Paris – Saint-Malo – 500km 6 days route

Hopefully something to inspire others to ride this bit: this is mostly based on the Veloscenique route that connects Paris with Mont Saint-Michel but with some Komoot vibes and our adjustments. We extended it a bit more to get to Saint-Malo, as the final destination is not really a place to stop, IMO it's interesting but that's about it. We rode for 6 days about 80km per day in early July, we got two full days of rain which wasn't particularly pleasing but that's biking for you. The last two days started to be unusually too hot for my liking and the average local weather as we approached the coast.

A few notes on the route:
– 2,960 mt climbs
– 3,030 mt descents
6 days total, which amounted to about 32h of total ride, about 80km per day (roughly).

As for the bike, I was riding my Kona Rove, alu, with 2×8, pretty much standard in the luggage configuration you see in the pics.

I rode on ICE trains from Germany to reach Paris, using packaged bike and sitting in the compartments. I wanted to share this as I seldomly see people wondering if that's a possibility. On the way back, from Saint-Malo to Paris we had to book a bike spot on the train.

The veloscenique is an old railway that has been converted into a mostly-compacted gravel and seldomly tarmac bike track, and we ended up using it for about 300km (give or take, didn't measure it). There are pros and cons to that: it's very flat, it is normally sided by trees hence mostly shielded from the wind and the sun, but it does get boring very fast and it won't pass by any meaningful urban area nor interesting landscapes, so we ended hopping on and off it to visit better places or taking more scenic and hilly routes. There are some pizza vending machines on the routes, but never saw one working. There are some resting areas with toilets and showers, but the majority were not sheltered and not even marked. I mean, it seems like a decent oversight if this was meant to be a bike riding track?

In general, France is worth going, south of Normandy is extremely beautiful and worth going. The center part has a lot of forests and comes with some gentle climbs. I love Avencon, and would totally go just to stay there for a few days.

I would not recommend Paris in general, and its outskirts weren't particularly fun to do, but to be frank we left Paris under the rain and rode in the rain for two consecutive days, so I might be biased.

The coast has been probably the least favourite part of the tour, mostly because of the lack of segregated trails, or because it was too hot.

I would love to ride the west coast of Normandy next to be frank, for sightseeing and historical reasons.

If you have any questions, please shoot 🙂