FAQ - Tour de France finish line on Champs Elysees

My husband and I had a bit of disagreement before and during our trip - we knew that the Tour finishes on a circuit course on the Champs Elysees in Paris, but weren't sure where exactly the finish line was located. Ed recalled seeing previous podium shots on TV with the Arc de Triomphe in the background and took that to mean that it was located quite close to the Arc, but I wasn't so sure. I'd tried to find more information about the finish on the internet, but couldn't find any sort of map (the official TdF website only had the overall stage map, not anything specific about the finish).

So, on the final Sunday morning of the Tour in July this year, we were up early to scout out where everything was. In the two previous days we could see where they were setting up VIP seating (usually photos of the Obelisk don't include grandstands!) Our hotel was fairly close to the Arc, and we took some photos with our bikes on the Champs Elysees in the closed section between the race course turnaround and the traffic circle at the Arc itself. We'd wanted to try to ride on the course, but couldn't find anywhere to get onto the course as it was very well barricaded - it seemed if you could get on the course, the police didn't really care if you were riding (this was at 9am, long before the caravan or the racers would be coming along) ... but there was really no opening we could see to get onto the actual course.



So, instead we rode along the sidewalk of the Champs until we got close to the park areas where all the VIP seating started and access became a lot more limited. As it turned out, the finish line was where all the grandstands were (and therefore, where the general public without grandstand tickets couldn't get to or see all that well). The closest non-grandstand places to the finish line were already crowded by early in the morning. We took our bikes back to the hotel, and came back to a spot near the intermediate sprint line (right against the barriers) by about 11 am and waited.

That day's L'Equipe newspaper was the most helpful in terms of the actual course route for the circuit finish, so I kept the map and scanned it just in case it can be helpful to anyone else.

FAQ - Eurostar and Bikes (and other trains)

One of our concerns for our trip in July was whether we would be able to carry our hard bike cases onto the Eurostar train (between London and Lille). In reviewing the Eurostar website, there was some conflicting information - because while on the one hand it mentioned that you didn't need to check baggage, just carry it onto the train - yet on the other hand, it mentioned that "you *should* use our registered baggage service" if you were travelling with bicycles or had too much/too heavy luggage. We wanted no part of the registered baggage service, because we were going to be taking a connecting train from Lille to Arras, so having our bikes arrive in Lille within 24 hours wasn't really helpful if we were already in Arras.

The Eurostar help pages listed that "A bicycle can be carried on Eurostar provided it can be folded or dismantled to fit into a bicycle bag. It can then be carried as part of a passenger's baggage and stowed in an appropriate area in the carriage where passengers are seated." So, this was a bit more helpful - it seemed to suggest that as long as your bike was dismantled and you could carry it on yourself it wouldn't be a problem. But, we weren't sure if they were going to differentiate between a soft bike bag and our hard bike cases.

We also saw this on the help pages: "Your luggage must be no more than two metres in length. Although there is no weight limit, you must be able to lift it into the storage racks provided". So, again we figured we were good, as our cases were just under 2m high and we were able to carry them ourselves.

Yet, on the other hand, when I tried to search on the web for other people's experiences, most of what I found was people using the registered baggage service. So, I even called Eurostar to check, and was told that as long as the bike was dismantled and in a case/bag we could carry it on.

I was a bit nervous checking in at Waterloo station, hoping that we wouldn't be told arbitrarily that our cases were too large and had to be checked in. Other than them not fitting into the x-ray machine of the lineup we were in and having to move over a few lines, we had no problems checking in or going through security. We made sure though to be near the gate entrance right at the time that boarding was due to start, so that we could be among the first to load our cases into the baggage section on our carriage - they stuck out at least 6-8 inches into the aisle, but no Eurostar employees seemed to care in the slightest.

