Motorcycle touring in Brittany

The coast is only half the story

The usual mistake is to plan Brittany as a coastal ride. The coast roads look good on a map but they are slow, full of dead ends down to headlands and beaches, and they clog completely in July and August. The Crozon peninsula in mid-August is a traffic jam with a sea view.

Inland is close to empty all year. The Monts d'Arree, the Argoat, the Landes de Lanvaux and central Brittany give you hundreds of kilometres of small, well surfaced roads with a gentle but constant relief that keeps the pace interesting. If you have a week, the sensible split is coast at either end of the day and inland in between.

Wind and damp are constants, not surprises

Wind in Brittany is a permanent condition rather than an event. On the headlands and the exposed coastal stretches the crosswind is strong and sustained, and it wears you down noticeably over a full day in the saddle. It is entirely manageable, but it changes how much distance you should plan.

Damp is the other factor. The maritime climate means roads dry slowly, particularly under the hedgerows of the bocage and in wooded sections that never see direct sun. Polished granite and painted road markings turn slippery as soon as it rains, and dried seaweed left on coastal roads after a big tide is a real trap.

A region you can ride all year

Frost is rare on the Breton coast, which makes this one of the few French regions that stays rideable in winter, as long as you accept rain. Plenty of local riders never put the bike away at all.

May, June and September are still the best windows: long days, no holiday traffic, and low light on the coast that makes the whole place look different. In July and August, do the opposite of everyone else and ride the interior.

Getting there, and what changes once you are ashore

Brittany is the easiest part of France to reach from these islands because you can land straight in it. Plymouth to Roscoff is a daytime crossing of around six hours and puts you an hour from the Monts d'Arree and roughly two from Crozon. Portsmouth to Saint-Malo runs overnight and drops you on the north coast with the Pink Granite Coast and the whole region to the west. From Ireland, sailings out of Cork and Rosslare reach Roscoff and Cherbourg and save you a long transit across England.

Once you roll off the ramp, traffic is on the right and roundabouts turn anticlockwise, which takes about twenty minutes to stop thinking about. The residual priorite a droite still applies in some towns and villages, where an unmarked side road can legally pull out in front of you. Brittany is also unusual in having no toll motorways: the RN12, RN164 and RN165 are free dual carriageways limited to 110 km/h, which makes crossing the region cheap and quick when you need to.

• Ferries: Plymouth and Portsmouth to Roscoff and Saint-Malo, Poole and Portsmouth to Cherbourg, Cork and Rosslare to Roscoff and Cherbourg.
• Speed limits: 50 km/h in built-up areas, 80 or 90 km/h on rural single carriageways depending on local signing, 110 on dual carriageways, 130 on tolled motorways and 110 in the rain.
• Kit: CE approved gloves are compulsory for rider and pillion, and you must carry a hi-vis vest on the bike.
• Licences: UK and EU licences are accepted as they are. Riders from the US, Canada and Australia should carry an International Driving Permit alongside their national licence, and check their insurance covers France.
• Fuel: many rural stations are unmanned and shut on Sundays, and automated pumps do not always accept foreign cards. Fill up on Saturday and keep some margin.

Planning a Brittany trip with Waver

Waver is a motorcycle route planner and navigation app, free and in open beta. You build the route in the web planner, where the routing can be biased towards winding roads, and told to avoid motorways or tolls. GPX import and export both work, so a track a friend sent you goes straight in, a saved route carries its elevation profile on its page, and folders keep a multi-day trip together rather than scattered across a dozen files.

On the road, voice-guided navigation runs on Android through the Play Store; on an iPhone, the planner and your saved routes work in the browser. It records the ride and gives you distance, time and speed statistics afterwards, you can share your live position with someone at home, run a group ride with a shared chat, and keep your bikes in a garage profile. Two things to know before you travel: there is no offline mode yet, so navigation needs a mobile data connection, and Waver does not do crash detection. It is a planning and navigation tool, not a safety device.