And a third cent:

France

I haven’t ridden much in the motherland, only a few small routes, but here is my third cent anyway:

Tl;DR

camp sites are good, trains are ok, landscape are great, let’s go !

Camping

In France it’s somewhat allowed to camp anywhere, as long as the owner of the land or the local town does not forbid it. Basically you better find a quiet spot and leave no trace behind you and you should be fine I guess (I never did that though). However, French towns very often have a “camping municipal”, which is a camp site managed by the city itself, like a library! It’s usually extra cheap to camp there and often quality of service is good. For the stove, you will easily find Camping gas, but there is also a Decathlon every 30 meters, so it should be easy to find new gas bottles if your stove come from there.

Trains

The SNCF app for booking train tickets is shit. Pure 24 carats of shit. There are alternative like https://www.12train.com/ , but afaik you can’t book a ticket for your bike there. Depending on the region, it can be free or not to bring your bike in a regional train (TER), and even when it’s free you might need a ticket for it. You will need to look that up in there https://www.veloabord.fr/, but I think it’s only in French (feel free to DM me if you need help with translation for a specific region). For long distance trains, it’s the same as in Germany, you need to book a dedicated ticket for your bike in advance as there are not many dedicated spaces for bikes.

Places to avoid/visit

Avoid big cities (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse…), unless you can stay on dedicated bike lanes. It’s really not like Germany, in France the small bike lanes are often of poor quality and in a shared space with cars. I would say it’s quite dangerous with a heavily loaded bike to cross such cities (again, unless riding on the large bike lanes like the “canal du midi” or so). In the country side you can often find roads with very low traffic, but not many dedicated bike lanes. I didn’t ride much in France yet, I only did Aix-les-bains to Montellimar, which is a really nice route, I can recommend.

Supply

There are many supermarkets in France, you should not have any issue resupplying. Go visit the small artisanal bakeries, it is our pride for good reasons (no my Germans friends, your bread is nowhere as good as our bread, I will die on this hill no matter on many year I live in Germany (I like Brotchen though…)). Many shops, bakery and restaurants are closed on Sunday and Monday. For the restaurant, in week days at noon, you can get a “plat du jour”, which is the main dish of the day, it will be served quickly. The service in French restaurants is often very good, tap water and bread is “free” (included in the price of food) and usually unlimited, ask for “un pichet d’eau” to get tap water, otherwise they might serve you a bottle which you will have to pay. For vegetarians, you will not have many choices, but worst case scenario, eat the cheese, it’s good. For vegans, in bigger cities there are dedicated vegetarian/vegan restaurants, but in the country side it will be a struggle to eat anything other than chips (which will certainly be cooked in animal fat too…).

Language

I think you really must learn to say “bonjour”, “merci”, “je ne parle pas francais, parlez vous anglais ?” (I don’t speak french, do you speak english ?) otherwise people will be rude to you. TBH, I try to learn this for every country I’m visiting, so maybe it’s just me. Young people will most often be able to speak basic English. Don’t expect much from the older generation though.

Happy biking!