Tour de France - 3 weeks
Combines 3 of our French (or part-French) routes:  Northern and Southern Burgundy, Bordeaux & the Dordogne, the Cévennes, Brittany, Provence, Champagne, the Loire Valley, Alsace, our “Switzerland” route, and the Basque Country. 

On this page, you'll find an overview of the trip, below.  Click on the map to see details of cycling in each of the regions.  Prices and departure dates are in the table, at the bottom of the page.

A Certain “Joie de Vivre”

France is a special place, about which few are dispassionate.  Her appeal is strongest amongst those who know her best.  Some years ago, an “Economist” statistical analysis of “Best Places to Live” put her 11th.  But when they simply polled their staff, she won hands down.

A strong native culture partly insulates her from Anglo-Saxon influence.  This complicates our ability to understand her – when it doesn’t provoke blind rage.  But her frequent rejection of our certainties has naught to do with us.  Rather, it is symptomatic of the way in which she sees herself, and of the unique prism through which she views the world (philosophy is a required subject in French secondary schools).  If the path frustrates some of us, we are no less drawn to the result.

Those who have travelled in rural France will need no encouragement to return, and newcomers will be delighted at what they find.  The French countryside is terrifically rewarding.  And very much alive, with an agricultural tissue that has disappeared in most properous nations.  Exploration leads to the roots of a delightful lifestyle:  those family farms are intimately linked to the Unesco inscription of “French Gastronomy” to its World Heritage list. 

Indeed, one can’t talk about France without talking about the food.  And the wine!  The French table is a deity:  the great social organizer, leisure activity, consumer of disposable income.  If French gastronomy has such prestige, it is because the French spend their time on it.  Inevitably, we shall, too.  And then cycle through picture-book landscapes to work it off.  Well, try to work it off.

It is no accident that Blue Marble’s base is in Paris.  French culture fits ours in many respects (7 weeks’ paid vacation, for instance) and influences our style of travel even in other countries.

Tour de France is an à la carte selection of our French routes.  Each departure of the trip includes three different itineraries.  Some departures incorporate our Swiss and Basque routes, which visit both France (the Jura and Savoie regions in the first case, the French Basque Country in the second) and her neighbors.

Having trouble choosing?  Follow this link for a general introduction to our French routes.


The Pont du Gard, thanks to Tom Albrecht