We developed a routine of getting the cases on and off the trains - Ed would take his on board, then I'd hand mine up to him then get on myself (we had our luggage in backpacks/travel packs which made life a lot easier, to have our hands free for the bike cases). Getting off, basically Ed would hand everything off to me on the platform, including the backpacks, and then we'd get organized on the platform rather than trying to put on our packs on the train and manoeuvre the cases off the train while wearing the packs. This worked for the Eurostar, the regional TER train from Lille to Arras, and a few days later the TGV from Arras to Paris - Gare du Nord.

Once in Lille, we had to leave the Lille-Europe station and walk across a bridge to the Lille-Flandres station, where we waited for the regional TER train to Arras. Our excitement for that part of the trip was the lady who vomited in the station, and then later relieved herself in our train car ... most passengers then vacated that car, particularly when the urine puddle made its way down the car. We didn't want to move our cases, but the conductor finally convinced us that our cases would be safe unattended and that we could sit further down in the next car.

A few days later, taking the TGV from Arras to Paris, there was already a lot of baggage in the designated area - but there was an empty table and bench seat across so we stacked our cases there. Again, no train employee seemed to care where they were.

As a side note, we had taken our cases on the Underground from Heathrow Airport to Earls Court Station then walked to our hotel, pushing/pulling the cases. Our hotel was probably a bit closer to the next station (Gloucester Road) but it wasn't fully accessible. Even with wheelchair accessible stations (ie. no stairs which would have been nearly impossible with the cases), there were still long corridors to pull/push the cases and it was a tiring ordeal. So, we got our concierge to book us a van to Waterloo Station when we left and it was quite reasonable. At Paris- Gare du Nord, the taxi line was way too long (and we probably would have needed 2 taxis unless we were lucky enough that a minivan showed up when it was our turn), so we hired a "limo" van - expensive, but worth avoiding the hassle of hauling the cases through the Paris Metro system (and our closest station wasn't accessible anyway). We were lucky when we eventually got back to Paris that an Australian we met on our bus tour had a rental van and drove us to our next hotel. Then we took the Air France shuttle bus, which was quite convenient from our hotel, to the airport when we finally left France.

Anyway, maybe detailing our experiences here will help someone else in future, because I couldn't find a lot of information online about bikes in cases and trains before we went. (I should add - we did all our train travel at off-peak hours, generally between 10 am and 3 pm, so that probably made things easier as well).

FAQ - Cycling from Arras to Vimy (Canadian Memorial)

As mentioned before, I have plans to put up some information about useful items we would have liked to know beforehand, but couldn't really find anywhere (or at least, couldn't find the information simply or concisely or consistently). So, this is the first of these.

As we could read on the official website and in guidebooks, the Canadian National Vimy Memorial is about 10 km north of the town of Arras, where we stayed for a few days in July. However, almost all the instructions we encountered (and that official distance) are for driving there, not for riding a bike - and we had no intention of riding on the N17 motorway (or worse yet, on the Autoroute) to get there.

Before leaving home, I purchased the Michelin #301 "Pas-de-Calais, Somme" Local map from a specialized map store - so we knew that there were other local "D" roads available to get to the memorial. (Helpful Hint - unless you're a true map fanatic and need to see the map well ahead of time, wait and buy it there in a bookstore - much cheaper at 4 Euros rather than the $14.95 Cdn I paid! You can always look at Via Michelin beforehand to get a sense of the area, and even print out a map from a specific search). The scale of the local Michelin map, 1/150000 was too large to get an idea though of how to get out of Arras to get on to any of these "D" roads - and the inset of Arras at larger scale was only a bit more helpful as it really only included the centre-ville area.

So, once in Arras, we went to the local tourist office located in the Town Hall. While we did get another local map of the centre of town, the workers there couldn't really help us with planning a bike route to Vimy - their best advice was "you don't want to go on the Motorway" and when we pointed to some of the smaller roads on our map they agreed but didn't give us any assistance as to how to get to those roads or which might be the best choice.

Therefore, we set off by walking our bikes over the cobbles of the Grand'Place north of our hotel, then rode west on the Rue Méaulens to the roundabout at the Place de Tchecoslovaquie. From there, we rode along the Rue Michelet to the north-east - but our larger-scale maps pretty much ended at that point.

