In August 2026, we cycled the French part of the Avenue Verte, from Dieppe to Paris. This post is intended as a practical, facts and stats focussed resource for other people considering this route. During our own planning for the trip, we had to patch together information and found there wasn’t an awful lot of info specifically related to cycle touring with kids. So hopefully this will help some people.
TLDR:
It’s great. A very accessible introduction to multi-day cycle touring in Europe, suitable for families who are reasonably confident about cycling with loaded bikes. Doing it with kids much younger than 8 or 9 would be hard.
About us
We (Anita & Stuart) are confident cyclists. We have previously completed long cycle tours, including the Avenue Verte. Our kids were 10 at the time of this tour and have also done some shorter cycle tours. This definitely gave us good confidence about being able to enjoy this route, but I’d also say this route would be a good introduction to cycle touring with kids, even if you’ve never tried anything on this scale before.
Equipment
Bikes
Anita and I have old 26″ wheel touring bikes. Mine is a Surly LHT and Anita’s is a Kona Sutra frame. Both hacked around over the years, but nothing fancy. Neither of us used more than 7 gears the whole trip.
The kids have an Islabike Beinn 26″ and a Squish 26″ Junior. Both eight gears, both 26″ wheels which made packing spare inners easier.
Sleeping
We have a Decathlon Quickhiker 4 person tent which is almost 10 years old. It’s a bit of a squeeze now, but it’s light-ish and still works great.
We all have good sleeping bags, though it was hot so we didn’t really need them for this trip.
We have a mix of lightweight sleeping mats and pillows. Some better than others. None particularly fancy.
Cooking
Jetboil stove which is tiny and awesome. Some collapsible pans and a mix of plastic and enamel mugs, plates and bowls. Nothing special – just picnic stuff really.
Navigation and the Route
We bought the printed guidebook from Sustrans which was really helpful, both in planning and visualising the trip and also in navigating some of the trickier bits.
We also used the GPX download from Cycle.Travel which was really helpful.
I had Komoot installed on my phone with pre-planned daily routes which I used a bit, but is totally non-essential. We used Google maps a fair bit, especially in towns and cities, both for navigating and for finding shops etc.
The whole route is pretty well sign posted, and for the vast majority of the route we only referred to the map or our phones to double check or when we deviated from the route for some reason.
We cycled Dieppe to Paris. You can of course do it the other way around. The route splits just south of Gournay-en-Bray. The shorter route heads south through Gisors and the Vexin – we took this route. An alternative takes you east through Beauvais and then back along the river Oise. The routes rejoin just south of Cergy before the final stretch into Paris.
We stayed true to the planned route until Maisons-Laffitte, where we deviated significantly to reduce the distance on what was already a very long last day (see details below). We rejoined the official AV route around Argenteuil and followed the canals before peeling off the route again around La Villette to head to our hotel. We didn’t do the very last bit down to the Notre-Dame, but have done on a previous trip.
Accommodation
We mainly stayed at campsites, all but one of which were pre-booked. One night we stayed with a Warm Showers host. In Paris we stayed in a hotel. More details on all of those in the day splits below.
We’re quite active Warm Showers hosts here in the UK (we’d definitely recommend doing this if you’re able to), which probably helped – it can be difficult to find a host if you’re totally new to the platform I think.
One thing to note about French campsites is that they mostly don’t have loo roll in the toilets…
Details
The following goes into further detail about each section of the route, our accommodation and anything else which might be helpful to know…
UK
We drove our van with bikes and bags in to Newhaven and parked in the Sainsbury’s car park for ten days, for £22 using JustPark. Totally legit, mega easy and way cheaper than other long stay car parks.
We rolled just over 1km along the bike path and onto the ferry which we’d pre-booked. You have to phone to make the booking with DFDS to include bike spaces – you can’t do it online.
Day 1
Had late lunch in Dieppe and stopped at a supermarket to get supplies for the night. We had pre-booked a pitch at Camping des 2 Rivières. Only about 10km down the AV from Dieppe. Great campsite. They had a small shop and play area.
Day 2
About 28km of dreamy cycling along the old railway line to Camping Sainte-Claire just before Neufchâtel-en-Bray. Excellent clean campsite which also has an affordable restaurant on site. Huge supermarket and boulangerie just a drop further along the AV.
Depending on what time your ferry arrives, you could easily go straight to this campsite for your first night.
At Mesnieres-en-Bray, there is a bivouac spot with water and a toilet where you are allowed to pitch up for one night. If we’d known this in advance, we might have done this rather than pay for two campsites…
Day 3
About 20km to Forges-les-Eaux. We stayed at Camping La Minière which didn’t require pre-booking. It also had a small pool which was great. I would definitely consider smooshing these first three days into two days if planning again, but it was actually nice to have a very short day here and spend an afternoon around the pool.
