my struggle to cycle from london to paris

I am picking my way through the thick foliage on a long-disused railway embankment somewhere outside Sevenoaks, using my bike as a battering ram against the brambles and nettles. My guide has disappeared into the wilderness ahead of us. Beside and beyond us are fields and vistas, but I can’t see them. I am asked, however, to imagine what this route might look like, if I were given the chance. I am following a man who has spent twenty years hoping to reroute the English section of what he sees as a “yellow brick road” for cyclists linking London and Paris.

The existing route, the Avenue Verte (AV), was inaugurated ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games, and formed a symbolic and physical link between the two capitals. While the French side was showered with new, smoothly paved greenways, a lack of funding and political will has meant that the English side has had a DIY mentality, until now. Now that it is Paris’ turn to hold the Olympic flame, thoughts have turned to this unfinished route.

Those who cycle the AV rave about the French side, so a friend and I cycled the 150 miles from Dieppe to Paris 10 days before the 2024 Games. Smooth former railway lines, interspersed with quiet country lanes, some gravel field crossings and a few manageable hills, took us through pretty French villages and gently rolling countryside dotted with chateaux.

Cafés and restaurants have sprung up along the route, such as Café Vélo Jaune in Dampierre-en-Bray. Others flourish in former railway stations along the route – the galettes at Les Tables De La Gare in Neufchâtel-en-Bray were excellent. Some 170 tourist service providers are even labelled “Accueil vélo” (cyclists welcome) along the route.

The final 28 miles wind a broad S-shaped route to Paris along car-free forest paths and dedicated cycleways, alongside the Seine and the Canal Saint-Denis. It’s a fitting end to a glorious three-day ride, although four days would give riders more time to take in the sights, including the large sculptures in the Vexin Français Regional Nature Park, slightly off the route.

The English side is a different story. The current route starts at the London Eye and trudges through miles of urban sprawl, even passing Gatwick Airport, with a few pleasant off-road interludes such as the recently upgraded Wandle Trail at Morden Hall Park, before tackling the North Downs and High Weald. There are some fairly rugged forest paths along the way, as well as some delightful off-road rail trails.

Much of the English route was created when the National Cycle Network was set up for the millennium by my guide, John Grimshaw. But unlike in France, the British government, local councils and tourist organisations have failed to unite to improve it. It has fallen to the cycling charity Sustrans to maintain and gradually improve the route with the usual courage and enthusiastic volunteers. Many users avoid cycling the English side or cobble together their own route to the ferry at Newhaven.

John now delivers green routes through his small charity Greenways and Cycleroutes. An improved Avenue Verte could, he says, be delivered for around £25m. (The upgrade of Junction 10 of the M25, a few miles to the west, due for completion in summer 2025, is costing £317m.)

John’s proposed route would instead start (or end) at Tower Bridge, following the traffic-free Thames Path and newly created protected cycle lanes out of the city, mirroring its French counterpart. Dartford, where we started our ride, is undergoing a regeneration, attractive stone paving showing 1,000 years of architecture, from the 11^e18th century Holy Trinity Church to the Tudor pub Wat Tyler.

We cycle through a flower-filled park and follow the lushly leafed River Darent for miles. While the first section of the proposed route, from London to Dartford, is almost complete, this section to Sevenoaks needs resurfacing, improved rights of way on footpaths and bridleways to accommodate cycling, and five new bridges over the Darent. For this relatively modest intervention, the route links six train stations to Sevenoaks (and more beyond) via the quaintly pretty villages of Farningham, Eynsford, Shoreham and Otford, as well as several castles (including Lullington and Eynsford), Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty – or AONBs (the Greensand Ridge and the High Weald) and countless places to eat and drink. It would be a local resource for daily walking and cycling, as well as a tourist attraction. There is demand: between the villages of Horton Kirby and South Darenth, the local community has already joined together to tarmac a footpath that was a bog in winter.

This heavily wooded area, with rolling hills that we skirt rather than climb, is a fitting example of England’s beauty and has me smiling all the way. We follow the riverbank far beneath the towering A2 and M25 bridges, and have barely seen a car. At Farningham we emerge from the wilderness beside the riverside tables of the handsome Lion Hotel, opposite an 18^e-century cattle fence – a bridge-like structure of flint and brick, designed to corral cattle wading across the River Darent. The river was considered one of the finest trout streams in England, a sign says, and Charles Dickens is said to have fished here.

We continue past the National Trust’s Emmetts Garden café, with its sweeping views over the Greensand Ridge, and stop at the Tulip Tree café in Chiddingstone, whose owners claim to have the oldest working shop in the country, dating back to 1453. We count 30 bikes under the old carriage arch and along a centuries-old footbridge to the converted coach house.

Visit Britain says that around 57,000 inbound tourist visits include cycling in some form, bringing in £63m a year, which I think is an underestimate (the Trans Pennine Trail in the Peak District alone brings in a third of that, although many are local visitors). Reliable sources put the value of cycle tourism at much more – £389m a year.

Refurbished railway lines, quiet roads and bridleways would have taken us through the Eden Valley, a short detour from Hever Castle. Instead, we turn east, past Tonbridge Castle and on to Tunbridge Wells, fulfilling the local council’s long-term active travel plans to connect communities with routes suitable for daily travel (an area with one of the lowest levels of daily cycling in England). It would then be a case of reclaiming lost railway lines for a flatter route across the High Weald AONB, picking up the end of the existing route at Heathfield, via the charming Cuckoo Trail, a smooth off-road path that follows the A22 to Lewes and then the Egrets Way along the River Ouse, completing the route to Newhaven.

With renewed interest around the 2024 Games, Sustrans is rallying stakeholders around potential route improvements, but raising money is a challenge – unlike motorways and trunk roads, there’s no long-term funding for active travel projects – and Sustrans says nothing will happen on the ground for at least five years. Active Travel England’s Chris Boardman cycled a section of the Avenue Verte ahead of the 2024 Games and praised its transport value to local communities and its value as an adventure route. If government got behind it, the payoffs could be huge: for a tenth of the cost of upgrading a single motorway junction, we could have something of real value to the nation and to local communities.

Laura Laker’s trip was organised by Normandy Tourism, DFDS ferries and LeShuttle. She stayed at the Hôtel Mercure La Présidence in Dunkirk, the Hôtel de Normandie in Gournay-en-Bray and the Campanile Conflans-Sainte-Honorine