Vendée Vélo Tour is a circular regional bike route in western France, linking to the Atlantic Coast.
Distance: 680km
Difficulty: Easy
The Vendée Vélo Tour is a regional cycling route that provides a lovely mix of coastal riding plus inland rural sights. This is a "local" touring route – it combines the Atlantic Coast beach resorts with smaller towns and villages that could be described as off the beaten track.
While it's obviously possible to ride a circular route in any direction and link in at any stage, the standard/full GPS trace starts on the Atlantic Coast at Les Sables-d'Olonne and heads anti-clockwise down through Tranche sur Mer before looping inland and crossing through the marshlands of the Marais Poitevin, a peaceful, canal-filled area teeming with birds. The loop comes back to the Atlantic Coast, where you can take a detour to Île de Noirmoutier, with just a causeway linking it to the mainland. Noirmoutier
The coastal section of the Vendée Vélo Tour shares the route with the Euro Velo 1 La Velodyssee route along the Atlantic Coast, providing an easy path both north (to Brittany) and south (to La Rochelle and Bordeaux) if you wanted to create a longer cross-country ride.
The eastern side of the Vendée Vélo Tour comes very close to but does not actually cross with La Velo Francette (La Rochelle to Caen), but it would be easy enough to zip across to Coulon and head north if you were wanting to ride on to the Loire and Normandy.
Other add-on routes nearby include the Vélocéan route between Pénestin and Saint-Nazaire, and La Régalante bike route from Mont St Michel to Nantes.
Download the full route in GPX format
The port at Les Sables d'Olonne. Photo: Rundvald via Wiki/public domain
