Product Description

Set off on your very own Tour de France! If you’ve always wanted to cycle along the back roads of France, the Ulysses Cycling in France guide will make your dream a reality. France is renowned as one of the world’s choice cycling destinations. It offers small, quiet roads, hospitable, pretty villages, a wide range of accommodations, major historic sites, diverse scenery and, of course, legendary cuisine and wines! This guidebook is an invitation to explore France’s deep-rooted charms. Each suggested tour starts off in a major city before leading you through the country’s back roads, where you can take the time to observe nature around you, to breathe in the heady scent of the countryside and to savour the local specialties you’ll find along the way. In addition to suggested tours of France’s various regions, including Provence, Périgord, Quercy, Burgundy, the Loire Valley, Alsace, Camargue, Brittany and Normandy, biking enthusiasts will also enjoy the Ulysses Cycling in France guide’s practical information on preparing their journey and its listings of the services that are available to cyclists along the way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #338483 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-10
• Released on: 2003-02-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Amazon.com
Pictures of France always focus on the Eiffel Tower or the Champs-Elysées, but the finest gems in France are the towns and villages off in Brittany and Normandy, Périgord, Camargue, and Alsace. You can rent a car, of course, but somehow a drive-through visit to small towns makes one feel like an intruder, whereas arriving on a bicycle in a healthy pedaling sweat forges an instant camaraderie with local folks. When you're not encased in and isolated by steel and glass, you have the leisure to explore, you can exchange "bonjours" with people cycling back from market with their baguettes sticking out of their baskets, you can feel the rhythm of the country and the texture of the terrain.

To fully insert yourself into a French experience like this, a good guide, one written for cyclists, is a prerequisite. Ulysses's cycling guide is superb. A 32-page atlas helps you plot your route, and the detailed chapters let you know what to expect as far as distances and tour routes, how strenuous the ride and what there is to see, where you can stay and what's available to eat, when market day is, and most importantly, where to find the local bicycle shops. --Stephanie Gold

Customer Reviews

Ah .. to cycle in France
I used this guide as a basis for 2 weeks cycling in France recently. While initially I had difficulty grasping the layout, and coming to grips with the maps, the suggested tours are quite detailed and provided me with some sublimely splendid cycling moments in Basse Normandy and Brittany. So I would recommend it to those who are prepared to be patient to take the info provided and work with it because the author has done her detailed kilometers. I'm hoping to use it again to explore other parts of France in the future.

OK for what it ts but not for every cyclist.
Gives the usual preparation tips. Has reasonable road directions and outline maps but the actual highway maps are useless. Gives several multi-day trips, broken into 1 to 5 day segments. Very poor guide to details of road conditions or difficulty. No information on where to stay or eat. The site descriptions struck me as about what any tour book on France will have.