A bicycle gourmet in France

The Tour de France reminds us that there are two kinds of cyclist. Racy ones, who measure satisfaction in rivers of sweat and breathless panoramas savoured from hard-won mountain passes; and the rest of us, whose reward at the end of a long morning in the saddle is a good lunch, later to be followed by a slap-up supper. The bicycle is our carte blanche for greed without guilt.

For the gourmet cyclist, the road that leads south from Paris to the sun has irresistible appeal. The defining French migration route of the modern era is the road more travelled — by Grand Tourists, impressionist artists and Parisians on their way to and from holiday. There are hills, and many rivers, to cross, but no mountain range, and with luck a mistral will blow you down the Rhone to Avignon.

The heavily beaten path got its hymn in 1955 when Charles Trenet's song Route Nationale Sept celebrated the longest main road in France — the Nationale Sept (N7) stretches 1,000 kilometres from Paris to Menton via Lyon, Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. Despite the arrival of the autoroutes, the N7 and the other main artery south, the N6, are too busy for enjoyable cycling these days. Instead we shadow them (and the motorway) on empty back roads.

Part of the fun of a long ride is watching the country change and enjoying the moments of transition. Coloured roof tiles on the bishop's palace at Sens confirm our arrival in Burgundy. On a bike you feel every crease in the land beneath your wheels, and we recognise Burgundy for what it is: the spine of France, its bones separating the Atlantic and Mediterranean. We sweat our way over the Montagne de Beaune and hurtle down to a carpet of priceless vineyards.

Saying goodbye to Burgundy, we cross the Sane into the Bresse, home of blue cheese and the Rolls Royce of poultry. The time is right for a chicken lunch at Vonnas, the gastronomic theme-park village which has become the personal fiefdom of superstar cook and one-man brand Georges Blanc.

On the village square of the self-styled "premier village gourmand de France", Blanc offers customers on different rungs of the spending ladder a pick'n'mix gastronomic and lifestyle experience — shops, hotels, health farm, heliport, serious restaurant and a simpler auberge for the Blanc-lite experience. It may all seem a bit gastro Disney, but the proof of the poulet is in the eating, and we find no fault with ours.

Down the centuries the tramp of travellers has fostered the art of hospitality. Ambitious chefs set out their stalls along the road, their Michelin-starred pit stops — tapes gastronomiques — springing up to delay the traveller like healing shrines on the road to Compostela, with names from the pantheon of French gastronomy: Meneau at Vzelay, Bocuse at Collonges, La Mere Brazier in Lyon.

While Trenet was immortalising the N7 in song, a hotelier near Montlimar was giving serious thought to the future of the tape gastronomique in the age of the motorway. Assembling a group of like-minded establishments along the road from Paris to the Riviera, Marcel Tilloy founded the Relais de Campagne in 1954, with "La Route du Bonheur" — the happiness trail — as its slogan.

All shared a commitment to a new style of gracious countryhouse living marked by soigne décor, culinary excellence and peaceful rural surroundings. Tilloy's idea caught on and bred a new kind of traveller for whom the hotel is the destination and the journey the holiday. The prestigious Relais & Chateaux association, which evolved from Tilloy's Relais de Campagne, still uses the "Route du Bonheur" slogan.

The Relais Chateaux banner has passed to Marc Meneau at nearby L'Esprance, a stylish bolthole beneath Vzelay's famous pilgrimage church. We'd warned Meneau that we were cyclists, so the chef served up a special reinforced menu, beginning with a thick soup, as he explained, "to rebuild your strength at the beginning of the meal". It worked.

Further on, friends are waiting for us at the foot of the Col de Tartaiguille, and we find them under a plane tree, beside the village fountain, with a plate of olives and a refugee Parisian philosophe-hotelier wearing jeans and intellectual Rive Gauche hair. If only there was a boules game in progress, this southern scene would have all the hallmarks of Provence.

Later, it is a warm ride over the hills to Nyons, with lavender and cicadas for company. At this point the cyclist on a mission would retire early in preparation for the Mont Ventoux, a famous cycling challenge to rival the Galibier and other nightmarish Alpine climbs.

We also retire early and sleep soundly, confident in our mission to ignore the Ventoux in favour of the road that takes us down the western flank of a beautiful miniature mountain range, the Dentelles de Montmirail, through Gigondas and Beaumes de Venise.

After a picnic beneath the Dentelles and a cooling-off period in the shallow stream of the Ouvze, our final approach to Avignon is a dusty stretch of the old N7. The old stones of the Papal city are glowing in the heat of a balmy summer evening.

The morning train ride back to Paris will take less than three hours. We watch our ride race by as if on fast rewind. We flash through the Tartaiguille tunnel — an hour's hard cycling in a few seconds. The cows have changed from brown to white, so we must be in Burgundy. It is good to get the return journey done quickly: heading north is no fun at all.