Lots of food options in the town and a supermarket a 15 minute walk from the campsite too.
Day 4
From Forges-les-Eaux the route comes off the railway track and onto small roads. It also gets a little hilly. The roads are great however and traffic was very low in August.
We cycled about 27km to just before Gournay-en-Bray and stayed with a host using Campspace which was delightful.
In Dampierre-en-Bray there is another bivouac spot, this time with a great covered eating area and vending machines. Again, If we knew this in advance, we might have aimed for this and saved some money. There’s also a lovely cafe in the village centre, Cafe Velo Jaune.
Day 5
The distances between possible camping spots get longer from here and day 5 was about 48km from Gournay-en-Bray to Dangu, just past Gisors. There was a brutal hill just after Neuf-Marche, but then lots of rolling through beautiful countryside and back onto a former railway line after Gisors.
The campsite, Camping de l’Aulnaie, was next to a beautiful lake, but was the grubbiest and noisiest of the sites we stayed at. I wouldn’t especially recommend it, but there aren’t many options if you’re camping…
Day 6
When we left the UK we didn’t have accommodation planned for this night and assumed we would wild camp. Though this is technically forbidden, especially in this part of the route through the Vexin, it would be pretty easy to find a quite spot for a night. The bigger challenge is food and water. It was hot and we ended up knocking on someone’s door in Maudétour-en-Vexin to refill our bottles.
In the end, a Warmshowers host came good and we camped in their garden in Vigny. There is a small shop in the village here which was open even on a Sunday evening in August.
Day 7
We had a hotel booked in Paris (more on that below), so we knew the last day would be tough, but there would be a reward at the end.
It was quite hard going and ideally we would have broken this up so that we could have enjoyed the ride into Paris more.
Originally we’d hoped to stay at a campsite at Maisons-Laffitte on the western edge of the city, but it was fully booked and no amount of pleading by email about how small our tent was seemed to convince them. Maybe if we’d just shown up they would have squeezed us in? It was an expensive campsite anyway, so we added an extra night to the hotel and braced for a longer final day…
Some lovely riding, particularly between Cergy and Maurecourt. The section through Saint-Germain-en-Laye looks nice on paper but was actually bumpy and tough going. After Maisons-Laffitte we deviated from the official AV route to cut down the distance and headed east to rejoin the route at the Pont d’Argenteuil. There was a big hill but the cycle paths were generally good.
The final section through the industrial north before reaching the canals was long and tedious. Plus there was nowhere to get snacks or ice-creams… By the time we joined the canals in Saint Denis it was rush hour and there were some bridge repairs which meant we had to walk sections with big, busy crowds. It was quite overwhelming for all of us.
After La Villette we came off the AV again to make a beeline for our hotel in the 19th arrondissement. This meant we missed the final glorious arrival at the Notre-Dame. But we walked much of the route the following days and it looked excellent.
60km in total this day, only made bearable by pizzas and a hotel bedroom at the end!
Days 8-10
We stayed in Hotel La Belle Ville, which was excellent. They stored our bikes in a back of house room. Our family bedroom was spacious, modern and clean. Because it was out of the city centre it was cheaper than other similar standard hotels, but it was easy getting the metro to the centre to hit the tourist spots.
When we left, we cycled across Paris to Saint-Lazare station. There is a great network of segregated bike lanes across the city and we found it quite easy and safe. The biggest worry was actually other speedy cyclists and e-scooters.
We had booked the train in advance using the SNCF-Connect website, which was straightforward. The platforms at Saint Lazare are on the first floor if you enter from the main frontage of the station and though there are lifts, it was busy and we ended hauling two of our fully loaded bikes up the stairs. We discovered that there is level access to the platforms from the north east of the station.
For the train from Saint-Lazare to Rouen we could book bike spaces. They were in an area with four vertical hanging hooks, but because we had booked all four spots, we were able to hang two of the bikes and leave two tucked in fully loaded.
The connection from Rouen to Dieppe was a local train which you can’t book bike spots on, but it was the middle of the day and not busy. The space for bikes was massive so it was easy to get all four bikes in fully loaded.
Finally we cycled into Dieppe for a final ice cream before riding back to the docks and home on the ferry.
A typical road on the Avenue Verte route.
The bike space on the local train between Rouen and Dieppe.
Conclusion
In summary, the Avenue Verte was a complete joy and we would totally recommend it for a family cycle tour. The only thing we would do differently would be to try and split up the distances more evenly. Though you could do the 250km in 4 or 5 days with some kids, 6 or 7 feels about right for it not to be too full on and to allow time at the campsites and a bit of sight seeing in the bigger towns.
