Gargilesse-Dampierre / Crozant Saint-Jacques à vélo - Via Vézelay

Cycle route from Gargilesse-Dampierre to Crozant

After reaching Cuzion along the D40 road, the Saint-Jacques à Vélo - Via Vézelay cycle route offers you a choice of ways around Eguzon Lake. You can decide whether to go along its eastern or western bank. 
We recommend that you follow the route as marked in the Saint-Jacques à Vélo - Via Vézelay roadbook, riding along the east bank, that’s to say forking left at the Cuzion, carrying on along the D40 road, then the D36. A less demanding option, it offers a more natural route beside the lake, plus access to the beach at Fougères. However, cyclists in search of provisions or a train station may prefer the western bank to reach Eguzon-Chantôme.
In summer, the lake becomes a large outdoor leisure centre much appreciated by tourists, so do be careful of motorized traffic along the local roads, with visibility sometimes limited.
From Crozant on, the Saint-Jacques à Vélo - Via Vézelay cycle route merges with the Tour de Creuse à Vélo cycle route. Signs carrying the yellow scallop shell on a blue background continue to be used.

Link

Crozant marks the most northerly point along the regional cycle route, the Tour de Creuse à Vélo. The Saint-Jacques à Vélo - Via Vézelay cycle route south towards La Souterraine merges with this route, signposting doubling up for a time.
Take care, though, not to follow the Tour de Creuse à Vélo eastwards towards Boussac (so leading you upstream along the Creuse River) if you wish to continue along the Saint-Jacques à Vélo – Via Vézelay route.

Tourist information

• Agence française des chemins de Compostelle – 05 62 27 00 05  
• Office de Tourisme de la Vallée de la Creuse - Bureau d'Éguzon-Chantôme - 36270 – 0254474369
• Creuse Tourisme Limousin 

SNCF train services

• For the first train station along the cycle route since Saint-Amand-Montrond, note that the Gare d’Eguzon-Chantôme is located along the west bank of Eguzon Lake. So, if you wish to head to that station, remember to fork west at Cuzion. There are direct trains for Châteauroux, Vierzon and Limoges Bénédictins.

Don't miss

• Gargilesse-Dampierre: the Musée Serge Delaveau, dedicated to this artist, with some 50 of his works on display.
• Lac d’Eguzon: the largest lake in the French region of Centre-Val-de-Loire, with many water sports and leisure activities possible.
• Crozant: the historic fort, badly damaged during the 16th-century French Wars of Religion, was brought down further by an earthquake in 1606 and today lies in ruins, but it’s still easy to imagine the exceptionally powerful effect this perched fortress once had; the Hôtel Lepinat, a heritage centre proposing  an interactive immersion into works by renowned artists inspired by local Creuse landscapes, plunging visitors, via multimedia tools and original backdrops, into the creative life and genius of Impressionist artists come to paint en plein air, or out in the open and in the moment, around the end of the 19th century.