Overview
Our regular bike tours in France are in the Rhône-Alpes region in the southeast, spanning the départements of Drôme and Isère. Although our home base in the Royans-Vercors is a national heritage site visited by tourists, the area remains relatively unknown, even within France, and yet to be discovered by cyclists from English-speaking countries.
Since we design your week day-by-day while you’re here, as the week progresses, we don’t have a fixed itinerary to publish. Instead, in the Rides section below we summarize some of the many choices of destinations available to us, from gently rolling Côtes-du-Rhône wine country to cliff-hugging roads along spectacular gorges, to WWII Resistance memorials in the Vercors plateau, to almost-Mediterranean Drôme-Provençale to famous Alpine passes of the Tour de France.
You can read endorsements from some of our past guests on our home page.
Rides
We ride on quiet secondary roads that have very little motor traffic. What few motorists you may encounter you’ll find much more bike-friendly than in North America. They don’t regard bikes as children’s toys which should stay off public roads, nor consider cyclists to be some weird, alien them dressed in sissy, outlandish spandex. Cars wait patiently until there’s ample room to pass, they don’t try to beat you to a turn to cut you off or pull out right in front of you from a side approach. A honk is a courtesy alert that someone’s behind you, not an aggressive threat that they’re coming through so you’d better get the !@#$%^ out of their way right now or else!
Dynamically customized for you. Because we stay at one home base the entire time, we aren’t obliged to conform to a rigid, predetermined itinerary. Instead, we observe and listen to you, check the wind, weather and road conditions, take into account local events of interest, and each morning (or the previous evening), choose a route or destination of suitable interest, length and terrain. Here are some of the possible ride destinations and/or places along the way that we may visit.
Côtes du Rhône vineyards, castle town of Tournon-sur-Rhône, Valrhôna chocolate factory & Chapoutier wine-tasting room in Tain l’Hermitage, scenic Routes des Belvédères & Corniche du Rhône.
St. Antoine l’Abbaye, early Gothic abbey, pilgrimage site for sufferers of ergot (wheat fungus) poisoning, also known as St. Anthony’s fire. Along the way, visit a remarkable outdoor model Railway Garden or see walnut oil being made at le Moulin à Huile de Léon in Chatte.
Spectacular, but the roads follow gradual grades. Combe Laval. Grands Goulets. Gorges de la Bourne & Choranche Grottoes (15% grade for the first km after the turnoff from the D531 road). Gorges du Nan.
Memorial to the Resistance at Col de Lachau. Museum of Prehistory, Resistance Memorial at Vassieux en Vercors.
| Col de… | Elev. (m) | Col de… | Elev. (m) | Col de… | Elev. (m) | Col de… | Elev. (m) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| * = On the 2005 Tour de France Stage 15 route | |||||||
| la Baume | 1,475 | la Croix | 1,029 | Lachau | 1,337 | Proncel | 1,100 |
| la Bataille | 1,312 | l’Echarasson* | 1,146 | la Machine | 1,053 | St. Alexis | 1,222 |
| Carri* | 1,202 | l’Herbouilly* | 1,352 | la Portette | 1,175 | Tourniol | 1,145 |
| Chalimont* | 1,374 | ||||||
Alpe d’Huez, Col du Glandon & Col de la Croix de Fer: Rides up these classic Tour de France ascents start about a 1½ hour drive away. See our Tour de France page for photos.
Just south of the Vercors plateau and bordering Provence are lavender fields, olive groves, oak groves hiding black truffles, the tower at Crest – said to be the tallest in France, Clairette de Die sparkling white wine made in the Drôme river valley … all just a short drive away.
Rhône-Alpes topography
The purple lines on the Google Map below show some of the routes we bike. If your web browser is running on an OS X Intel-Mac or Windows (2000/XP/Vista) PC, the “Earth” button will let you use Google’s Earth browser plug-in to see the lay of the land in dynamic 3D. The map will detect if you don’t have the plug-in and offer to download it (you may have to quit and restart your web browser to activate it).
