Short trip through East France Planned (Jun 14)
 

Hello folks of the interweb!
So please forgive me, I spend far less time than ought on the HUBB.
So here I am asking for some advice/tips hints etc.

My other half has granted my time off for good behaviour as it were. So I have a 5 day window in June to go through Eastern France looking for some lovely bends, scenery, eateries and Bike friendly/secure BnB’s or Hotels.

The rough itinerary is to leave Canary Wharf (work) on a Thursday evening and head straight over to France.
The intention is then to use Friday to get as close as possible to Grenoble area so that we can take the remaining 4 days to work our way up the East side of France avoiding motorways at all costs.

The principle caveats are:
Can only leave London at 5pm on Thursday.
Need to be back in London Tuesday night (ready for work on Wednesday morning).
I’m getting old and want to stay in BnB’s, hotels etc as it’s a short trip I can’t be fluffed with camping.
I really want to ride up to L’alpes D’Huez if possible.

So friendly peeps and sagelike wise ones. I’m looking for accommodation recommendations, road recommendations, way points, best GPS etc.

As a bit useless information, my travel buddy will be riding a 2009 Yamaha Tenere 660. I’ll be on my trusty 2008 Ducati ST3 (full luggage, screen extender, heated grips, additional chargers, sat nav mount).
As a bit of back ground in 1992 I rode a XTZ 750 Super Tenere from Newport in S.Wales to Dahab in Egypt and I’ve toured on a 1995 R1100 GS across Ireland in 2006, Holland and Germany on VTR 1000 Firestorm in 2007. I’m just feeling a little out of practice at the moment!


Thanks a million!
Chris

5 days is not a long time to do such a trip, if you want to get to Grenoble. As you probably know it's just over 1000KMs each way, and off the autoroute it's 15 hrs door to door without any hold ups, so 2 days ride at best one way, and thats' without stops or taking in anything apart from looking at the road.

https://maps.google.fr/maps?saddr=Gr...mra=ls&t=m&z=6

I've been living in france now for 8 years, and believe me France is a big country with a lot to see. You can of course make quick time on the A roads, but on the RN's and D roads, you can double your travel time easily.

You will probably get some good advice from some of my colleagues at Bike Club France. • Portal.

In my experience for what it's worth, this is a great bikers' hotel. In the high Vosges mountains.

HOTEL RESTAURANT - COL DE BUSSANG

In a very scenic area, nice roads.
A reasonably easy 1-day from Calais, particularly if you use the motorways (and pay the tolls).

Mark and Ida are a very entertaining biking couple and will tell you excellent routes for exploring.

If you have any interest in World War history, there's that as well, the hotel used to be the customs house on the German side of the France-Germany border until 1919.

As Pongo says above, going all the way to Geneva could use a lot of your 5 days. This might be a shorter but better ride.

Cheers

Great Hotel, but always fully booked for a long time ahead. But the Vosges mountains are worth a visit. A lot of great routes! If you need more information contact me.

Thank you
 

Hi Guys,

All feed back is very welcome thus far and I realise it might be a tad ambtious to run that far south in one hit. So I think we'll try and re-think the plan. Longer Auto-Route runs for me to get as far south as possible and take my time coming back are simple enough. I feel that my travel companion on a Tenere thumper might not appreciate a prolonged 160kph ahem, sorry, I mean130kph autoroute cruising.

I'll check out the hotel asap, in the mean time any recommendation for bike friendly places on the east side of France along the German/French Belgian/French borders will be welcome.

Cheers all and thanks for the feedback to date!

C
PS getting excited now.:clap:

Try Hotel Constantin in Kaysersberg, France. It's a beautiful medieval town on the Alsace Wine Route and on the edge of Les Voges and Des Ballons nature parks.