Whenever we visited France in the past (20 years ago), the French had the attitude, if you can’t speak French properly, we will not help you, we will pretend not to understand you and we will definitely not attempt to speak English.

What a difference to the French attitude now.  They could not be more helpful and if we attempted our poor French, they assisted us with correct pronunciation or if they spoke a little English they would try their English.  We had many “interesting” half English, half French conversations.  As we cycled through Towns and Villages we were greeted with Bonjour.  If we stopped for lunch we received a Bon Appetite.  If we stopped to check our map, people would stop to give us directions.  When we talked to people we always got a Bon Courage or Bon Journee.  On the very occasional hill we had to go up we were encouraged with allez, allez as if were in the Tour de France, it was very funny.

The cycling in France and their cycle routes was absolutely brilliant.  Well signed routes, although some areas were better than others.  Some areas went to the extreme of keeping you away from any road, and directed you away from the Towns and Villages (to ensure safety).  The car drivers were extremely courteous and gave us loads of room when passing and for 99% of the time waited until it was safe to pass before passing.

The French people generally are fit, they cycle or walk places.  We often saw little old ladies on big black bicycles with a basket on the front cycling to the bakeries, or supermarkets.  Every supermarket we stopped at had bicycle parking right in front of the main entrance.  We didn’t see any mobility scooters in France.  We saw a few chubby kids but not many.  When you consider the French diet of white baguettes, croissants, choc au pain, quiche and high fat foods I cannot understand why they are not huge obese people.  Maybe it is their attitude to walking and cycling, it is a means of transportation, not exercise.

France cycles and encourages cyclists.

There were a few things we didn’t like about France: dog poo, smoking and toilets.

The French do not clean up after their dogs, it is often littering the sidewalks and it can be a bit of a \”minefield\”.

Smoking is still very common and unfortunately it is prevalent amongst young women.

Finally, as touring cyclists we use a fair amount of public washrooms.  The toilets varied from feet straddling a hole in the ground, toilets with no seat and no toilet paper to full-serviced toilets that are cleaned after every use. The urinals were more often than not open to the world view.  You would walk past a man having a wee before going to your enclosed cubicle.  We never knew if there would be toilet paper in the loo or not, most often there wasn’t any. At camp-sites they often did not provide toilet paper.  Not that they had run out of paper, there wasn’t even a holder for the loo roll. We always had to carry our own loo roll in our pockets.

We missed out on the warmshowers in France, because French people generally take their vacations in August.  Because of that we didn’t get to have too many in depth conversations about health care, schooling, politics etc.

We found that the big cities as most cities around the world had their fair share of poor people, poor housing, dirty streets and graffiti.  In the countryside they appeared to be better of with bigger houses, cleaner streets and a general pride in their areas.

We really enjoyed France, the people, the cycling, the Towns and the villages.  The weather could have been a bit warmer and drier, but France is a great place to cycle.