After the Marathon de La Rochelle Serge Vigot: Nantes
The Route: La Rochelle → Nantes (4 nights) → Nantes Atlantique Airport Logistics: Direct TER or Intercités services, fastest around 1 hour 45 minutes, with direct trains running through the day. Marathon Month: November Duration: 4 nights
La Rochelle ──(≈1h45 direct TER/Intercités)──> Nantes
│
Nantes Atlantique (NTE) ◄──(≈25 min navette from Gare SNCF)──┘
The Marathon de La Rochelle Serge Vigot finishes beside the old harbour, and Nantes sits a genuinely short journey north: direct trains cover the route in around 1 hour 45 minutes at their fastest, a manageable trip for the day after a marathon rather than an ordeal. It is the second Atlantic river city on this list, but a different one in character: Nantes sits on the Loire rather than a tidal harbour, and its identity is built as much around a former industrial shipyard as around any historic old town.
Four nights here suits a runner who wants a genuine change of pace after the race rather than a quick city stop. Much of what makes Nantes distinctive, a mechanical bestiary built inside a former shipyard, a moated castle turned museum, a covered 19th-century arcade, works regardless of November weather, and the city's flat geography along the Loire keeps the walking gentle throughout.
Nights One and Two: Central Nantes and the Château
The Château des ducs de Bretagne, a moated fortress in the centre of the city, now houses the Nantes history museum inside its own ramparts; the walk around the top of those ramparts is flat, paved and gives a clear view down into the moat and out over the surrounding rooftops, an easy first orientation walk on legs still recovering from the race. A short distance away, the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul's white limestone interior is worth the stop for its scale alone, and it costs nothing to step inside; the tomb of François II, the last independent Duke of Brittany, and his wife Marguerite de Foix sits inside, its four corner figures representing the virtues the couple were said to embody.
Getting around Nantes on foot is helped by the city's tram network, three lines running at street level with no steps at most stops, a practical option for shortening any of the walks above once the legs have had enough for the day. Single tickets are available from machines at stops and validated on boarding.
Cours des 50 Otages, a broad boulevard built over a filled-in arm of the Loire, runs flat and tree-lined through the centre of the city for close to a kilometre, a genuinely easy stretch of walking that connects the château area to the Passage Pommeraye, a covered 19th-century shopping arcade of ironwork and carved stone stretching across three levels, sheltered entirely from any November rain.
Close to the railway station, the Jardin des Plantes gives a second, gentler option for a first or second day: a formal botanical garden of around seven hectares, largely flat with gravel paths and a series of heated greenhouses, useful on a genuinely wet late-November day when an outdoor circuit elsewhere in the city is less appealing. Entry is free, and the garden's proximity to the station makes it a natural stop on the way in or out of the city rather than a special trip in its own right.
Where to stay: Sōzō Hôtel, a four-star property converted from a former chapel near the centre, gives a distinctive, quiet base a short walk from the main sights. Radisson Blu Nantes, on Place Aristide Briand in a converted neoclassical courthouse, offers a more conventional four-star alternative in the same central area, close to the city's tram network.
Where to eat: La Crêperie du Bouffay, in the Bouffay quarter's tangle of medieval streets, serves a classic galette complète, buckwheat, ham, egg and cheese, alongside Breton cider, a straightforward, filling meal that needs no special planning.
Nights Three and Four: Les Machines de l'Île and the Loire's South Bank
The Île de Nantes, a long island in the Loire that was the city's working shipyard until the 1980s, now holds Les Machines de l'Île, a set of large-scale mechanical creatures, most famously a walking elephant that carries passengers on a slow circuit, built inside the old shipyard workshops themselves. Entry prices and ride availability vary by season, so check the current schedule at lesmachines-nantes.fr before planning the visit. Alongside the machines, the shipyard's original Titan cranes still stand on the quayside, preserved rather than demolished, a genuine piece of industrial history rather than a themed reconstruction.
A flat riverside path runs along the Quai de la Fosse on the opposite bank, passing the Mémorial de l'abolition de l'esclavage, a memorial to the abolition of slavery built partly below street level along the river, free to enter and level throughout, a sober counterpoint to the mechanical spectacle across the water and a reminder of Nantes's own history as one of France's principal slave-trading ports.
Back on the island itself, the Hangar à Bananes, a former banana-ripening warehouse converted into bars and restaurants along the quay, gives a straightforward option for an evening out that involves no more walking than a stroll along the waterfront, its industrial brick shell left largely as it was rather than disguised behind a fully modernised facade.
The shipyards themselves closed in 1987, and much of what makes the Île de Nantes worth a full two days rather than a single afternoon is the scale of that closure: cranes, dry docks and workshop buildings large enough to have built ocean liners now sit alongside the mechanical elephant and the memorial, evidence of an industry that employed thousands of people within living memory rather than a themed backdrop built for visitors. A slow walk along the full length of the quay, rather than a direct route to any single attraction, gives the clearest sense of that scale, and the flat, paved surface throughout makes it an easy way to spend part of a fourth day without asking much of the legs.
Getting to Nantes Atlantique Airport
Nantes Atlantique Airport (NTE) is reached by a dedicated navette from the south entrance of Nantes's SNCF station, taking around 25 minutes and costing €10 per trip. Services run daily except 1 May; check current times at naolib.fr before travelling, and allow enough margin to collect luggage and reach the station in good time for the shuttle.