France Trip

Riding down to France next year and looking for any info that might help me organise my trip please. I will be riding down from Rotterdam and my first stop will be Etreaupont staying at Logis Hôtel le Clos du Montvinage Rest for one night. My next leg of the trip would be to Treignac Ridersrest for maybe a few days. The second leg is 400 miles and not sure if the girlfriend is up for that sort of mileage in one day. My third leg would be to the Vercors region and staying at Hotel le Marronnier again for a few day and then working my way up to Germany. I think Mr Arsey has stayed at these hotels and after reading is trip reports the region looks spot on. Also Mr Wapping seems to know France very well. Any suggestions would be great as i am not that familiar with France only visiting for a couple of days from Belgium.

Thanks Doc

Why not leave Treignac for another time and stay somewhere not 400 miles from the lovely hotel in Etraupont (used it twice)?

Somewhere in the Morvan, Burgundy or Alsace? Draw a box on a map with Troyes, Le Creusot, Mulhouse and Hageunau in the corners.

wessie said:

Why not leave Treignac for another time and stay somewhere not 400 miles from the lovely hotel in Etraupont (used it twice)?

Somewhere in the Morvan, Burgundy or Alsace? Draw a box on a map with Troyes, Le Creusot, Mulhouse and Hageunau in the corners.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I will have a look.

Etreaupont, on the French / Belgian border to Treignac, south of Limoges is a long way, even if you take motorways. Not least you probably have Paris sitting in between. It shows the dangers of trying to do too much, based on ‘This place is nice and this place is nice and so is this place’ then trying to do them all in one go. Pee your pillion off on day two and the whole trip might become a nightmare.

Wessie has the best idea. In short break it down in daily mileages that you / she are comfortable with. If that is say 200 miles, great. If that is to be 200 miles on really small D roads all the way, that can feel like a very long way. The mistake that many riders new to France make is not getting their head around the size of the country. The best method I have found to explain it is by asking them to imagine the same distance (a mile is still a mile, in England, France or Japan) from their home to somewhere they are familiar with in the UK. For example, you live in Huddersfield, so to go to Elgin on the Scottish coast past Aberdeen directly, is about 400 miles. Would you / your pillion pillion do that in a day? Would you do it on small B roads all the way? Then consider Huddersfield to Bristol, conveniently 200 miles away, if you go directly. How would you do that in a day, with your pillion and still be talking at the end of it.... and be looking forward to the next day, too?

The great thing about places is that they generally don’t go away. Treignac won’t vanish. Save it for another trip, maybe opting to travel over via the Normandy ports, instead of Holland?

Etreaupont, to say Quarré-les-Tombes, a nice enough decently sized village in the heart of the attractive Morvan, is 200 miles using what I would call ‘sensible’ N and D roads, as opposed to every small left, right, left, left, right down every ‘must do’ small D road that you can find. You can also chuck in some motorway between Reims and Troyes if you fancy it. There are two hotels in Quarré-les-Tombes. I haven’t stayed in either but they look OK, last time I went past and made a note of the place. The Logis gets a good write-up and the other place seems OK, too. The village has a bar, a small grocery store, a chemist and a 24 hour petrol pump, payable by card. I think it all looks OK.

Quarré-les-Tombes to Rencurel is then about 220 miles down sensible roads or you could even blast it on the motorway between Chalon-sur-Saone to past Lyon. One tip, you do not want to ride through the middle of Lyon, if you can avoid it.

I hope this gives you some ideas, especially how to go about breaking up a journey into bite sized and imaginable chunks. Not least, it is sometimes nice to have a day off the bike somewhere, without having to load up and ride on.

PS Don’t be afraid to take motorways. Governments build them (at great expense) for a purpose. Use them sensibly and life can become easier.

PPS. Start each day with a full tank of petrol, even if that means just lobbing in a quarter of a tank the evening before. It makes life an awful lot easier; trust me on that.

Thanks Richard. I will take another look today. Your probably both right in that I am trying to do too much in one trip. We do prefer to sail out from Hull as its convenient and a lot easier than riding down to go over on the Chunnel.

Doc said:

Thanks Richard. I will take another look today. Your probably both right in that I am trying to do too much in one trip. We do prefer to sail out from Hull as its convenient and a lot easier than riding down to go over on the Chunnel.

Click to expand...

You want to try riding to the Chunnel from up here!

Khulu said:

You want to try riding to the Chunnel from up here!

Click to expand...

I can believe it pal. I have driven down and that was bad enough.

Doc said:

Thanks Richard. I will take another look today. Your probably both right in that I am trying to do too much in one trip. We do prefer to sail out from Hull as its convenient and a lot easier than riding down to go over on the Chunnel.

Click to expand...