On the local Michelin map, we knew that we wanted to turn north and head towards Roclincourt, but unfortunately the map didn't give any sort of name or number for this road. There were directional signs to various places, but mostly for things like the church (L'église) or the town hall (La Mairie) or how to get to the Motorway, and didn't help us much. So, we ended up going probably 3 km out of our way to the east, ending up at St. Laurent-Blangy, before we saw a bus stop with a map where I was able to determine that we did in fact want to turn north at the sign for the St. Nicholas Mairie.

We were a little bit concerned as we approached the motorway that we were in fact going to go over it rather than end up on it (as it was a bit of a detour rather than straight across), but once on the other side and heading north again we were reassured by signs that pointed towards Roclincourt (the next village we were aiming for on the map).

All was well until we got to Thélus, where once again the lack of a specific larger-scale local map was a problem - we got a good exploration of Thélus in several directions, including east to the N17 motorway and out northwest to a dead-end before we took what looked like a relatively main road northward that was labelled to the cemetery. This did take us north-west like we wanted, ending up at the N17 with the apparent road into the memorial a bit south on the opposite side of the N17. (and looking back at Google Earth/Google Maps afterwards, we somehow missed the "Rue de Vimy" which was what we wanted - I think we were on the Rue des Abouts and Rue de 19 Mars instead, before ending up on the Rue de Vimy).

Unfortunately, this road was blocked off to traffic, with instructions (in French) about how to detour around back to all the major roads we were trying to avoid in order to get to the Memorial from the opposite direction. It was slightly concerning that in English the sign only mentioned road construction, but in French it mentioned work being done for undetonated explosives and how dangerous it would be to go this way. On the other hand, it would also be quite dangerous to ride in busy traffic on the motorway! There was a mountain biker who had lifted his bike over the barrier and rode in just before we got there, and as he didn't come back (and we didn't hear any loud explosions), we decided to go this route we'd planned. There was only one area where there was some construction being done a bit off the road, and the workers waved to us as we rode by - lol. So much for my anxieties about being chased away by security or something like that.

The bonus was that at the end, we had a lovely tree-lined boulevard all to ourselves with no cars allowed (see photos below). We were happy to see the official Canadian government sign signifying we'd reached the official Memorial area, near the trenches/tunnels area of the Memorial site. We were able to ride our bikes up to the main memorial area, where we locked them to a pole in the parking lot. (We think that the security guard offered to watch them for us such that we didn't need to lock them, but we weren't secure enough with our French to be sure so we locked up anyway). Back near the trenches/tunnels area (where the official Visitor Centre is), we were able to lock up again at an actual bike rack in the parking lot.



On the way back to Arras, this time instead we went south to Neuville-St. Vaast, east along the D49 to Thélus (probably how we should have gone from Thélus had we known the other road would be closed), then back south through Roclincourt to Arras and kind of randomly along a few one-way streets to our hotel (tackling the cobbles this time rather than walking - ouch ;-) ).

Total time: going = 1.5 hours, 21.3 km; coming back = 45 minutes, 15.4 km.
Route summary:
-from Arras Grand'Place, NW on Rue Méaulens, then NE on Rue Michelet/D41, then N on Rue Raoul Briquet (according to Google Maps, just where Rue Michelet turns into Rue Anatole France).
-turn left when you get to the N17, go across it, then right again and N on Route de Roclincourt/Rue d'Arras.
-once at Thélus, probably best to go left/W on the Grande Rue/D49 to Neuville-St.Vaast to avoid the potentially-still-closed road we took.
-from Neuville-St. Vaast, go north on the D55/Route du Canada (is that obvious or what?) and there were even signs from this direction directing you to the Canadian Memorial, so should have no problems finding it from here.

(I tried to plot our routes on images I saved from Google Earth, seeing as our Garmin Edge didn't seem to work that day to plot it automatically for us - sorry for the wobbles).