ok, for real this time, the last post about this trip to france, a kind of counterpart to the “concept” post with which I kicked this series off.

the topic is route and logistics.

in general, as I see it, the pros of cycling in densely populated areas (like france) are the safety net (including creature comforts) and the number of things to see/do. the downsides are that the sense of adventure, construed as danger or personal risk of a certain kind, is somewhat dulled, the costs (of the creature comforts), and, at least at times, cars.

not a hot take, but I don’t think there is one best way to do a trip on a bicycle. in this one, though, I indulged my indoor cat instincts, and I generally ate well and stayed in decent or better hotels. doing it differently makes it a different trip–possibly a better one! here are the obvious pros of the hotel-based tour:

• you carry less weight = ride faster = cover more distance (this is some benefit, but in the end, it’s mainly a different vibe.)
• you shower every day, so you can wash clothes = carry less weight; easy to mitigate skin problems; less impact in communal indoor environments
• you can count on a good sleep and bathroom
• you can easily stash the bicycle for sightseeing on foot

here are the obvious drawbacks:

• it costs money to stay in hotels, it costs money to eat in restaurants. the trip can be quite a lot cheaper if you camp. (though the overhead on camping gear / bike luggage is non-negligible.)
• every day, the main logistical worry becomes arriving in time for check-in. (by staying in big chain hotels with 24-hr check-in, you can mitigate this. and if you’re camping you will probably spend some time imagining or looking for the right spot.)
• at best you yo-yo between “civilization” = places with hotels and not = wherever else you ride. but this constrains the route.
• you feel less self-sufficient, if that matters to you. (you are probably never completely self-sufficient, but in the end it’s all about how you feel about it!)

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route planning.

in western europe, I find that komoot is my single best tool for making routes, with good (reliable) metadata on route type (including speed limits), user-submitted photos (for surface quality, vibes, points of interest), user-submitted recommendations, and integrated google street view to check things like the width of the shoulder or check against some sense of whether a section of road looks good to ride on. (since, however, a lot of their advantage comes from the submissions of the user base, it’s not helpful everywhere.) I also find their time estimates to be a useful benchmark even if they aren’t accurate in an absolute sense.

the obvious drawback to using komoot is that you stick to “known ways.” for this tour, which was (for me) kind of high-mileage and, as a result, mostly on paved surfaces, this was not super limiting. but a wilder tour could benefit from more study of satellite maps rather than road maps and user-submitted “highlights.”

I started by breaking up the total route into the number of days I had, and then tweaking each day to go through cool places, some of which I found on komoot, some of which I had heard of, some of which I read about. I put a little bit of thought into resupply, lunch, and dinner. by making each day with some detours for sightseeing, I had the option to shorten the route on the fly if I wasn’t feeling up to the mileage. then I looked for hotels to book, which finally resulted in a draft route that had accurate starting and end points for each day. I export the gpx from komoot to my cycling computer.

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here are the routes (the header image is a screenshot generated from https://veloviewer.com/):

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(…for more coverage of “france 2023”, click here…)