Massif Central - Four day jaunt

Just back from a four day Calais - Calais round trip to the Massif Central, organised by a friend of mine.

Great fun and lots of excellent roads. Will lob up the Garmin file later when I have tidied it up.

Wapping said:

Just back from a four day Calais - Calais round trip to the Massif Central, organised by a friend of mine.

Great fun and lots of excellent roads. Will lob up the Garmin file later when I have tidied it up.

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One of my fav areas of France - glad you had a good time and will look forward to seeing where you've been

Andres

Lots of green lanes in the area as well I've heard

Long old route for a 4 day trip, be interested to see your routes, still pondering over my long weekend next spring.

Rasher said:

Long old route for a 4 day trip, be interested to see your routes, still pondering over my long weekend next spring.

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best plan to be near the bm dealers eh

Massif central is a bikers paradise. Auvergne tourist board have a widely distributed leather extolling the virtues of the area as a biking destination.

Good stuff to eat, twisty roads, volcanos, what's not to like

Hi Wapping,

I too would be very interested in seeing your routes, and any recommended places to stay!

I am thinking next year's early season outing could accommodate such a jaunt instead of a round Normandy/Loire/Picardy/Pas de Calais.

Very interested especially if much of the route work etc has been done already

JH

Rasher said:

Long old route for a 4 day trip, be interested to see your routes, still pondering over my long weekend next spring.

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Easily doable for sure me ol' fruit, but a reasonably long way in four days. Two days down, two days back.

From the Garmin tracklog it was about 1,200 miles in France mostly on D roads, plus about 120 to get me down to the chunnel and back; say 1,300 all in door-to-door from central London.

We didn't slouch about, stop to take pictures, gawp at the views or any of that old nonsense. In short, we went to ride our bikes, briskly. I took my F800R, a great little bike, which will get even better when it has its Wilbers fitted at MCT in a week or so

We stayed at a separate hotel each night and travelled light; just a very basic tailpack in my case.

Each day, a coffee stop in the morning and afternoon and a lunch break of about an hour, starting the days out at about 09:30 and into the hotels between 17:00 to 18:00 in the evening with no stress. Fuel stops, two in a day.... ride in, fill, ride straight out.

Five of us in our bunch. All 'experienced' riders, including a (retired) traffic Class 1 plod instructor from the Met, a founder member - and still reasonably active instructor with - Rapid Training / Rapid Tracks etc. We didn't need to use a 'marker drop-off' routine at all, never being far apart on the road all day.

I have attached the Garmin Mapsource tracklog, hosted on DropBox. I will use it to tidy-up the routes in a day or so.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14126843/Massif Central Garmin Tracklog.gdb

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I plan on doing something similar in 2012 as a 'Wapping Wander'.

A great ride, you guys covered some miles for sure....

I am heading that way in a couple of weeks with a group on road bikes to meet up with our trail bikes that are travelling in the back of a big van.

Would be interested in your viewpoint of riding to Auvergne in a day from the chunnel - it is def a full days riding but would like to know if you would also opt for the motorways or have an alternative more interesting route in mind? or anyone else that has rode that way.

Cheers

MSK72 said:

A great ride, you guys covered some miles for sure....

I am heading that way in a couple of weeks with a group on road bikes to meet up with our trail bikes that are travelling in the back of a big van.

Would be interested in your viewpoint of riding to Auvergne in a day from the chunnel - it is def a full days riding but would like to know if you would also opt for the motorways or have an alternative more interesting route in mind? or anyone else that has rode that way.

Cheers

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With an early start (as you live in Hants consider an overnight boat to Le Havre) getting to somewhere like Montlucon is an easy, if long ride.

My first trip on a bike to France involved riding from Le Havre to Montlucon avoiding motorways as the first leg. The roads weren't very interesting and I'd be tempted to use the autoroute down to Orleans, where it starts to get better.

MSK72 said:

I am heading that way in a couple of weeks with a group on road bikes to meet up with our trail bikes that are travelling in the back of a big van.