As soon as I suggested it, I had in mind where Huddersfield is.

That being said, you are swapping riding through the UK (which is not all bad) with possibly grinding across France. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. But, if you are set on Hull, so be it.


Cue..... Riding across France is great, the UK is shite, type comments.

One tip.

I think you bought the Michelin route planning 726 map?

Take a foot ruler and mark out on it 200 miles, 300 miles and 400 miles, using the scale of the map. Not sure how to do that? No problem: Google Paris in Google maps. Pick a spot that looks about 200 miles away and Google will display the route. Fine tune at will. You now know where is 200 miles from Paris. Put the end of the ruler on the middle of Paris on the map and mark on the ruler where the place you selected falls along its length.

You now have a pretty good guide as to where a circle with radius of 200 / 300 / 400 miles is from any point on the map. Put one end on Rencurel say and rotate the ruler around, you should find yourself in the Morvan. Swing the ruler around again and you should find yourself in Provence.

You do of course have to use a bit of imagination, if there is a bloody great mountain range to go through or (more likely) around but as a rough rule of thumb it ain't bad.

PS If it was good enough for Marshal Zhukov to move entire armies across Russia, it will be good enough for most of us....



He is doing it with dividers, to establish distances. The ruler is just a cruder version.

Thanks again Richard. Looking at the places you suggested. Getting to Etreaupont is a good starter from Rotterdam then onto Quarré-les-Tombes. From there we are thinking maybe the Dordogne region and exploring round there. Maybe finding a base for a few days and then deciding where to go next. Like you say places will not disappear so the Vercors could be another trip.

Quarré-les-Tombes to say, Périgueux is somewhere between 270 and 300 miles. If that suits you both, I see nothing wrong with the idea. It's quite a nice run, scenery wise (as so much of France is) not least as it changes for much between the start, the middle and the end. Having a base to explore from is a great idea.

Then you only have to decide how to come back.

Sounds good. I have heard good things about Riders Rest Treignac. Depending how long we stay maybe coming back up the coast.

Wapping said:

One tip.

I think you bought the Michelin route planning 726 map?

Take a foot ruler and mark out on it 200 miles, 300 miles and 400 miles, using the scale of the map. Not sure how to do that? No problem: Google Paris in Google maps. Pick a spot that looks about 200 miles away and Google will display the route. Fine tune at will. You now know where is 200 miles from Paris. Put the end of the ruler on the middle of Paris on the map and mark on the ruler where the place you selected falls along its length.

You now have a pretty good guide as to where a circle with radius of 200 / 300 / 400 miles is from any point on the map. Put one end on Rencurel say and rotate the ruler around, you should find yourself in the Morvan. Swing the ruler around again and you should find yourself in Provence.

You do of course have to use a bit of imagination, if there is a bloody great mountain range to go through or (more likely) around but as a rough rule of thumb it ain't bad.

PS If it was good enough for Marshal Zhukov to move entire armies across Russia, it will be good enough for most of us....

He is doing it with dividers, to establish distances. The ruler is just a cruder version.

Click to expand...

I used to have a pen like devise with a small wheel at the end; put the wheel where your starting from; zero it: then roll down the route you fancied; there's your mileage; did it work; no idea; slung it in the tank bag and winged it using pace notes;

Khulu said:

You want to try riding to the Chunnel from up here!

Click to expand...

I always think that ride to the tunnel is the start of the holiday.

Quinten said:

I always think that ride to the tunnel is the start of the holiday.

Click to expand...

Mine starts once I get onto mainland Europe as it's a long drag to get to Kent for me.

Quinten said:

I always think that ride to the tunnel is the start of the holiday.

Click to expand...

Ok if you live in kent.

Khulu said:

Mine starts once I get onto mainland Europe as it's a long drag to get to Kent for me.

Click to expand...

Mine starts in Hull

Doc said:

Ok if you live in kent.



Mine starts in Hull

Click to expand...

Mine too.

Quinten said:

I always think that ride to the tunnel is the start of the holiday.

Click to expand...

Those 10 minutes must just fly by.

Yes, it was rather a tongue-in-cheek comment!

In my defence, if the roads are busy (or, as they were yesterday, snarled up by Operation Stack while Giles and his mates were nosing around the ports) it can take closer to 15 mins than 10.

I believe (I have never been there) that Riders Rest can provide their guests with a bunch of suggested rides to take, centred on the guesthouse.


One thing confuses me in the picture in post #12. The picture says that the journey between Quarré-les-Tombes and Treignac is 382 miles. This seems a long way. I guess you set it up as Quarré-les-Tombes to Périgueux, then from Périgueux back to Treignac? I would estimate the journey from Quarré-les-Tombes to Treignac at much closer to 300 miles than 400.