Driving through France bikes on roof or just hire when you get there?

[Holidayhavanas]

Hello!

First time driving to France, stop offs include La Rochelle. DH wants to take bikes on car roof - for those well seasoned travellers to France do you tend to take your own or hire when you get to destination. For me it’s an added hassle and not sure how secure they will be as I wanted to stop off on the drive down etc. I’m minded to hire them when we arrive. Thanks

We’ve driven to France with bikes

We're not seasoned travellers in France but hope to be, Im planning all manner of cycling trips for next year. We plan to take them on our bike rack at the rear, the bikes are ebikes so our years of putting bikes on the roof are long gone, they're very very heavy

We wouldnt want to hire bikes when we get there as that cuts down our flexibility of what we want to do, where we want to go etc and we paid a lot for our bikes and they're set up for us obviously

Plus the cost of hire obviously

We’ve driven to France with bikes on the back of our car, just make sure they are locked securely.
If you have them on the roof remember to check to it height when going into car parks etc, and to book a tall car for the crossing

Thank you!

Our bikes on roof rack is lockable and we've never had issues parking up for a few hours - for overnights have usually beought them to a more secure position but agree that bringing with gives more flexibility - plus your own saddle, not someone else's idea of "comfortable" 😁

We put them on the back not the roof, if you're going La Rochelle direction you'll have to deal with Rouen and you won't be able to get through the tunnel. If you want to drive somewhere for a ride you'll mostly be stuffed, the parking is all height restricted.

Massively fuel inefficient too.

@nearlyspringyay thank you that’s good intel!! Didn’t think about tunnels.

Also cost. Locally your now looking at 40-50 Euros per day hire. So it’s only really worth it if your going to use all day. For a 10 mins cycle to village it’s expensive

Watch out for customs/immigration wanting to look inside your boot on the way back. We have a tail mounted bike carrier (roof mounted are a PITA to use) that slides down so you can still get to the boot without unstrapping the bikes. Some poor sod in front of us at Calais was made to take all the bikes off so the police could see into his boot.

Generally we bring our own bikes for flexibility.

Good point about the boot. Our rear rack apparently tilts down so that you can open the boot, we have never tried it though, I cant imagine it working!

We live in France and travel with bikes on racks.

If they are locked on the rack you are unlikely to have a problem and having them with you will be convenient to make the mot of every opportunity to ride..it is often easer to explore further than on foot.

We've done both. In terms of hassle it is easier not to but you do lose that certain spontiniety!

When we were young and carefree and childless we were able to take the wheels off and carry the bikes in the car with the backseat down which was good as having a bike available meant we could cycle around the local area and go for longer rides. But its worth looking at when you actually will use them. Even having them available all the time we used them only four or five days over two weeks.

Now we have children we have looked at the costs and hassle and concluded its not worth it. When they were small we were able to get the children's bikes in the car boot if we removed the wheels etc but now they are cycling more adult size bikes we would need an external rack. As we tend to cycle from home or use the train when in the UK we concluded that it wasnt really worth buying a rack just to transport the bikes for holidays.

As others have said there may be restrictions on driving routes (but realistically these can be overcome) and also many towns have underground or multistorey parking which may not be available if you have bikes on the roof (again this can be overcome but adds a bit more hassle to stop offs). I wouldnt have thought security is a major problem as long as everything is locked on and taken into hotel at night.

Have you checked out the bike hire situation in where you are going? We have found for our last few holidays that bikes were available to hire for 10 Euros or less a day and so we hired them as and when required.