Would be interested in your viewpoint of riding to Auvergne in a day from the chunnel - it is def a full days riding

but would like to know if you would also opt for the motorways or have an alternative more interesting route in mind?

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(1) Where in the Auvergne? It's a big area; from top to bottom would be at least a couple of hours ride on its own. Let's guess at Clermont Ferrand as it is in the middle.

(2) What time do you intend to start off in the morning / what time do you intend to finish at your hotel? The further in time these two are apart will increase your potential travelling distance.

(3) Stopping en-route? We had two stops of about 30 minutes for coffee and about an hour for lunch on each day, plus two quickish fuel stops. We probably averaged 45 mph all day on reasonably demanding D roads, so those three simple stops cost us 90 miles. If you stop more or for longer you will lose more miles. You may ride faster or slower of course, or stop more or less, which will add or subtract from your average speed. Who knows?

(4) Work out (1) (2) and (3). Look at the Tracklogs and look at a decent map (see sticky). Yes, you can do it in a long day for sure, probably doing a good mixture of motorway*, National (N) roads and some majorish Departmental (D) roads. How, is difficult for someone else to answer. As Wessie points out, as you appear to be in Hampshire it may be better to travel over from Portsmouth overnight and crack off early in the morning? But, if the rest of your party is travelling on the Chunnel (or you really need to start from there) then you are stuck with that, I guess? Can you cross overnight, or cross the evening before on the chunnel? If so, you will save one hour due to the time difference.

*There is no shame in motorway miles to cover distance, particualrly if you need to be somehwere by a certain time or to achieve some other purpose, or it is really lashing down with rain or the main roads simply run parallel for miles and miles and miles. That is why there were invented. The purpose of your holiday is I guess to ride off-road bikes in the Auvergne and you want to get there in a day from northern France? Start to cut your cloth accordingly. Sit down with your mates and cobble something together.


PS Michelin's Bis 'tourist' routes map is good. So (often) are the Bis 'tourist' roads themselves.

We often ride from Le Havre to Treignac (Just North of Brive), takes me approx 6 to 7 hours inlcuding stops using the Paege and N154 through Evreux/Nonancourt/Dreux/Chartres/Orleans (from here you can take a more scenic route N20 D918 D940 adds an hour) or push on on the A20. If you are headed for Clermont Ferrand then stay on the A71 from Orleans. Ferry docks at 08:00 so gets you there for 3pm (give or take) but I know the route and don't stop long on my own i suspect with a group you are going to add a couple of hours.

Brilliant areas to ride both road and Green Lane.

How much of this was motorway and built up areas Vs really great roads?

I may investigate climate and see if it could be another option for my trip next spring, I really want two days of fantastic roads from the four day jaunt, preferably with the closest you can get to Alpine roads without going that far (Mainly cos my GS will stack up well against the power rangers and I love really tight twisty roads where the fun is at legal speeds, and generally the corners are easier to see / judge)

Still buzzing from La Bonnette last month. the more I rdie in Europe, the more I crave returning, and hats off to Wapping for getting out there so often - and taking others on the journey

Rasher said:

How much of this was motorway and built up areas Vs really great roads?

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Is that a question for me or Mr Riders Rest?

If me, the only motorway was a stretch from Calais to J5 (Cambrai is 8) and about junction 9 on the way back, picking up the motorway at Peronne. Say an hour or so each way. The rest is 'great roads', I guess.

It's not Alpine, as it does not go high enough. We never got above 1,800 meters, I think. But the whole area's roads are all as much fun as you want to make them.

As to the climate?

France has four broad climatic zones: the humid seaboard zone west of the line Bayonne-Lille with cool summers; a semi-continental zone with cold winters and hot summers in Alsace-Lorraine, along the rhodanian corridor and in the mountainous massifs (Alps, Pyrenees, Massif Central); an intermediate zone with cold winters and hot summers in the North, the Paris region and the central region; and a Mediterranean zone with mild winters and quite hot summers in the south of France.

Make what you will of that.

Appreciate all of the info and sharing experiences, plenty off food for thought.

I am not planning the route but am sure we will be sitting down soon to talk it through.

