How it works

You use the map with no account, nothing to install and nothing to accept. Here is what it shows, and what it can do.

The colours

Each line tells you how you ride there: protected, tolerated, or not at all. That is the only thing this map promises, and it is why it exists.

• Red: closed to bikes

  This is not advice, it is French traffic law. A red line is a way you are not allowed to ride on — and the route calculation will never send you there, even if it is the shortest way. In fine dots, the footpaths closed to bikes: hiking trails, often in protected areas. They are switched off by default.

• Dark green, solid line: a cycle path or protected way

  A cycle path separated from traffic, or a greenway reserved for you. This is where we try to take you.

• Brown dashes: a cycle lane

  You ride on the road, in a painted lane, alongside the traffic. Protected by a line, not by a kerb.

• Green dots: path shared with pedestrians

  No separation at all: it is up to you to slow down. Common on seafronts and squares.

• Olive dashes: road shared with cars

  A “chaucidou” (advisory cycle lanes on both sides of a single central lane for cars) or an advisory lane: the road is narrow, and cars move into your lane to pass each other.

• Grey dash-dot: track open to bikes

  You are allowed to ride there, and that is all we know about it: nobody has recorded the surface. It could be a smooth greenway or a dirt track. Grey promises nothing — the other colours do tell you something about the way.

• Purple ribbon: a signposted cycle route

  EuroVelo, the national “V” routes, regional routes. The ribbon says it is signposted on the ground, not that it is protected: look at the colour of the way underneath. In thinner purple, the local loops, waymarked leisure rides.

• Thick orange: a main road

  A road with heavy traffic. Often allowed, rarely pleasant, and best avoided with children.

The Layers button, at the top, lets you switch each of these layers on or off, along with the reported hazards and the services for cyclists. The high legibility mode there thickens the lines and strengthens the colours, for partially sighted people — who do ride.

Finding where you are

The round button at the top right of the map locates you and follows your position. Your phone will ask for your permission — it decides, not us.

If you would rather not be located, the welcome screen lets you enter a postcode or the name of a town. The map opens there, and you move around with your finger.

Getting somewhere

The simplest way: the Route button, at the top of the map, or Plan a route in the menu. It first asks for the start — your position, or a point tapped on the map — then the destination.

Without using that button, the same gesture works directly: tap the map at the place you want to go to, then go there. The trip appears in blue, and the map gives the distance by road, the direction, then the turns as you go: “in 300 m, turn left”.

This trip only uses ways open to bikes. Ways closed to bikes do not exist in the calculation: it will make a detour rather than send you onto one.

You can also tap the pin of a bike rental or a station and ask to get there — handy when you need to return a bike in a town you do not know.

The calculation covers fifteen kilometres at most. It is made for an outing and for everyday trips, not for planning a ride across a region. Once you arrive, locate yourself again and set off from there.

Planning a trip from home

Everything above starts from where you are. To plan an outing before you have started it, you also need to be able to choose the starting point.

It is the same gesture, with the other button:

1. Tap the map at the place you will set off from, then start from here. An empty blue circle marks this start, so that it is not mistaken for the solid dot of your position.
2. Then tap your destination, then go there.

The map then shows the whole trip: the blue line, the distance by road and the share that is not on a cycle path. You do not need any location permission for this — you can do it on a computer, at home, the day before.

On a computer, nothing changes: a mouse click replaces your finger, in exactly the same place. Click and hold to move the map, a single click opens the details of the point.

A planned trip gives neither direction nor turns. These instructions are worked out from your real position: they only appear once you are there, with location switched on. We would rather say nothing than have you turn left from your sofa.

To clear everything and go back to normal guidance: clear this trip, at the bottom of the box.

Finding a service

The pins show bike rentals, bike shops that do repairs, pump stations, self-service bike stations, e-bike charging points, covered parking and bike washes. Tap one to see the name, the address, the phone number and the website when they exist.

Ordinary bike racks only appear when you zoom in on a street: there are a great many of them, and showing them everywhere would weigh the map down for nothing.

Hazard signs

Some places are recorded as dangerous in OpenStreetMap. The map shows them with the matching roadside sign. This is neither a calculation nor an opinion of ours: it is a statement held in the database, most often taken from a sign standing on the spot.

We only show what may concern you on a bike: nothing on motorways and expressways, where you are not allowed to ride, and no areas — a flood or subsidence zone is not a point on the road, and its sign would land just anywhere.

• Dangerous junction an intersection reported as such
• Cyclists on the road this sign stands on the road, to warn drivers that bikes come out here. It does not mark a cycling facility
• Poor road surface worn surface, dip in the road, roadworks under way
• Road narrows the road tightens, there is not enough room
• Dangerous bend sharper than the road led you to expect; downhill, you pay dearly for it
• Series of bends the road bends several times in a row
• Pedestrians, children, school frequent crossings, often unpredictable
• Animals crossing only appears when you zoom in on the street
• Other reported hazard everything else, from crosswinds to falling rocks

These pictograms are the official French signs AB2, A21, A2a, A3, A1a, A1d, A13a, A15b and A14, taken from Wikimedia Commons under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence, and republished under the same licence.

These records are rare, for the whole of France. The tag exists, and it is almost empty. If you know a place that deserves it, OpenStreetMap is waiting for your report, and it will show up here as it does everywhere else.

The service pins

Every pin is the VELO drop; only the white symbol changes with the service offered.

• Bike rental, self-service bike station pick up or return a bike
• Bike shop sells and, above all, repairs, which saves an outing
• Pump and repair point self-service station, pump and tools
• E-bike charging charging point that accepts bikes
• Parking shelter, bike locker, secure storage; ordinary bike racks only appear at street zoom
• Bike wash cleaning station

What the map cannot do

• It does not name streets

  Turns are given as a distance and a direction, never by a street name: the data that runs the map holds only geometry, and shipping it with the names would make it much heavier.

• It can be wrong

  The data comes from OpenStreetMap and from public services: it is good, not perfect. A sign standing on the ground always takes precedence over this map. If you see one the map does not know about, tell us: the correction is applied by hand and passed on to OpenStreetMap.

• It does not replace your attention

  A permitted route is not necessarily a safe route. Watch the road, not the screen.

What it does not do with your data

No account, no sign-up, no advertising, no trackers. Your position never leaves your phone: the route is calculated on your device, in the browser. The IGN base map goes through our server, which means IGN never sees your IP address. And the server logs record no IP address.

Nothing will remind you to come back: there are no notifications, and there never will be.