There’s a brand new bicyle route in our part of the Lot-et-Garonne, and it’s a good one. The Voie Verte de la Vallée de la Baïse runs 27 km from Feugarolles to Moncrabeau, following an old railway line through the Baïse valley. It opened in June 2025, and it passes through some of the prettiest towns in the Pays d’Albret — including Vianne, Lavardac, and Nérac.
Like the Voie Verte de l’Armagnac further west, this is a paved, car-free path open to cyclists, walkers, and rollers. It’s flat (old railway lines always are), shaded in stretches, and connects six communes along the valley. You can do the whole thing as a long bike ride, or just walk a section of it for an afternoon.
Vianne
Vianne is an English bastide, founded in 1284 by Jourdain de l’Isle in partnership with King Edward I of England — built to counter the French bastide at Lavardac just upstream. What makes Vianne special is its fortifications. This is one of the very few bastides in Gascony to have kept its entire defensive wall — 1,250 metres of ramparts forming a near-perfect rectangle, with square gate towers and round corner towers still standing. You walk through one of the four original gates and you’re inside a medieval walled town with a grid of streets, an old church that predates the bastide by 150 years, and a quiet, lived-in atmosphere that feels genuinely unchanged. It’s not a museum — people still live here — but it feels deeply, unmistakably medieval.
We stopped to pick up pâtisseries in town before heading out. Walking back to the start with a bag of pastries is, I think, the correct way to use a voie verte.
Nérac
The voie verte passes through Nérac, which is the main town of the Albret and worth a visit on its own. It has the Château-Musée Henri IV (the future Henry IV of France spent his youth here), the lovely Parc de la Garenne along the Baïse, and the Moulin des Tours at nearby Barbaste.
Practical
The voie verte runs from Feugarolles in the south to Moncrabeau in the north, with Nérac roughly in the middle. You can join it at several points along the way. There’s good parking in front of Vianne’s walls. The path is flat and paved throughout — fine for road bikes, hybrid bikes, or just walking.
For more information, the Albret tourism office has a dedicated page: albret-tourisme.com/la-voie-verte-en-albret.
gascony girl 