Brian and I have been wanting to bike around France for a while and we finally decided to give it a try, starting with the Bordeaux area. We envisioned biking along country paths, through vineyards, stopping for a stroll and some wine at a chateau every now and then.
There are a ton of areas in France where you can do just that, but we picked the Bordeaux region because 1) we’ve never been there and 2) it’s relatively flat so the biking would be easier. We could probably deal with rolling hills or steeper terrain, but wanted to straddle the line between a fitness vacation and a wine vacation.
Could we have our wine and bike it too?
If you’re thinking of doing something like this, here are a few things that I figured out along the way.
Book With a Tour Company v. Plan it Yourself
In general, there are three planning options:
- (1) Plan it all yourself: create a route, reserve sleeping accommodations and arrange for bike rental (or plan for bringing your own). In short, do everything on your own with no input from someone with boots on the ground. If you are up for a total DIY effort, the France Vélo Tourisme site is a great resource.
- (2) Book with a company that offers self-guided tours: you’ll choose from a variety of routes that they offer, and they will book hotels/guest houses, arrange for bike rentals, and coordinate getting your larger luggage from one hotel to another so you don’t need to lug it along with you on your bike.
- (3) Book with a full service company that offers guided tours: all the details of a self-guided tour and you will have a guide biking along with you throughout the route.
Option 2 seemed like the Goldilocks choice for us. It offered more training wheels than booking fully on our own, but more autonomy than a fully guided tour. We wanted help with bike rental and luggage transport and insight into guest house accommodations. We also figured they would know which routes were nice and which ones would land us on a busy road competing with car traffic.
Here’s a list of all the companies I checked out, along with some notes I made along the way. Freewheeling France is an easy to use aggregator of tour companies and their routes. I found it to be extremely helpful.
As you can see, the offerings are all pretty similar. We ended up choosing Evazio for their price, route, and positive reviews. We don’t regret our choice at all, but there are some things we would do differently next time.
Our Route
We arrived in Bordeaux a few days early so we could get a headstart on tackling our jetlag. It was really nice to have some days of recovery before jumping into long days of cycling. Evazio sent a taxi to bring us to our first hotel in Pauillac where we got our bikes and spent one night.
- We started in Pauillac and rode a loop around it, before heading towards Margaux, stopping in Listrac-Médoc.
- On the second day we rode from there into Margaux, crossed the Gironde river on the ferry and rode along its bank to Bourg, where we stopped for the night just beyond it, in Lansac.
- The third day was a ride into Saint-Émilion which was pretty long, not gonna lie.
- We had an extra day in Saint-Émilion that was supposed to be a loop around the area, but we nixed it in favor of exploring on foot.
- Our final day was a simple route directly back to Bordeaux, mostly along a cycle path.
What We Would Have Done Differently
Get Route Details Sooner
The biggest issue was one we could have easily avoided, if we’d but known! Evazio didn’t give us access to the exact route with landmarks and wineries on it until we had paid our final bill one month prior to the trip. I guess this is understandable given the fact that we could have canceled and used their route basically without paying for it. Although we had the option of paying in full earlier we waited until it was due and that ended up leaving us very little time to plan out the rest of our trip.
Start Planning at Least Two Months in Advance
Even with a tour company helping us, the amount of planning we needed to do ourselves was more than anticipated. It took a lot of legwork to identify which wineries we wanted to visit, and then make reservations after sorting out where we would be and at what time. Add in a 7 hour time difference between Austin and Bordeaux and the planning process took almost twice as long because we were coordinating directly with most wineries via email. Also, at just 30 days out, many of the more popular chateau were already fully booked.
Arrange for In-Person Bike Orientation
Our bikes were dropped off at the hotel the day before our tour started. If we could do it over again, we would request an actual fitting and personal orientation. Our bikes had a few issues with gear shifting and my frame was slightly too big for me. We made it work but it would have been preferable to fine tune our mode of transport before spending multiple long days in the saddle.
What We Appreciated
Unique Guest House Experiences
We ended up staying in some small towns at a couple of very quaint and bucolic guest houses that there is no way we would have found on our own. That experience alone was worth hiring a tour company. We stayed at Domaine de Ludeye in Listrac-Médoc, run by a very kind couple who live on site and cook very well. We ate dinner with a nice German couple who were also guests; and of course, shared plenty of wine with them.
The other guest house, Les Chambr’hôtes de Gallau in Lansac, was a big, classic stone home, fully remodeled and on absolutely fairy tale grounds. It is actually home for the sole proprietor Christine, who invites guests in as a way to maintain some social interatcion in a very rural location. She was an even better cook than our hosts at Domain de Ludeye and I brought some delicious meal ideas back with me. The night we were there, it was just us and our host which gave the large home a kind of ghostly feeling, but in a romantic, cinematic way. What was not romantic was the bed, which was so soft that I slept on the floor. Got a great night’s sleep down there though!
