Start: Paris

Finish: Nice

Time: 72h

Paris Nice 2002

by Daniel Heesch

An idea

It was in early Spring 2002 that the idea hatched. It came into being all too suddenly, and once there, a strong sensation told me that it could not easily be undone. I was just studying a map of France to get my bearing in preparation for a trip to Grenoble, a city of which I knew little more than that it makes a great base for cycling trips into the Alpes. As I studied the surrounding area, my glance wandered westwards, towards that grand river Rhône, running, as it does, all the way from close to Lyon to the Mediterranean Sea. I was immediately intrigued by the possibility of traversing half the country just by following that river, and downstream at that. The map suggested that it would be a rather nice scenery too: to the left would rise the majestic Alpes, and the Massif Central would welcome me on the right. In a stroke of youthful recklessness, I tied up the loose ends by choosing Paris in the north and Nice in the south, neither of which of course were anywhere near the Rhône. With these endpoints, the trip would get close to 1,000 kilometers, but by the time I added up the kilometres, the idea had already taken on a life on its own.

As for the direction, it wasn't once in question that I would leave in Paris, and arrive in Nice. After all, this is how professional cyclists still do it every year, albeit more slowly and on a less direct route. Another reason was purely tactical, for anyone who has spent any time in the Rhône valley and the Provence region will know of the Mistral, a fierce wind that blows down the river valley towards the sea and beyond. There are days when there is no Mistral but it's sufficiently frequent to consider it a serious risk cycling in the wrong direction. Southern France also conjured up magic memories from days long gone, a few of which I had spent at the Cote d'Azur with its mix of orange and lemon groves, stately vineyards, and fields of lavender, and above all with its warm mediterranean climate - plenty of things therefore that would somewhat soothe the pains that would inevitably grow as the journey progressed.

The length and difficulty of Paris - Nice dwarved any other long-distance rides I had previously done. A 700 kilometers nearly-non-stop ride had once taken me from Oxford in England to Kassel in Germany, but the terrain in the Netherlands and substantial parts of Germany are extremly flat, you can normally rely on a westerly wind, mild weather and there is a four hours ferry break to refuel and relax. By contrast, with Paris and Nice as endpoints, the original "along-the-river-pedalling" exercise had turned into a pretty grown-up endurance ride with one notable mountain pass midway, a potentially very hot final day in southern France and a lot of gruelling terrain in the final third, or at least so it seemed from topographical maps of the region. With around 1,000 kilometers, the ride was likely to involve at least two consecutive nights of cycling, so there were challenges aplenty above and beyond the sheer distance. Although I was confident that I could do it, I am still somewhat surprised that I did do it. There were plenty of occasions where it would have been so easy to give up. Perhaps this is what makes such rides psychologically so difficult. There is often a train station nearby from where a high-speed train delivers you back to Paris. There is always a hotel somewhere near the road that would love to have you stay for the night. In the end, although I did resisted all such temptations, it took almost a day longer than what I had naively assumed: about 72 hours, from Friday 9am to Sunday 9am.

To give the narrative some structure, I have chopped up the trip into nine stages between 50 and 160 kilometers. You can use it as a template for a leisurely nine-day ride. My aim was to finish it in two days, though that proved a bit ambitious: three days and nights were needed in the end. With some better preparation and a bit of good luck, i still believe it can be done in two days. Time will tell.

The route

When planning the precise itinerary, one question concerned the point at which I would get into the Rhône valley. It was obvious from the topography of France that I could not altogether avoid some hills. There were two options. One possibility was to follow the Seine upstream through the Plateau de Langres into the Department Côte d'Or in the northern parts of Burgundy, then to drop down to the banks of the Saône river. The Saône is a major tributary of the Rhône which it meets a few hundred kilometers further south just before Lyon. This route was closer to the original idea as it would have involved cycling through the Rhône valley from its very beginning but the terrain between the two rivers Seine and Saône seemed a little too hilly for my taste, also there seemed to be a scarcity of national roads. The second route would have taken advantage of the fact that the Loire originates in the southernmost regions of the Massif Central and gets, near St-Etienne, excitingly close to the Rhône valley. Also, in the north the Loire misses Paris only by two hundred kilometers. From the map these kilometers looked very benign, I would thereby bypass Lyon, reduce the overall climb, and add more scenic value to the journey by including the picturesque Loire valley. I chose the latter option and I wasn't disappointed.

