded with their Cochon de Haute-Loire and more. The sun shone throughout, as it did every day other than a Saturday evening’s warm rain.
Alongside the varied landscape, Le Puy itself was fascinating and photogenic – I took my film camera for walks and produced a photobook of the results when I got home. My return journey, though tinged with the regret of leaving, was smooth and still very firmly part of my holiday – comfort, passing countryside, and a late lunch on the terrace of a Paris bistro – an early start got me back to York within one day.
Doing this flight-free involves a little more work but gives me two travel days that are still a pleasure, rather than a grim procession through security checks and a couple of hours with a planeful of germs. It costs a little more but there are conveniences too – start and finish of my rail journeys were within 20mins walk of home and destination.
