A five day cycle tour, May 2025

There were three of us on this tour: Jack and Teresa from Oregon USA, and me. I planned the route and booked the accommodation. I used the French IGN map no.924 “Voies vertes et Véloroutes de France” (“Greenways and Cycle Routes of France”) to set the overall plan, then a combination of Komoot, OutdoorActive and my Hammerhead handlebar computer’s software to prepare detailed routes for each day. Apart from the final day the routes mostly followed rivers and canals.

Prologue – 9 May. Home to Amiens.

With my bike on a car roof rack I left home at 0830, drove to Wheatley where Jack and Teresa had been staying, loaded their bikes onto the other two roof racks, and drove to the Shuttle terminal in Folkestone. A delay of 3½ hours and a two hour drive from Calais to Amiens finally got us to our hotel around 2100. We walked to a local all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant where the food was brought to our table by a robot waiter.

We were offered a storage room in the hotel for our bikes but in the end we left them locked onto the roof rack overnight.

Overnight: Novotel, Pôle Jules Verne, Longueau, Amiens

Stage 1 – 10 May. Amiens to Péronne.

Our first day’s route headed east following the River Somme and its accompanying Véloroute the V30 the whole way. The Somme Valley is broad and flat; the river is mostly controlled as a canal with locks as it meanders westwards. Either side of the main stream and canal marshes (marais) and shallow lakes (étangs) form extensive wetlands.

We set off alongside a main road, mostly downhill through the suburbs on a sporadic cycle path featuring parked cars and bollards, stopping on the way at a local bakery to buy sandwiches for lunch. After 2km we crossed the bridge over the railway lines, and turned right to join the V30.

The day passed uneventfully. The weather was sunny and warm, the surfaces we rode on varied between tarmac, concrete and hard-packed gravel. The going was easy apart from a noticeable headwind. Jack made the point – so obvious, but as a naïve cycle tourist it hadn’t occurred to me before – that panniers make a big difference to the wind resistance on the bike.

Approaching the larger town of Corbie where the V30 crossed to the other side of the river we cycled past a ‘Route Barrée‘ (‘Road Closed’) sign and had to backtrack when it turned out to be closed even to a determined cyclist. We got back to the river bridge via a short diversion on the normal roads.

We stopped now and again, often at a lock. At one, the lock at Sailly-Laurette, an explanatory sign mentioned a nearby memorial to the English WW1 war poet Wilfred Owen. It was a small stone pillar inscribed simply with his name and a stylised dove. Owen was a serving soldier; he was killed in action a week before the war ended.

Reaching the outskirts of Péronne we left the riverside and rode to our hotel in the town centre. Dinner was Pizza at Pasta’Pizz, a takeway with a few inside tables where despite its unprepossessing exterior we had excellent pizza and excellent service.

View track on Komoot

Overnight: Hotel St Claude, Péronne

Stage 2 – 11 May. Péronne to Tergnier.

It was Sunday, so in case we couldn’t buy food later we bought sandwiches at a bakery close to the hotel. Rejoining the V30 where we left it yesterday I was surprised and puzzled to see we were now riding alongside the Canal du Nord. It took a detailed look at the IGN app on my phone to see that the Canal had joined the Somme just before Péronne and it and the Somme Canalisé were now contiguous almost as far as the village of Voyennes nearly 20km away. From here onwards keeping up with the changes in the rivers and canals we would follow became increasingly challenging.

We duly followed the combined canals through gentle countryside very like yesterday’s; green fields, distant villages, lakes and reedy marshes, locks on the canal. Quiet and peaceful. Except for the fishermen. Crossing a minor road we came across a group of parked cars and a temporary notice announcing a fishing competition was taking place today. Sure enough, down on the towpath there were maybe twenty or more fishermen (they were all men) spaced at regular 20 metre intervals along the bank, each with one or two enormous fishing rods blocking the path. (“I’ve never seen such long poles!” – Teresa.)

The others let me go first. I rode gently towards the first man with his rod blocking the path. He didn’t budge. I rode round on the grass. The same for the second, and the third. By the fourth I’d had enough, nor was there room on the grass to get round. I called out a few choice words in French and the offending rod was grudgingly moved. Further on a few more made the same effort. I politely thanked those that did, and grumbled at those that didn’t.

At the far end, past more parked cars, I stopped and looked back. Jack and Teresa were out of sight; I waited for them to catch up. They too had been hindered but no harm had been done to bikes, riders, fishermen or equipment. They then turned back to take photos, but I was still in grumpy mode and stayed where I was.

We temporarily parted company with the Somme at Rouy-le-Grand, near Nesle and continued on the Canal du Nord for a short while before heading cross-country to Hombleux, where we stopped by the church for a break (there was no café), and then on to the small town of Ham. Here there was a convenience store open; we bought cans of cold drinks and stopped soon after for a roadside sandwich lunch. We were now back following the Somme, though at times at some distance from the river/canal and its surrounding wetlands.

We reached our hotel on the road before the centre of Tergnier early in the afternoon. I stayed for a rest while Teresa and Jack went to explore the centre; they reported there wasn’t much to see and on this Sunday evening nowhere that looked both open and a better bet for dinner than our hotel. The Royal Haveli’s restaurant only offers an Indian menu, and happily the food was good. There were only a few other customers and after eating we ended the evening chatting to three other travellers – a Dutch pilgrim walking to Rome, and two friends, Dutch and Swiss, also on a long-distance walk.

View track on Komoot

Overnight: Hotel Royal Haveli, Tergnier

Stage 3 – 12 May. Tergnier to Compiègne.

Having followed the Somme upstream for two days, today we turned south-west and followed another of France’s major rivers, l’Oise, downstream. We also said farewell to the V30 and joined the EV3 – one of the major cycle routes of Europe, named the Scandibérique, which runs 5650km (3510 miles) from Trondheim in the north of Norway to Santiago de Compostela in the north-west of Spain.

Scenically, our third day was much the same as the first two. Hydrographically we generally followed the valley of l’Oise, cycling alongside the Canal St Quentin, the Canal Latéral de l’Oise then, after some forest riding through the Forêt Domaniale de Laigue, joining l’Aisne which we followed a short distance to its confluence with l’Oise itself just on the edge of Compiègne.

Approaching the day’s halfway point we diverted from the canal into the town of Noyon. It has a busy, compact centre with a maze of one-way streets which we frequently ignored to avoid getting hopelessly lost. We rode slowly and carefully and no-one really seemed to mind!

Noyon has one of the seven much-admired Gothic cathedrals^* of Picardy. Equally interesting is the astonishing medieval half-timbered “Bishop’s Library” next to the cathedral which has somehow survived the devastation of two world wars as well as all the other turmoil in the centuries before. The links have more information.

Back on the Oise after several kilometres of forest tracks we rode through the centre of Compiègne to our hotel on a commercial development about 5km further on. One of the B&B Hotels chain, it had no bar or restaurant but the friendly receptionist explained the four-star Kyriad Hotel next door would gladly serve us the beers we were craving, and that there were two restaurants close by for evening meals. She also told us the best way to keep our bikes safe overnight was to take them up to our rooms in the lift, which we did. For our evening meal we chose Léon, a branch of a well-known French chain of fish restaurants.

* Actually six cathedrals and one basilica, but no-one seems to care about the technicality.

View track on Komoot

Overnight: B&B Hotel, Compiègne