Starting & finishing in Lyon. This tour incorporates the 970km ACT France along with some sections of TET France, other un-sealed tracks and some of the best road-biking in Europe. Total distance is approx 1,800km in 9 days with one 2 night stay in the French Pyrenees. 

ACT France is quite possibly the perfect gateway into the world of ACT. For the new adventure rider who’s grasped the fundamentals of adventure riding and found reliable competence this is a 970km route that will delight. In fact riders of all abilities will be awed by the incredible and ever-changing scenery in this East-West traverse of the back country of southern France.

Starting among the staggering cliffs and headlands of the Vercours Massif and ending five days later facing the towering rock barrier that is the Pyrenees, this is a route that changes by the day as the land and man’s place upon it constantly transforms. In the mountains there’s forestry and grazing, in the valleys crops and vineyards, but it’s never the same twice as the soil and rock strata change. Sometimes the trail is a sandy yellow, then a gritty red, turning to a rocky black. While all along the route you witness the toil of man, through agriculture, through architecture, through the centuries all the way back to prehistory.

The ratio of road to off-road is a modest 41%, but this will not be your impression as the trails – as they so often do with ACTs – wind their way into the remote high country, so they take time and, again in the ACT tradition, they’re connected by the quietest and most scenic country roads in the region. This is central Europe and within a couple of hours ride in any direction you’ll find modern metropolises, but ACT France succeeds in taking you on a journey into a quieter, older France. One you’ll fall in love with.