Paris by bike

Parisians may have gone Velib mad, but cycling in the city can be scary. Resident Agnes Poirier finds a quiet route via the best bistros and markets

THE novelty factor may have worn off but the romance between Parisians and le Velib continues.

Back from their long summer holidays, 215,000 of my fellow Parisians have renewed their annual subscription to the city-wide bicycle scheme. These, together with other occasional cyclists, such as tourists, make up the 100,000 daily rentals. Needless to say, the scheme is a 'succes formidable'.

Young entrepreneurs have turned the Velib into businesses, organising paid-for Velib tours for American tourists in the Latin quarter. You can spot the riding hordes with their red jackets on, led by a lean Parisian student in a yellow vest.

For those who prefer to go at their own pace, we thought the time right to devise a GulfWeekly Velib tour. One which will take you from the world's oldest and biggest flea markets of St-Ouen to those of Vanves.

This three-hour 'mini tour de Paris' with its ups (to Montmartre) and downs (from Montmartre, it is downhill all the way) includes bistro and cafe stops.

It's a north-south 15km ride that is best enjoyed on the weekend when the flea markets are lively with jazz bands and the Paris street traffic is at its quietest.

In a few weeks, St-Ouen, like another 30 surrounding suburbs of Paris, will be equipped with Velib stations, but until then, let's go to the Velib dock station at Porte de Montmartre. Always choose a bike with a straight saddle (a saddle tilted backwards means it needs repairing), check your tyres, light and brakes, and adjust the saddle to your height, making sure it's not loose: I remember one epic ride with the saddle turning on its base like a weather vane.

My favourite route starts with a cycling flanerie through the streets of St-Ouen that bear revolutionaries' names (the area has had communist mayors for a century). In St-Ouen, the urban landscape changes drastically from that of bourgeois Paris: low-rise 19th-century red brick factories and typical tiny 1930s workers' houses. St-Ouen wouldn't be the same, of course, without its many flea markets spread either side of rue des Rosiers: marches Paul Bert, Biron, Dauphine and Vernaison, to name but a few, have attracted junk fetishists like me since 1885. And, the great thing about the Velib is that it has a basket which can hold anything up to the size of a cabin suitcase: very useful for that 1930s Bakelite hairdryer.

At the weekend, I often stop at La Chope des Puces for live jazz and the bistro Paul Bert for a pate sandwich. The waiter there is always grumpy; it's part of the folklore.

From St-Ouen, I usually cycle through Porte de Clignancourt, with its French West Indies locals living in 1930s council estates, and ride up, up, up rue Hermel where the view over the Sacre Coeur gives me just enough strength to keep going. My favourite 18th-arrondissement street is rue Lamarck, a winding road of blond stone Haussmannian buildings encasing the Montmartre hill like a snake. I always think of the chanteuse Edith Piaf, who often stopped at Le Relais Bistro. As a child I couldn't understand why people preferred Notre Dame to Sacre Coeur - to me there was nothing more beautiful than this big choux a la creme.

In Montmartre, the best bit comes when you suddenly realise that from there on, it's all downhill. Among my favourite stops in the descent is the leafy square sheltering the artists' cafe, Le Botak. At the bottom of the hill, throngs of tourists come to boulevard Rochechouart to buy a ticket to Le Moulin Rouge's evening spectacles.

Time to leave and cycle through the aristocratic private cul-de-sacs and art nouveau squares such as place St Georges, a wonder of architecture best admired from the cafe A la Place St Georges. The ride through rue St-Denis (the street may be one-way but cyclists are allowed to ride southward) is the best advert for little-known multi-cultural Paris with Asian, Vietnamese, Algerian and Turkish street vendors.

The final leg of the journey is a very pleasant affair, cycling through the 14th arrondissement and its many colourful markets. And, here you are, in Porte de Vanves, where antique and vintage clothes dealers have set up their stalls along avenue Marc Sangnier. Let's find ourselves another classy bargain - using the money saved on the guided tour.