Riding in France (not the Alps!)

[caterhamnut]

Apart from the riding in the eastern regions of France, are there many other more regional areas in the rest of France where people can get good MTB riding?

 

[Telemarker]

Massif Central, puy dome area, Pyrenees, Brittany, vosges mountains
Check out Trailforks

 

[Mcharza]

And don't forget La Bresse area

 

[caterhamnut]

Massif Central, puy dome area, Pyrenees, Brittany, vosges mountains
Check out Trailforks

doh - hadn't thought of looking at trailforks....

 

[GrahamPaul]

Also check out www.wikiloc.com but don't forget to filter for "Mountain Bike"

 

[nobbyq]

brittany ?

 

[KenX]

Here in Serre Chevalier, wicked!

 

[Zimmerframe]

brittany ?

Yup .. not really known for it's mountains But there are a few places with some reasonable "hills" where there's some ok downhills (2km max...not vertical ) and you can get in some reasonable elevation changes in not too long a distance. Round lac de Guerledan there's a few hundred k's of trails.

None of the trails seem to be on trialforks .. so strava sadly :

41.5 km Mountain Bike Ride on November 1, 2019 by Zimmer F. on Strava

29.7 km Mountain Bike Ride on September 9, 2019 by Zimmer F. on Strava

 

[GrahamPaul]

Yup .. not really known for it's mountains But there are a few places with some reasonable "hills" where there's some ok downhills (2km max...not vertical ) and you can get in some reasonable elevation changes in not too long a distance. Round lac de Guerledan there's a few hundred k's of trails.

None of the trails seem to be on trialforks .. so strava sadly :

41.5 km Mountain Bike Ride on November 1, 2019 by Zimmer F. on Strava

29.7 km Mountain Bike Ride on September 9, 2019 by Zimmer F. on Strava

Wikiloc shows 5 routes for your area, @Zimmerframe - perhaps you can say whether they are any good?

 

[Zimmerframe]

Wikiloc shows 5 routes for your area, @Zimmerframe - perhaps you can say whether they are any good?

Excellent ! .. I searched "brittany, France" and nothing came up for there

So the 1st one "La Vélodyssée-06 Guerlédan - Pontivy" .. that basically follows the canal tow path and is usually done by people cycling the nantes -brest canal. Quite popular, I've met a lot of people doing it of all nationalities. Not really one for the MTB crowd though ! Interestingly, their sat photo is from a couple of years ago when the lake was drained for maintenance, so you can see the old canal running through it. There are a couple of nice DH tracks which take you to the start of it, but most people use the road.

The 2nd and 3rd one are uzel-guerledan and back again, but a slightly different route. I've seen a few people do the route, but not done it myself, part of it is on my list of things to do when it's raining and everywhere else is too muddy..

The 4th one, Saint-Guen to Guerledan looks a bit more interesting and in the latter part goes up and back down part of the tour de-france route with a long nasty hill, so a good chance you'd break 90kph for an eye streaming smile.

5th one - baud Guerledan - follows the canal tow path again, though the route could do with editing as they got lost in Pontivy and then tried to get up a really gnarly hill when they got to the dam - which is do-able just , but you'd have to be a pretty shit hot rider and wouldn't really fit with the style of the rest of the ride.

All 5 your could do on a road bike sadly ..

Here's a few more from the area, with a couple of black rated ones to at least wake people up a bit ..

Station VTT - Base de plein air de Guerlédan

 

[GrahamPaul]

All 5 your could do on a road bike sadly ..

Thanks for that. There's always a risk taking gps downloads on trust and I usually spend ages with Google Maps and Google Earth making sure that these really are tracks and not either a road or (worse) someone's planned route which they are thinking of taking and just put a line on the map and upload in the hope that someone tests it for them. (Wikiloc now warn if that's the case).

I usually make sure I only do ones with a description but have been caught out on that, too. I chose a nice, circular route of around 30km to do with the missus on her clockwork bike in 2018. It was listed as "Easy". We were a bit surprised to find 2km long rock garden at 20%. When I wrote in the comments that this was anything by "Easy", the OP replied that he found it easy because he'd practised it a lot...