France: Finding a train route with your bike – recap and updates

When you're trying to travel with your bike, SNCF sometimes tells you there's no solution, even though you could combine TGVs, TETs, and TERs.

- We used to check the Swiss CFF website https://www.sbb.ch/fr,

but it’s become useless since the "bike" option for France was removed.

- Next, we go to the Deutsche Bahn website https://www.bahn.com/fr, which has a "bike" option that combines TGVs, TETs (IC), and TERs. Then, you can either: - Buy the ticket directly on the Deutsche Bahn site, or - Note all the trains in the itinerary and, to use your discount cards, go to the SNCF website to purchase all the necessary tickets. The Deutsche Bahn site lets you adjust connection times in the "details" of an itinerary if the suggested one seems too short. I’ve found that 10 minutes is really risky—delays, crowds on the platform making it hard to move quickly, not to mention the line for the elevator and navigating an unfamiliar station. Still, it’s best to double-check that each train allows bikes.

- Now, thanks to the site "Biclous et bidouilles," check it out here:

https://biclousetbidouilles.com/un-site-en-or-pour-voyager-en-ter/

I discovered this site, which helps calculate bike-friendly routes in France:

https://www.horaires-de-trains.fr/horaires-ter.html

I gave it a quick test, but it seems limited to TERs—too bad, since the ideal is to combine all available train options.

One pitfall to avoid: always make sure you’re still on https://www.horaires-de-trains.fr/horaires-ter.html and haven’t accidentally switched to https://www.horaires-de-trains.fr/.

These days, SNCF is gradually converting all its TGVs to INOUI. Normally, they all have bike spaces, so these workarounds might not be needed much longer.

Thanks so much for the info and especially for the site!!

Since I don’t want to dismantle my bike and especially don’t want to carry a bike bag I wouldn’t know what to do with during my bike trip, I always travel by TER. For example, to find schedules that combine TER trains from Annecy to Toulouse, I log onto the TER Rhône-Alpes website, enter the departure and arrival stations, and the site gives me the TER travel times. Sure, it’s not the fastest route, but at least I don’t have to take everything apart.

A bike bag makes a great groundsheet for sleeping under the stars! ;)

Not all bike bags are created equal. There are lightweight fabric bike bags that fold down into a tiny package.

There are also rain covers for bikes, also made of thin fabric, which take up almost no space and are lightweight.

This mini-guide should really be called "Europe: Finding a Route..."

I actually searched for and found several routes in the same day, by train from Budapest to Besançon! !