Here then is a short summary of the plan: shortly after crossing the ring-road of Paris in the south-east, we find ourselves on the Route Nationale 7 (henceforth N7) with destination Nice. The route roughly follows the Seine, but only for a little while and at such a distance that one cannot see much of it. After around 50 kilometers of fields and forests, and roughly in Fontainebleau, the N7 turns south and heads directly towards the Loire, which it hits after around 150 kilometers of not too hilly terrain at Briare. For the next 250 or so kilometers, we'll roughly follow the Loire valley upstream through Nevers (at KM 246) and , through the first night (if you start in the morning that is) towards Roanne (at around KM 400), until reaching St-Etienne perched on the slopes of the Massif Central at KM 480. On the way, we steadily gain a few metres altitude (from 140m in Briare to 560m in St Etienne).

In St Etienne the route leaves the Loire valley for good and winds its way up towards the "Col de la Republique", which at KM 490 marks not only the mid-point of the journey but also, with 1160 meters, by far the highest point. It lies halfway between the Loire and the Rhône and the climb over 20 kilometers at 5.8 percent is quite intense. The descent from the Col into the Rhône valley just south of Lyon is therefore all the more terrific. It is long, steep and with only a few gentle curves.

Once in the Rhone valley, we head straight south on the "Route de la Soleil" towards the Mediteranean Sea, through Montelimar, Valence, Orange and Aix-en-Provence. This is the easiest route in many ways. You won`t need a map for the next 200 kilometers and it is also pretty flat. If the mistral blows, the channeling effect can be massive. The reason why you may want to consider a slightly different journey is the stunning scenery between the Rhône and the French-Alps. A good place to leave the N7 for a while is shortly after Orange. For 50 kilometers, you will cut through the picturesque region of the Vaucluse with the imposing Mont Ventoux in the far distance, before rejoining the N7 on your way to Aix-en-Provence. From there you head straight west for around 200 kilometers before reaching the Mediteranean Sea at Frejus. From here you have two options to get to Cannes: either follow the coast, the Corniche d'Or , which is a demanding series of rolling hills, or plough into the Massif d'Esterel, which is a long climb followed by a long descent. From Cannes to Nice, it's a fast ride with lots of other cyclists. If everything goes according to plan, the city should come within sight just before the 1,000 kilometers mark.

On equipment

There exists a problem in a branch of mathematics known as combinatorics which runs under the name of the "Knapsack problem". The problem is this: how do you pack a knapsack of a given size with items of various size and utility such that the total utility of the knapsack is maximised. If an item takes up a lot of space, you may want to put it in only if it is particularly useful. The problem is compounded if you do not only want to keep the most useful items but you also seek to minimise the total weight of the knapsack. If you have ever thought the "Knapsack problem" was only of academic interest, it clearly is not! After much optimisation, my rucksack contained but the bare essentials: no food that I could not buy on the way, no water-proof clothes and no sleeping bag, no spare shoes. But instead two 0.5 kilo bottles of carbohydrate powder, a small pump, a puncture repair kit and a spare inner tube, both boxless so that everything would fit in snugly, two or three allen keys for adjusting the click pedals, the saddle and the tribar, one set of underwear, one t-shirt and a pair of socks for the few days in Nice, a pair of long leggins, a warm and cosy jumper for the nights and as a cushion to sleep on in case such need should arise, a toothbrush and a rear light. Then for the journey a bright yellow bike shirt and functional underwear, and last but not least five pairs of exposable contact lenses. This was the core, now comes the luxury: a full-blown and rather bulky pre-digital SLR camera (which didn't actually fit into the rucksack and spent most of the journey precariously wrapped around my tribar), two 1.5 ltr bottles to mix magic drinks, swimming shorts, a credit card, and a tiny piece of paper with useful addresses and telephone numbers. The bike itself: a 105 aluminium road bike by Bulls, perfectly mid-range but very lean and light.

Paris to Briare
Briare to Nevers
Nevers to Roanne
Roanne to St Etienne
St Etienne to St Vallier
St Vallier to Nyons
Nyons to Aix
Aix to Frejus
Frejus to Nice