Dover to Calais seemed to be the accepted way of getting to France, and the last (and only other) time we toured from England to France, we enjoyed staying in Dover, and then hopping to Calais. But in recent years there has been continued development (we hope) of a special London to Paris cycle route, known as the "Avenue Verte". 

We are not really sure who is behind the Avenue Verte, how the route was chosen, and how good it really is. However the Avenue has its own Wikipedia page and web site, and talks a good game. That is usually enough for us to give something a try.

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The Avenue Verte keys off the Newhaven to Dieppe ferry, rather than Dover-Calais. We get to Newhaven in the rather crazy way of coming down the UK Avenue Verte  from near London, but on hitting the coast we turn east, away from Newhaven, and circle the whole south of the country (1800 km) before coming up on Newhaven from the west. Only then is it over to Dieppe, and on to Paris.

After Paris, we continue our custom of following famous cycle routes, taking advantage of parts of Eurovelo 3, Eurovelo 6, the Canal de Nivernais, the Tour de Burgogne, the Voie Bleu, and the Via Rhona! We string these out in a fairly direct route, like this:

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Michael HutchingHi Steve and Dodie, just looked at your projected route in France. A few weeks back we cycled in Bourgogne and came through the Route des Vignes from Beaune to Santenay. We then circled the short distance to Chagny and from there took the very direct and straight D981 to Givry from where there is a brilliant voie verte that basically takes you all the way to Macon. We’ve described it in our blog Retyrementon2wheels6. There’s a bit of a hill after Cluny, but with e-assist……. Bonne route, Michael
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The exception to the direct route claim is that jog up to the north east, mid way along. The jog takes us from Paray le Monial up to Chagny, before carrying on south to Macon. In principle we could jump from Paray to Macon directly, but that's the EV 6 up to Chagny and the Voie Bleu down to Macon. That sounds more cool than "bushwacking" from Paray to Macon. It amounts to just a 100 km "detour".

Depending on how the time is going, we could also head off into Provence when we reach Avignon, or we could delve into the Camargue, from Arles. For either of these, we would cook up a route when we get there.

Anyone drawing a straight line (or any line) through France is going to run into a pile of famous regions. There are thirteen regions (and about 100 sub-regions - "departements"), and literally each of them is famous for something (or many things). Our tour mainly crosses the Paris region,and then Burgundy, the Rhone-Alps, and Provence. We can't go wrong with this, because in France you just can't go wrong.