France, June 08, ideas gratefully received

I'm heading over to Luxembourg for a few days in June; after that I have 7 days as a free agent, and then I must be in Brittany (near Brest). Travelling alone on an RT.

I'd thought about heading down to Schaffhausen, Switzerland, and the Rheinfall, which I've not seen before. From there to Brittany (according to MapSource) is 720 miles. Plan so far is:

Day 1 - leave Luxembourg, to Germany - bimble about
Day 2 - arrive Schaffhausen / Rhienfall (pm)
Day 3 - Switzerland; sightsee? Ride passes? Mountains?
Day 4 - ??
Day 5 - ??
Day 6 & 7 - start across to Brittany?
Day 8 - arrive Brittany, afternoon.

Does anyone have any "must sees" while in Switzerland, and whilst wandering across France?

I'd thought about going north again after Schaffhausen to the Vosges - love the area, but I have been there a few times...... or there must be any amount of stuff to be seen - sights, villages, towns, whatever - during the course of a 700 mile wander across France taking a line roughly (very roughly) through Belfort, Troyes, south of Paris, Le Mans and thence Brittany.

Thoughts and suggestions very welcome. I'm not a big fan of planning too tightly but I don't have much time to myself this year and want to pack in all the value I can.

In my experience the countryside from Belfort to Brittany doesn't really contain any great areas of spectacular scenery - there are no serious mountains to head for. That's not to say you can't have fun on the N and D roads, which will always be an improvement on roads here (well, here in Kent, anyway!). The countryside in Normandy and Brittany tends to be rolling hills which have some nice roads and attractive towns. Can't recommend any particular places to visit, I'm afraid - I tend not to go for towns and cities.

There are some good roads in the Jura mts (south between Belfort and lake Geneva and Neuchatel). This seems to be a pretty unknown part of France from a tourism point of view.

As an alternative, you could get over to somewhere like Andermatt in Switzerland in a few hours from Belfort and have a day or two riding the passes around there. Weather should be ok in June.

Or, from Schaffhausen you could set off towards Geneva and via a gentle loop south, you could go through the northern half of the Massive Central, which is great. Vaguely Geneva-Lyon-St Etienne-Issoire-Limoges then up through Poitiers. Depends on how many miles you want to do, really.

Have fun, wherever you go!

When in June are you thinking of going? If you're thinking about the first week, feel free to pop in to my place in Normandy on the way to Brittany. I'll be there with a few mates exploring the local roads.

Other than that, my only advice is to stay away from the autoroutes and avoid N roads wherever possible. Stick on D roads and you should have a great time whichever route you plan.

If I was to cross from Switzerland to Brittany, I'd aim to cross France as far south of Paris as I could. The further north you get the less interesting it becomes (huge generalisation, I know).

If you have a few major towns in mind, I'll happily give you some suggestions on which routes to take between them.

Rambling Sid Rumpo said:

Does anyone have any "must sees" while in Switzerland, and whilst wandering across France?

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Hello me deario

In between your cordwangling and your boagling, you could visit the Schlumpf Museum in Mulhouse.



Read up about its origins before you go!



Greg

Greg Masters said:

Read up about its origins before you go!

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There's some of the history here but it only tells a part of the story.

Basically, the Schlumpf brothers were getting State aid to run their textile business. But most of this aid was being syphoned off to fund their totally private museum. The museum was a homage to their mother Jeanne (who's bust appears, altar-like, in the museum).

They had a massive collection of splendid cars, including 2 of the six Bugatti Royales made. To give you an idea of the Royale, in 1986 one of these cars sold for US$8.4m. A further Royale is in the museum, a 'replica' of the Esder car made from original Bugatti parts.

There was a bit of trouble when the museum was 'discovered' in 1977 and the Schlumpf brothers did a runner back to their native Switzerland where Hans died in 1989 and Fritz in 1992.

Greg

Greg Masters said:

....Basically, the Schlumpf brothers were getting State aid to run their textile business. But most of this aid was being syphoned off to fund their totally private museum. The museum was a homage to their... the museum was 'discovered' in 1977 and the Schlumpf brothers did a runner back to their native Switzerland where Hans died in 1989 and Fritz in 1992.Greg

Click to expand...

Another vote for the Schlumpf museum. Quite unique and stacked with cars. As GM says a bizarre homage to their mother and the Bugatti motorcar. The place take on a strange religious air and is slightly disturbing. Quite what the locals, who hadn't been paid for months, thought when they broke into the place is beyond belief. Thankfully they didn't smash it all up in anger or break the collection up for sale.

Bugatti made beautiful racing and saloon cars, whilst GB was turning out the 'lorry' Bentley. The Royale is probably the nicest car ever made by anyone. I thought that the Schlumpf had a third Royale they intended to use as spares but probably I'm wrong*.

My father, now in his 80's, has a friend (himself in his late 70's) who restores / builds by hand old Bugatti cars in the south of France. He is about to retire by building a one last one-off 'special' out of the hundreds of Bugatti pieces he has in his garage. It will have a 'special' engine, coming from an Alfa Romeo of the right vintage, he simply doesn't have enough energy left to keep machining too many of his own parts!


*Just realised that the third Royale is a very nice one-off replica special, also in the museum.

Gentlemen, thank you for taking the trouble to comment; it's appreciated.

The Schlumpf Museum sounds fascinating - thanks, Greg, and Wapping; I'll go wangle my nurdling iron in there at some point. I'd prefer to avoid 500 mile days (OK, if there's a reason, but there's time enough for that sort of holiday riding when there's no alternative, if you see what I mean) but there's so much to see.... big problem of living in north Scotland is it takes forever to get out of the country so generally it's one trip a year. No long weekends buzzing round France or Germany for this boy, sadly.

The Massif Central is a big temptation; the Gorges du Tarn / Florac and Millau areas are spectacular, and I haven't yet ridden across the viaduct, I'm ashamed to say. I've been under it and around it and taken panoramic photos of it, but never actually ridden it. The roads road Florac are superb biking roads. Chalon sur Saone would be an interesting visit on the way across; never forgot camping there as an 10 year old on our way to a family holiday in Juan les Pins in the 60's - woke up in the morning and there was this huge, still river, tree reflections in it, warm, still air, and lots of little old men on battered pushbikes with baguettes in the baskets, heading home for breakfast. That's still the picture of the archetypal France I carry in my head; common sense and experience says that actually, 40+ years on, it's likely to be 200 hectares of Zone Industrielle and a motorway now

I can see this is going to go the same way as it always does - plan, then improvise and finally ignore, culminating in a mini-iron-butt day at the end .

Jacques, thanks for the kind offer, but I'm afraid I'll be wrong end of the month. Teaming up with other bikers, however briefly, is always good.

Robin, thanks for the suggestion of the Massif - got me thinking. BTW I opted for the exact opposite colour config - grey / silver Aerostich with hi-viz flashes - if that's your Aerostich colours in your avatar. But as SWMBO keeps pointing out, after the excesses of Christmas that zip might be a touch more difficult than before.... bugger.

Luxembourg itself is very pretty! I lived there for 4 years, and can't wait to go back on the bike.

Ride up to Vianden Castle. Or along the banks of the Mosel river which forms the border with Germany.

Luxembourg is indeed beautiful; there's a temptation to think it's full of little financial and EU gnomes (sorry if that was your, ah.chosen field of endeavour ). I went to Vianden in 2004 and that's where I'll be based this time as well.

I remember realising that I'd never been in a cleaner, tidier, place than Luxembourg. Litter? Nil. Graffiti? Nil Not to say it doesn't exist at all, I suppose, but it's certainly notable by its absence.