Day 5: We make it to London! Avenue Verte completed!

After more than 220 miles, we reach the London Eye and the end of the our bike ride from Paris to London.

After riding more than 220 miles on our bicycles from Paris, we are at the London Eye.

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Day 4 on the Avenue Verte: What it’s like from Newhaven to Crawley

This was a tough day: 61 miles and nearly 3,000 feet of climbing.

We’ve made it to England! London no longer feels so far away.

But if I thought Day 2 of our adventure along the Avenue Verte was challenging, Day 4 had it beat.

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Avenue Verte Day 3: We reach Dieppe and take the ferry to England

The final 55 miles in France, weighed down by a large can of cassoulet.

It’s our last day on the Avenue Verte in France. We have 55 miles to bicycle from Gournay-en-Bray to Dieppe, there’s a climb with a 7% grade, we’re now carrying a heavy can of cassoulet au confit du canard for someone in England, and we need to make the 6 p.m. ferry across the English Channel.

Can we do it without stressing?

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Day 2 on the Avenue Verte: 65 hilly miles to Gournay-en-Bray

The Avenue Verte turned decidedly rural on our second day as we continued our bicycle ride from Paris to London.

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Avenue Verte: Day 1 of bicycling from Paris to London

A bike route from Note Dame in Paris to the London Eye? Of course I had to ride it.

A bicycle route from Paris to London? From the Seine to the Thames and connecting Notre Dame and the London Eye? That’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull — of course I had to do it.

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On and off the bike in and around Strasbourg

Just how bike-friendly is Strasbourg? And what about the food?

Strasbourg calls itself the most bike-friendly city in France (and fourth in Europe). So of course I had to check it out.

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EuroVelo 5 in Alsace: A bike ride through the vineyards

We based ourselves in Strasbourg and bicycled through cute half-timbered towns.

Time to base ourselves in Strasbourg for a few days and do some biking.

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‘Seine a Velo’ cycle route: 3 days between Rouen and Paris

For me, the highlight of this route is Claude Monet’s gorgeous garden at Giverny. Rouen was a lovely surprise.

A sign along the way.

France’s Seine a Velo cycle route stretches more than 400 kilometers between Paris and the English Channel (Le Havre or Deauville, take your pick). We chose to ride between Rouen and Paris, so most of it. Here’s what we found.

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2 emotional days bicycling along the D-Day beaches

Going by bike is the perfect pace for experiencing the D-Day beaches.

I have two three pieces of advice for anyone thinking of going to Normandy and the D-Day beaches.

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Cycling in England: A bike ride from a 900-year-old priory to a Victorian seaside town

Mottisfont to Swanage, mostly using the U.K.’s National Cycle Network.

This ride is a shout-out to Britain’s National Cycle Network, which got us so much of the way from a few miles north of Mottisfont to Swanage.

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