According to the forecasts, it was looking like it would be the last good weekend before Autumn properly kicked in. So we headed off for the Mayenne river tow path again. The tow path has been converted to a voie verte (greenway), and you can cycle between the towns of Mayenne and Laval while hardly ever encountering a car. October has… Read more »
When summer finally arrived, we felt more like riding than blogging. After all, you take your opportunities where you can when you live here. The weather doesn’t do things by halves in Normandy. May was pretty good, mostly very Spring-like. Then June arrived in a bad mood. It was grey, it was grumpy and worst of all it was cold. Well,… Read more »
After having posted, more than two months ago, about how it felt like Spring, the gods decided to punish our presumption by giving us another Winter. I mean, it’s not just that it’s been cold and blustery, which is has, but we’ve also had enough rain to drown Noah. And yes, you can cycle in the rain. But it’s not… Read more »
The only reason this road is less travelled is that it has just opened. And it’s not a road – it’s a voie verte. A little while ago I wrote about how we’d discovered a new greenway on our doorstep (here and here). It’s a part of the Vélo Francette and links existing sections that run from Flers south to… Read more »
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 »
Travelling home from the garage the other day (don’t ask – bloody cars) we were passing through Laubrière when something caught my eye. You don’t expect to find anything significant in Laubrière; it’s just a wide spot on the road. You couldn’t even call it a village. But clearly it was once rather more important. I knew immediately what I’d… Read more »
This year we plan to ride more of the greenways (voies vertes) in the Grand Ouest – an area that covers Normandy, Brittany and the Pays de la Loire. It’s easy to get lazy and keep travelling the same stretches – especially as they’re so beautiful. But we need to explore more, so I grabbed our map of France’s voies vertes… 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 »
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 »
Our old dog Zola loves to ride in his Doggy Hut. He glides along, gazing imperiously at the passing scenery like some pampered prince. And now we’ve finally got it on video. I got a GoPro for Xmas but this was the first chance to try it out properly. It was a blazingly bright day, bitterly cold in the wind,… Read more »
Had a brilliant cycle ride on Sunday – my longest yet, at 33km. The weather was crisp and cold – about 6 degrees and sunny. In the morning we walked the dogs around a local lake, cancelling our planned longer hike as I had an upset tummy and was feeling filletted. But the walk made me feel a lot better,… 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 »
Sometimes you look out at the sky and think, ‘nah, I’ll skip it today, it’s too grey’. As someone who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of idleness, I find this kind of argument highly persuasive. Today was an example of why I shouldn’t. We decided to ride one of our favourite sections of the Veloscénie voie verte – one… Read more »