I think we are going through the tunnel but will see how it turns out as both crossing are roughly the same return price at moment about £50 (without cabin).

I can see from the track logs and a bit of google maps that there is going to be a fair bit of time in the saddle before we even start throwing ourselves off road up and down the mountain routes - never mind the ride back!!

May be back with a few more questions as its my first jaunt into France on a bike...

MSK72 said:

I can see from the track logs and a bit of google maps that there is going to be a fair bit of time in the saddle before we even start throwing ourselves off road up and down the mountain routes - never mind the ride back!!

May be back with a few more questions as its my first jaunt into France on a bike...

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Yup, France is a BIG place. It's a common enough miscomprehension, particularly amongst 'first timers', that it is somehow the same size as England. A rough guide is that it's twice the area, with the same population, as the UK. As most Frogs live in Paris (just as most UK bods live in London) you can work out that much of the rest is spread out over a big area and is pretty empty.

One bit of easy advice. Put Google maps to one side, just for a moment, and get yourself one or two proper maps. It will make your life so much easier to grasp the scale and plot something out.

MSK72 said:

Would be interested in your viewpoint of riding to Auvergne in a day from the chunnel - it is def a full days riding but would like to know if you would also opt for the motorways or have an alternative more interesting route in mind? or anyone else that has rode that way.

Cheers

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Google reckons about 450 miles / 7.5 hours, in my experience you can normally beat these times (in the saddle) but are likely to struggle to keep to them with stops.

In my experience of French motorways if your cruising at GS speeds (Indicated 85) after slowing for tolls / traffic / junctions and fuel stops the "moving average" will be around 65mph.

I also seem to spend about 15 minutes stopped for each hour moving as an average over a full day which would suggest about a 9 hour run from Calais for your proposed run (using motorways).

Avoiding motorways would reduce average speeds to around the 50mph mark, maybe less if there are a lot of built up areas to go through.

'JH' said:

Hi Wapping,

I too would be very interested in seeing your routes, and any recommended places to stay!

I am thinking next year's early season outing could accommodate such a jaunt instead of a round Normandy/Loire/Picardy/Pas de Calais.

Very interested especially if much of the route work etc has been done already

JH

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I can recommend the Riders Rest as a place to stay.

MSK72 said:

Appreciate all of the info and sharing experiences, plenty off food for thought.

I am not planning the route but am sure we will be sitting down soon to talk it through.

I think we are going through the tunnel but will see how it turns out as both crossing are roughly the same return price at moment about £50 (without cabin).

I can see from the track logs and a bit of google maps that there is going to be a fair bit of time in the saddle before we even start throwing ourselves off road up and down the mountain routes - never mind the ride back!!

May be back with a few more questions as its my first jaunt into France on a bike...

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If you are all from Hants then LDLines is a no brainer. You can save the best part of a day travelling as a) you will travel fewer miles in the UK b) go to work on the day you get on the ferry as check-in is 10pm c) sleep on the boat: I used the "free" recliner seat in the scumbag's lounge but I was only travelling 150 miles (you could head straight for the kids' play area and sleep on the cushions) d) wheels rolling at 8am in France d) 100 fewer miles to travel in France e) short distance home after getting back to the UK

wessie said:

If you are all from Hants then LDLines is a no brainer. You can save the best part of a day travelling as a) you will travel fewer miles in the UK b) go to work on the day you get on the ferry as check-in is 10pm c) sleep on the boat: I used the "free" recliner seat in the scumbag's lounge but I was only travelling 150 miles (you could head straight for the kids' play area and sleep on the cushions) d) wheels rolling at 8am in France d) 100 fewer miles to travel in France e) short distance home after getting back to the UK

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I'm with you on all counts there, especially the return journey. Good to know there are a few options for sleeping arrangements too!

In putting a route together I am trying to get a feel (from everyones hard earned experience) for the better biking roads as all of my time in France has been on four wheels and predominantly on the autoroute and big cities.

However common sense will prevail on what we can ride enroute as the aim of trip is to ride our trail bikes (mainly bm 450's) on the available green lanes. Will see if it is not too late to go via Le Havre.