Cherbourg to..................

Our next foray into France will start and end in Cherbourg (due to ferry tickets) and we intend to tour the country for a week before holing up in the Vendee for a further week enroute to Cherbourg. We don't particularly want to go further north than Paris so:

1. If the ferry docks at 11:00, where is the best place to reach for the first night ???? to start the trip? We were aiming for Mulhouse but MS Autoroute predicts a ten hour trip for this journey, any other recommendations?

2. Next stop will be somewhere ???? (2nd night) after touring down through Switzerland to Arles (3rd night) before heading back through the centre acoss Millau (got to see this) and ???? then onto the Vendee.

Anyone care to fill in the ???? gaps?

Your advice is much sought and appreciated.

Tim

Surely it all depends on how fast you want to ride, which roads (Motorway / A / B - or N / D as the French call them) for how long and quite what sort of place you want to stay in? Large town / city, vilage, B&B, type of hotel etc. etc. etc......

I can only guess you don't fancy the 10 hour ride, arriving at 9pm or later if you fancy stopping (daudling?) for lunch / tea?

So, if you fancy a five hour ride, you will cover near enough half the distance, less the time spent eating, peeing, smoking or whatever. Does anywhere around halfway appeal to you?

Any half decent routeplanner will give you pretty good guide to time from A to B to C to D. Just pick out the distances / towns that suit you best. Simple maps are as good a way as any. Easy as that.

PS As a rough rule of thumb.

(i) France stops for lunch around noon, so you won't have got far if you stop to feed for an hour, your boat docking at 11.

(ii) If really you go for it on D roads, you will be lucky to average much over 45 miles an hour over a day's full ride.

(iii) Everyone's speeds vary. We did motorway Bordeaux to Algerceras at the bottom end of Spain in one day. But that was just to get to Morocco in a hurry. I wouldn't suggest it for a holiday. Others may baulk at doing the same journey in three or four days.

Some years ago I covered 603 miles from Ramersdorf (Munich) to Dunkerque, starting at 06:00 and just missing the 13:15 ferry, these days I doubt if that is possible. All the more surprising is that it was in an old Golf2 fully loaded with a bike on the roof rack!

Autoroute can be a bit conservative as it quoted the same route via Lille and Tournai as taking 7hrs 41mins. However the roads twenty years ago were not packed and the Belgian police preferred to sleep in the Aires.

Considering my destination is the other side of France and Paris straddles the route, I suppose that it would be better to stop for lunch in Argentan and stop for the night at Auxerre before heading further east or should I stick with the main route via Paris?

BTW Any recommendations for the French Alps in June?

Tim

As an alternative, if you don't mind a boring day on the motorways, why not head over from Cherbourg to around Metz (6 hrs according to Autoroute). The next day you can ride south through the Vosges mts, which has some great roads and scenery. The Route Des Cretes takes you down towards Mulhouse. From there you can either go into Switzerland or head down in the Jura Mts towards Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). The roads and scenery here are good, and they're relatively undiscovered.

I've ridden in the Alps a couple of times but haven't really scratched the surface. Look HERE for more detailed information. Depending on time available, you could ride any number of passes. Some of the really high passes might still be a little bit iffy in early June, but there are alternative ways. The Route des Grandes Alpes is a good place to start if you want to do the highest passes. (LINK) or the Route Napoleon is slightly further west and not as high. Both will take you down the to the Med if you want to go that far, but you can easily miss the coast and travel across towards Arles inland, and shoudl be able to work the Verdun Gorge into your route.

There's another thread here about Millau and surrounding roads.

Enjoy wherever you end up going.

EDIT: just seen your other post and I'm not sure if you're going by bike or car. The suggestions Ive made are mainly bike-orientated, but I'm sure would be fine in a car too.