Route required Paris to Monaco

IainA said:

Hi, I'm looking for a route from Paris to Monaco for a charity bike ride I'm organising. We're looking for as quick as possible, rather than as scenic as possible, and hopefully missing too many big ascents (if that's possible !). Can you help ?

There are a huge lot of possible routes. What I can recommend is not a specific route but rather a way to define your own.
1. go to www.viamichelin.com
2. look for a route from Paris to Monaco. Enter the following options:
- click "options"
- as "route type", select "short". Also select as a preference "avoid tolls", as this trick will prevent viamichelin to suggest you use motorways.
- I didn't really understand whether you DO or DO NOT wish to climb major ascents If you do, then fine, the shortest way will send you straight through the southern Alps. If you don't, you can define a stopover like, for instance, Aix-en-Provence, which will help you avoid the mountains.
3. the search result will give you a general skeleton to follow. Now you have to look at the proposal in details and look "manually" for alternate routes:
- roads drawn in RED are high trafic, usually a bad choice on a bicycle. Avoid them whenever you can.
- roads in YELLOW are usually moderate/medium trafic, and relatively fast and direct - probably the best choice for your "fast" trip
- roads in WHITE are really minor roads, often very quiet. The narrowest ones are sometimes in poor condition, and not the most direct.
4. After you've found your skeleton, it can be useful to cut it into segments and do new searches on each segment. Use stopovers to force the system away from "red" roads.

If you proceed this way, you will find relatively easily a reasonable route for your quick trip to across France.

Now what kind of "charity ride" are you planning ? with a large group ? if so then you have to think about accomodation and favor a route through significant cities.

Talking about quick rides, do you know about the "diagonales de France" ? They are a classic of long distance cycling, where people will ride across France, from one corner of the "hexagon" to another, following a free route but within a limited timeframe. The available time corresponds to an average speed (all stops included) of about 13 km/h. Paris-Monaco is not a "diagonale" proper, but if you followed the same rule then the ~960 km should be covered in about 75 hours, all stops included. Meaning that if you leave Paris at 6am on a Monday, you expect to be in Monaco Thursday before 9am.
If you can read some french, have a look at diagonales.homelinux.netadfOpen ↗ and allow yourself a little dream.