All across Europe, cities large and small are getting in on this act: providing the free or cheap-ish use of bicycles on which to make your way around the place. And, like other big cities, you need some serious nerve to take on the traffic and wind your way among all the cars.  Paris traffic is heavy and pushy, and on a bike you will often overtake all the cars who are sitting at a standstill.  And they might not like you for it.

But Paris is a nice city to cycle around: the roads are very good and smooth and the scenery is nice.  There are bike lanes which you will largely be in, but they are also used by taxis and buses, so go gently.  Be careful to cross roads only at crossings, and don’t overtake vehicles on the right and watch out for people opening doors of parked cars – you don’t need to be shoved across the street. 

Velib bikes (www.velib.paris.fr) are the government’s way of saying “Look how bike friendly we are”.  The bike racks in which you will find the Velib bicycles are handily distributed all over the city, roughly every 300m. You can also use them twenty-four hours a day, so if you’re stumbling back to your hotel after a few bottles of French red then you can theoretically wobble home on a bike.  Just remember to put it back in a bike rack.

So here’s how it works.  You pay the general hire fee for a usage card: that is the outrageously cheap sum of one euro per day, or, if you reckon you’re going to be there a week and will cycle every day, you can get a weekly pass for five euros.  Then the bikes are yours to use as you please: You can cycle for free for up to half an hour at a time.  If you’re organised and time it right, that’s plenty of time to get from one point in Paris to another.  You take the bike from one bike rack and deposit it in any other that you come across.  After that half an hour, the price starts to rise quite steeply, so be careful.  The next half an hour costs another euro, the half hour after that is two euros and every half hour after that is another four... so it breaks down like this:

Half an hour: Free

One hour: One Euro

One and a half hours: 3 Euros

Two hours: 7 Euros

And suddenly life has become more expensive than it would have been if you’d just taken the metro.  So you have to be careful – this can be a real little money saver, and a great way to become familiar with this beautiful city – not to mention good exercise.  But time it wrong and you’ll pay the price.

As a tourist, what you’ll need is a credit card (all the big ones: Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, JCB, Electron, Maestro) to pay for your usage card.  You can do that right there at the machines by the bike racks – it’s not something you have to apply for online in advance or anything – and then you just keep hold of the card to use as you like throughout the day.  Or the week, if you’re getting a week pass.

The bikes are only for adults, I’m afraid, although those travelling with 14 to 18 year olds can give their permission for kids that age to ride – check out the sites listed below for more details on that.  But it’s not like you can use these bikes for a family cycling day with children – and to be fair, would you want to on the streets of Paris?  Perhaps that would be taking the danger factor a little too far.