On yer bicyclette

London is a battlefield for cyclists but Paris is reclaiming the streets for two-wheelers and not just the Tour de France. JOHN BELL took his bike to the Bastille and won

I PEEKED out of the Gare du Nord and stared at the traffic. It was a warm Friday evening. I'd spent the three-hour train trip from Calais trying to concentrate on my Paris street atlas rather than the delights of the French countryside. Parisians once described their cycle lanes as "corridors of death" but surely, in this land of the bicycle, it couldn't be worse than London? Like starting some theme park ride I almost closed my eyes, pushed off and flew down the Boulevard de Magenta, taking the Place de la Rpublique in my stride. "Which way for Bastille?" I shouted to the man in the open-topped sports car and so it was that I learned the French for "follow me".

Perched on a bike you can instantly touch a city. The smells, the tastes, the sounds all waft past without a moment of "tourism exhaustion". Christiane Obert realised this five years ago when she stopped working as a Paris blue-badge guide and set up Paris Vlo just off the Bastille. She's not alone in offering guided tours by bike (even RATP, which runs the Mtro has five offices running bike hire) but when it comes to devotion to the cause Christiane is out in front.

Our group of 22 riders, all shapes and sizes, follows on. Many have hired bikes for the day. A small baby sits behind his father while his six-year-old daughter pedals beside me. This is no cycle club but a group of visitors who know that there is more to a city tour than a recorded voice on a double-decker. The elderly lady who hasn't been in a saddle since 1948 says she doesn't know which is greater fun, riding the bike or discovering the backstreets of the 12th and 13th arrondissements.

A bar in the Rue St Bernard has varnished walls stacked with wine bottles and locals with red noses, St Margaret's Church has its Souls in Purgatory Chapel and, by chance, the wedding of Valrieand Christophe, which we are invitedto watch. Problems with traffic?

Not when Christiane is in front waving at the car drivers as she makes them stop for our cycling convoy to pass.

She produces keys to courtyards, smiles for children and, in the middle of a housing estate, the 18th century house where the Duchess of Orleans hid from the rigours of the revolution. "I'm the key," says Christiane, "an introduction to the city. We do the history, but in a backstreet, backyard sort of way."

She practises what she preaches and we shake hands with furniture makers, a lady at the bus stop and a man from one of the immigrant hostels who tells me that he misses his wife and children back in the Ivory Coast. I notice that there's no mention of any of this in the guide book. "At night time we go up the hill to Montmartre and people applaud.

There's something special about bike tours."

Christiane is quite right. After the daytime tour, I decide to miss out on her favourite, the Paris at Dawn tour on Sunday, which starts at 5.45am and opt instead to spend Saturday evening on the Paris by Night tour, which you can comfortably do after dinner. In the speed of the fading light we take in the royal Place des Vos-ges and the narrow and ancient streets of the Marais.

Rue des Tour-nelles, Rue de Jarente ... I frantically write down the names of roads stuffed with little restaurants and bars. We make cycle patterns among the sculptures of the Palais-Royal and, as the gas lights come on, we bike through the colonnades of the Louvre and stop in its most ancient part, the Cour Carre, to listen to a man playing a flute. It's magical if not downright romantic.

The City of Paris is doing its bit for the bike. To 130 kilometres of cycle lane they've added bike maps.

On Sundays they wheel out their pice de rsistance. Worried about the centrepiece of Paris, the Seine, being cut off from its surroundings by 70,000 cars which hurtle daily along the expressways on both sides of the river, the city has taken the bold step of closing these roads to traffic.

Now, on Sundays, from 9am until 5pm these highways, with their associated underpasses and tunnels, have been returned to the people. Rollerbladers and walkers now mix with bikes where, on weekdays, the taxis fight it out with the trucks.

There is nothing quite like swooping in to a three-lane underpass in the wrong direction.

Here, the only traffic is the boats on the river, which I cross only once to ride from the Eiffel Tower, past the Louvre and Notre Dame, leaving the traffic fuming somewhere above me. Down here on the quais, families are picnicking where, on other days of the week, the air would be solid with exhaust fumes.

I stop for the world's best ice-cream from Berthillon on the Ile St Louis and join a crowd of cornet-licking seven-year-olds where the underpass emerges on to the river bank. They start to play in the fast lane. The Louvre? The Eiffel Tower? No, these children are the thing to see.

WAY TO GO

JOHN Bell and his bike travelled to Folkestone from Charing Cross on Connex, returns from GBP 19.80 (the bike went free). They then caught Eurotunnel's (01303 288 680) special bike service using Le Shuttle to Calais, GBP 15 each way including bike transportation. They travelled on French Railways from Calais to the Gare du Nord, GBP 23.50 single (bike free). Connex and French Railway sectors bookable through Rail Europe (08705 848 848). Alternatively, Eurostar charges GBP 20 for a bicycle one way (bike travels as unaccompanied baggage and must be collected). For cycle hire and guided tours in both English and French contact Paris Vlo, 37 Boulevard Bourdon, 75004 Paris (00 331 4887 6001). Further information from French Government Tourist Office (0891 244 123). For bike maps visit the Paris Tourist Office website www.paris-touristoffice.com

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