Day of Rest in Between Cycling
We had the option to add an extra day in Saint-Émilion and that turned out to be such a blessing! The day was scheduled to be a long loop around the city on our bikes but we ended up staying off our bikes altogether. Instead, we spent the day exploring the city by foot. It was nice to have a little variety, and give our rumps a break.
I Repeat: Plan on a Lot of Planning
The route, hotel bookings, bike rentals, and luggage transport are the logistics that the tour company handles. However, if you want to visit wineries or other specific points of interest, there’s some legwork involved in figuring out how long the route will take and estimating what time you’ll be arriving at the various places you might want to go. Invariably, a winery will not be available at a time that’s convenient for you and you’ll have to do some rejiggering on the rest of the details to make it work. It’s more time consuming than it sounds.
When to Go
Best Season for Biking*
May and June are the best times for a trip like this. The “high season” starts in April but in reality, the weather is going to be reliably better in May and June. You might still encounter some cool days or rain but the chances of an entire day being gray and rainy get smaller and smaller the further into summer you get. You could also go in July but in my opinion, it will be way too hot.
*Editing to add the complete irony that I wrote this paragraph before we arrived in May during Bordeaux’s earliest ever heat wave – 95 degrees every day, lucky us!! Mother Nature has a wicked sense of humor.
Winery hours are often shorter in the off or shoulder season with some wineries closed altogether. Tours in the high season will have a small premium on their price, but due to schedules for wineries and the nicer weather, the extra amount is worth it.
Best Day to Start Your Tour
However, even in high season, many wineries are closed on Sundays and Mondays. I’d recommend starting your tour on a Tuesday in order to maximize your options for visiting chateaux. Be sure to check the calendar for any national holidays in France as well. We accidentally booked over a bank holiday and missed out on several potential wineries that day.
Give Yourself a Few Days Before Jumping on Your Bike
I’d suggest arriving a few days before your tour starts so you have time to get oriented, get over jetlag, and just relax a little before hopping on your bikes. Some extra cushion in the schedule is nice to have, if you can afford the vacation time.
What to Expect
Even Flat Routes Have Some Hills
The terrain in Bordeaux is mostly flat but there are still some hills. Our bikes were heavier than we’re used to: chonky rentals and they each came with a panier and a heavy lock.
This made even small hills seem harder than they should be and there were also a few honest to goodness huge hills that we had to walk our bikes up. So even “flat” terrain is not going to be exactly that for the whole route.
Expect At Least Some Car Traffic
As for biking whimsically through vineyards…yes, there was a lot of that. Those roads still do have cars driving on them but they are few and far between. Since we don’t yet have teleport technology, you will need to ride on some busier roads sometimes. However, the speed limits seem lower than we are used to in the states, and in this region at least, cars are very accommodating to cyclists.
We felt pretty safe on our route except when we had to cross a river where the only way to do so was along an actual freeway. We had to bike across the freeway bridge (with no shoulder), make a left across traffic, and head the wrong way down the other side’s entrance ramp. The whole affair took about 2 minutes but that was enough time to see my life flash before my eyes.
The freeway ride was the worst part of our bike ride. The best part was our last day, riding from Saint-Émilion back to Bordeaux. Most of that portion is along the Roger Lapébie bike path, a wonderful, shady, very long stretch of smooth sailing. (The whole path is over 35 miles long!)
What To Pack With You On the Bike
You will be biking through vineyards which means very little shade and few stops along the way for water or food. It is very rural. This isn’t a comprehensive list, obviously, but covers the things that will keep you alive.
- Bike gloves. Long days spent hanging onto handle bars will do a number on your fingers. If you have sweaty hands, the gloves will help.
- Sun shirt. The sun can be relentless. Being fully covered will either keep you warm if you need it or surprisingly, keep you pretty cool.
- Bring loads of sunscreen and reapply it to your exposed skin often. See above note about the sun.
- Camelback for water. You will need more than you can bring in a bottle, trust me! We brought 3 liter camelbacks with us and those probably saved our lives.
- Snacks. Apples, food bars, trail mix. Even if you plan to buy food, emergency snacks will come in handy as restaurants are few and far between and hours can be irregular. Plus if you get a flat, you can stress eat a few granola bars for an instant pick-me-up.
- Winery clothes. If you’re a dude and wearing bike shorts, pack a nicer pair of shorts to pull on over these before you head into a winery. The chateaus are pretty relaxed but you may feel out of place in full-on bike gear.
Next Up…
A Brief Explainer About Bordeaux Wines and How to Make the Most of Your Visit
We must’ve been in Bordeaux at about the same time.