Around Bordeaux

How do you drive around Bordeaux?

« The ring road isn't a way around the city. It's a funnel. Step off it and the vines start straight away. »

Route verified on 4 August 2026 · We'd rather take the long way round.

Why driving through Bordeaux is such hard work

Bordeaux is a river city before it is a ring-road city. The Garonne cuts it in two, and on the through-route there are very few places to cross: the Pont d'Aquitaine to the north, the Pont François-Mitterrand to the south. Everything else has to pick one or the other.

Around it, the A630 ring road closes a single loop that takes, all at once, the A10 down from Paris, the A62 from Toulouse, the A63 heading for Spain and the A89 arriving from the Massif Central. Four motorways, one loop, two bridges — and most people were only ever passing by on their way to the coast.

In practice, La Route Buissonnière keeps you off :

• the A630 ring road and its two Garonne crossings (Pont d'Aquitaine, Pont François-Mitterrand);
• the A10, A62, A63 and A89 as they close in on the city;
• the dense drive through the Bordeaux built-up area.

Routing around Bordeaux in three steps

1. Open La Route Buissonnière and enter your start and destination (say, Saintes → Biarritz).
2. Add Bordeaux as a city to avoid, or simply let the app route around it.
3. Follow the route: it takes you along the back roads, well clear of the city.

A real example: Saintes → Biarritz without the ring road

1. Leaving Saintes, you reach the east side of the city through the Libournais and the vineyards of Saint-Émilion, with its classified slopes, instead of dropping onto the A10.
2. You cross the Entre-deux-Mers, the rolling plateau between the Dordogne and the Garonne, with its villages and its bastide towns, then come down to Bazas and the Bazadais.
3. You enter the Landes de Gascogne: the great pine forest, its long quiet roads and its Landes villages, heading south towards Mont-de-Marsan.
4. You carry on through Saint-Sever and Hagetmau, pass Orthez in Béarn, then meet the Adour at Peyrehorade — Bordeaux and its ring road left behind, the Basque Country and Biarritz at the end of the road.

Other drives where going around Bordeaux makes sense : reaching the Bassin d'Arcachon without the ring road, through the Landes; coming down from the Charente towards the Pyrenees or Spain; linking the Bordeaux vineyards to the coast on small roads.

What you get for going around Bordeaux

The ground changes three times in a morning. First the limestone valleys of the southern Charente, then, all at once, the slopes of Saint-Émilion where the vine rows step down towards the valley. The monolithic bell tower shows up from a long way off, cut straight into the rock. You drive a little slower, you look a great deal more, you wind the window down.

Then the landscape empties out and starts to smell of resin: the Landes de Gascogne, its dead-straight avenues of pines, its dark lakes. The air turns salty well before you see any water. The road here is no longer time lost — it is already the journey.

Why doesn't La Route Buissonnière go through the centre?

Frequently asked questions

Enter your start and destination in La Route Buissonnière and add Bordeaux as a city to avoid: the route then stays well upstream of the city, through the Entre-deux-Mers or the vineyards, without touching the A630 or its bridges.

Yes, and we own up to it. On our Saintes → Biarritz example, going around Bordeaux adds 87.2 km and 2 hr 57, measured on 4 August 2026. In exchange the route stays 29.3 km from the centre instead of 5.1 km, through Saint-Émilion and the Landes de Gascogne.

Not yet. La Route Buissonnière currently covers France, which is where these routes are calculated and verified. Other countries will follow.

La Route Buissonnière · an independent project, made in France, with no advertising.