The Nantes e-bike tour: 22 km of green line in 2.5 hours

What the route covers

The green line is a painted route 22 km long that threads the city together, and it is the reason this tour exists. On foot you would give it two days. On an e-bike you get the spine of it in an afternoon, with the street-art installations along the way. The stops are the château, where the guide takes Anne de Bretagne and the end of Breton independence; the Machines de l’île and the mechanical Elephant on the island; and the LU Tower, the old biscuit factory that is now a cultural venue.

You meet in front of UNIQLO at Place du Commerce and collect the bikes from the nearby parking. Trams T1, T2 and T3 all stop at Commerce, so it is easy to reach from anywhere in the centre — the same network that gets you to the castle, as set out in getting there.

The rules that catch people out

Three of them, and they are all worth reading before you pay.

The minimum height is 1.5 m, or 4 ft 9 in. That is a hard limit on the bikes, not a suggestion, and it rules out a lot of children who would otherwise be fine on a two-hour ride. Below that, children under 22 kg ride free in a child seat, and a trailer is free for children under 40 kg. So a small child is catered for and a nine-year-old of average height may not be — the awkward middle is the problem. More on family logistics in visiting with children.

Some departures require a minimum of three bookings to run. Annette from the Netherlands praised the guide’s perfect English and the mix of history and modern art, and her one complaint was exactly this: the three-person minimum. If you are a couple booking a quiet midweek slot in winter, take the free cancellation seriously and have a fallback.

And the fare does not include museum admission at the château. The tour stops outside, in the free courtyard, which is where the Anne de Bretagne story belongs anyway. If you want the 32 rooms afterwards, that is a low-cost ticket at the desk — who pays what is on the tickets page.

What the riders say

Thirty-four reviews at 4.8, which is a reasonable sample for a small-city tour. Heidi from the United States wrote that “the electric bikes made it possible for us to see much more in a short time without working too hard”, and David from Ireland said that thanks to the e-bikes it was “a very leisurely way to take in the city”. Karen in the UK found it “really interesting, and we saw lots of the attractions we didn’t know about”. The pattern across the reviews is consistent: people are surprised by how little effort it takes and how much ground they cover.

If the height rule or the bikes rule this out, the same two and a half hours on foot with a licensed guide costs less — the monumental tour is mid-range where this one tops the list — and the options are compared on the guided tours page. Everything on the site sits together on the all-tours hub.

Can’t make these dates?

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Frequently asked questions