Off road routes through france?

[Losttheplot]

I'm planning on having a week or so riding down through france on my way to the pyrenees at the end of july.

I'll be riding my XChallenge, so willing to tackle any sort of difficulty level.

Does anyone have any pointers on where to look for trails/ROW, or previously used routes??

Start point would probably be Le Havre..

Nathan

 

[Wapping]

Le Havre to the bottom of France is a long way....

Off course you can go off-roading in France (it's a big sales market for the manufacturers) but it's rather like asking how to get from Cornwall to Scotland using off-road trails. Nobody in their right mind would do it, unless they had a lot of time.

The French have diferent 'trails' than we do, not least because their land ownership / access rules are very different to ours in the UK.

 

[Riders Rest]

If you want to find some decent trails to ride pick up some Blue Maps (Carte Topographique Serie Bleue) Use the "Carte de Randonnee" designed for back-packers they are 1:25000 they will detail all the tracks in a given region they are produced by IGN so www.ign.fr is their website address.

Alternatively you could use the Garmin Topo Map series which can overlay your mapsource routes.

France Topo 7 = Massif Central
France Topo 2 = Pyrenees, Sud Ouest
France Topo 1 = Alps

 

[Wapping]

How did the very long cross country ride go?

Any pointers, tips etc. for anyone who wants to do the same?

 

[Malcvtr]

In my experience, just use a Zumo 660 mate. During my trip in August, it chose "minor roads" more than once to get me to my destination quicker. Riding up a 20% inclined farm track, on a fully-laden 1200 in the pissing rain with tight bends and long drops did wonders for my sense of adventure