The Vosges district, too, is worth visiting, and endless tours may be made from Nancy as a centre. Provence also, the Riviera, and the Cornice Road, afford some of the most delightful wheeling to be had in the country. But tourists, with time enough to make these long excursions, will prefer doubtless to map their routes out for themselves by the aid of the C.T.C. Road Books and Baroncelli’s Guides.
There is only one portion of the country which every one who cares for the pleasures of cycling should be advised to avoid, and that is the vast and dreary plain stretching from Paris to Le Mans, and from Rouen to Orléans. In planning a tour through France by routes other than those here given or suggested, Baedeker’s or Murray’s guide-books should be used for general information, supplemented, for road information, by the Géographie Joanne for each department through which one is passing. They can be purchased for 50 centimes, or 1 franc 25 centimes, in every bookshop in France. They are quite reliable enough, and much more convenient to carry than any other maps published in the country.
The Cyclists’ Touring Club is at present engaged in bringing out a revised edition of its French Road Book. So far, however, Baroncelli’s Guides are the best cycle routes published. His address is 18 Rue Roquepine, Paris. The Sketch Routes, published by the Véloce Sport (English address, Paul Hardy, 27 Alfred Place, Russell Square), are very useful if they happen to take you in the direction you wish to go. The Cyclists’ Touring Club Road Books, only sold to members, contain a vast amount of useful information unfortunately not well arranged. Membership in this club, which only costs half-a-crown a year, is desirable for tourists on the Continent.
The Customs regulations in France are not at all stringent, and tourists are now almost invariably allowed free entry with their machines at the chief ports, provided they can prove themselves to be tourists, and possess a sufficient knowledge of the French language to explain the fact intelligibly. Otherwise, a deposit of fifty or more francs is demanded; but if a receipt be obtained, the amount, with a very trifling deduction, will be returned if the tourist leaves the country within six months. If one, however, proposes to go for a few days into Germany, Belgium, or Spain, it is well to obtain a Passavant Descriptif, a description of the machine, which costs a penny, and will permit the bearer to return without any other formalities than showing this document on again passing the Customs officers. It can be obtained at the frontier stations by which one leaves the country, and is good at any other point of entry. A passport is of very little use, but some papers of identification, if possible French, may be indispensable for any one who sketches or photographs. Sketching and photographing are prohibited within a circle of 10 kilometres of any fortifications.
French hotels are usually reasonable and excellent. When they are extortionate, they are nearly always bad.
Parcels Post is about as unreliable as in any other part of the world. Clothes forwarded in this way are subject to the same uncertainty of delivery, as regards time, as in England.
Suggestions as to distances to be ridden, clothes to be worn, and so on, are quite unnecessary, since any one who has toured at all is usually a law unto himself in these matters, and will accept no advice.
But as the roads are the best in the world, the people the most polite, unless a head wind catches him, the tourist should have a delightful time if he keeps to the right of the road, and provides himself with a lamp and a bell.
Ballantyne Press
Printed by Ballantyne Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh and London
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