Forget supping champagne as you hurtle from shiny new St Pancras to Gare de Nord by Eurostar, soon we'll be considering a picturesque pedal to Paris.
No doubt inspired by this summer's Tour de France prologue in England which took an ultra scenic route to the French capital, three County Councils have signed an agreement with Transport for London to back the development of a cycle route to span both sides of the Channel by 2012.
The proposed Green Way will promote cycling by signposting a wonderful sounding, largely traffic-free route from St Pauls, through Surrey and the beautiful West and East Sussex countryside to Newhaven, across the Channel to Dieppe and following the old railway line into Paris, dismounting at Notre Dame. Sounds tres bon to us.
Avenue Verte is inevitably dependent on funding for all that green tarmac and signpost translation but fortunately, this is a huge EU sponsored project which is likely to come to fruition. Plus, the French are streets ahead of us when it comes to pedal power with their excellent Vélib' and Paris Respire schemes.
Of course, if you can be bothered, you can cycle to Paris tomorrow and if you're not sure of the way then CTC - the UK's national organisation for cycling - can help you out with a route map. They can also, helpfully, advise that it's about 212 miles and will take at least 17 hours which reminds us how nice it is to sit down on Eurostar and snooze for a couple of hours.
View the Franco-British Cycle Plan map here, watch the velo-video here and find out more about the project here.
Image courtesy of daveknapick's Flickrstream.
