Starting in Saint Malo after a loop around Jersey, I arrived late for this one, so didn’t get to explore saint malo too much. But there are ferries from Portsmouth direct to Saint malo, or you can do what I did and combine this ‘little’ adventure onwards to Paris with a trip around jersey. St malo to Paris is around 265 miles (426km) and then if you decide to continue this route on to Calais for a ferry back to Dover, England then you will need to do another 190 miles (305km). I am putting this route in intermediate mainly because of the distance the terrain at least if its dry it should not be too hard or technical for most people with this route consisting of lots of endless bike paths and forest tracks and some field crossing, this is where it can get a bit tiring and muddy if it’s not dry.

A big portion of this route follows these endless cycle paths that are practically flat with no major elevation gain or descents, although going in this direction does feel a little more draggy as it is a very slight up hill. I’m not sure if they are old railway lines I think they might have been, they certainly resemble cycling a long old railway lines. For the most part of this route it is really quiet in terms of traffic, I’m sure it will be a little busier in the summer months, but when you do come onto the roads they are mostly pretty quiet country roads. The obvious exception is when you finally arrive at Paris. I did manage to find a pretty much all bike lane route into the city after some off-road trails just beforehand, so most of the getting into Paris and out of Paris is on cycles paths some nice wide and segregated from cars some are pretty narrow and get filled with people though.

In terms of what bike to use I’d just use a gravel bikes even a hybrid would do the job, just something you are comfortable riding and with a bit of tread on the tyres. If you take this on in the summer most of the trails will be hard packed and fast rolling, in the winter you will just want a bike with good mud clearing because them French fields do get very muddy.

Plenty of cafés to stop off along this route, you might need to detour slightly of the endless bike paths into the nearest town on occasion though and remember that on Sundays most everything is shut in France so make sure you try to stock up the day before.

Once you have made it to Paris you can continue on to Calais to get the ferry back to Dover if you like this part of the route is probably a bit more off-road and stays away from places, nothing too crazy but some nice woodlands trails plenty of farm tracks and some nice gravel win farms. Like most of, the route can get very muddy in the wetter months. Also, this section of the route can be quite hard to find camp spots in between the two national landscapes, places it’s just lots of fields which were just mud when I took this on. Lots of spots after just out of Paris then at the end though, so if you can survive the middle section you are good to go. Not much else to say about this route, no mountains to climb and not a huge amount of elevation gain. But is you like café’s bike paths and very little if any hike a bike, then go for it.

Below, I have split the route into parts to make it easier for the GPS. Full route is also included