The other day I wrote about how we’d spotted a new voie verte (greenway) under construction. It was clear that this was a part of the award-winning Vélo Francette cycle route that runs 617km from the Normandy beaches at Ouistreham (Caen) to La Rochelle. Although we walked only a small section of the new voie verte, I speculated that it might go as… Read more »
It seems that the V43 Vélo Francette is not our little secret any longer. It has just been voted the best cycle route in Europe. Fiets et Wandelbeurs – a Belgian cycling and rambling organisation – has recognised the beauty and convenience of the route. According to Google Translate and a judicious bit of editing, the jury said something like: “The… Read more »
Over on Google+, I recently got into a ‘debate’ with another cyclist who took exception to us walking our dogs on the voies vertes. He was ill-mannered and aggressive, and his arguments, if you can call them that, not worth repeating here. But it did get me thinking about cycling spaces and infrastructure. The ‘rules’ about whether dogs should be on… Read more »
There are certain sections of the local voies vertes (greenways) that we ride frequently, but they never get boring. Every time is slightly different, depending on weather, light and – above all – season. In Summer, many sections of the voies vertes turn into green tunnels as the overhanging branches of trees fill up and bow down with the weight of their… Read more »
Last Sunday we rode down a local voie verte accompanied by our sprollie dog Cézanne. But this time I wasn’t hauling the DoggyHut trailer. And the reason was that our old spaniel Zola is no longer with us. In some ways it was a melancholic ride, but in other ways heartening. Zola was an old boy – three months shy of… Read more »
It’s been a while since we hit the voie verte, other than a stroll some weeks back without (gasp!) the bikes. So it was great to be out on the trail again, on such a fantastic spring day and also on a stretch of voie verte we’ve not ridden before. There’s a Eurovélo route (marked EV4 provisoire on my map) that runs… Read more »
We’d meant to go cycling on Christmas Day. Or Boxing Day. But the weather gods had other ideas. And so the New Year came and I was itching to try out my new GoPro (thanks, Santa). Finally, half-way into January, we headed off to ride the Vélo Francette from Domfront. We’ve ridden this route before, although I was on my… Read more »
I love riding down the voies vertes with the dogs. In fact, any outing is made more pleasurable by their company as you watch them discover things you hadn’t seen. But it does make for some complicated cycling. We made a short, 6km (each way) jaunt down a section of the Véloscénie today. We’d previously walked a small section of… Read more »
The recently inaugurated Vélo Francette (VF) cycle route runs from Ouistreham (that’s the port at Caen to most travellers) to La Rochelle – a distance of over 600km. Our ambition on this ride was somewhat more modest. There’s a stretch of the VF that runs south from Flers to our local town of Domfront, which is where we started. It’s… Read more »
We discovered our local voies vertes (greenways) last year and thought we were the only people who knew about them. It was an easy error to make, because the density of walkers, cyclists and horse riders is so incredibly low. Some days we’ll walk the local greenway and not see another soul. It turns out our favourite stretch is part… Read more »
There’s a lot of competitiveness and snobbery in cycling (as there is in car ownership, flying and so many other activities – ask me sometime what hackers are like). It seems as though, if you don’t know the precise gearing of your bike (and have modified it yourself), or ride anything costing less than £3,000, or have never done a… Read more »
