Around Nantes

How do you drive around Nantes?

« Going around Nantes isn't swapping one ring road for another. It's leaving the through-route altogether. »

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

Why driving through Nantes is such hard work

The Nantes ring road, the N844, is a complete loop around the city. On paper that is a way around. In practice it is the only way through, and it carries local traffic and the whole of the coastal through-traffic at once.

Above all, the Loire can be crossed at only one point on that loop: the Cheviré bridge. Heading down to the Vendée or back up towards southern Brittany means going over that single structure, onto which the N165, the N137 and the N249 all feed. One bridge for an entire coastline.

In practice, La Route Buissonnière keeps you off :

• the N844 ring road and the Cheviré bridge, the only Loire crossing on the loop;
• the N165, N137 and N249 expressways as they close in on the city;
• the drive through the Nantes built-up area.

Routing around Nantes in three steps

1. Open La Route Buissonnière and enter your start and destination (say, Rennes → La Roche-sur-Yon).
2. Add Nantes 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: Rennes → La Roche-sur-Yon without the ring road

1. Leaving Rennes, you head east through Châteaugiron and its castle, then Vitré, a medieval town of the Breton marches.
2. You drop due south through La Guerche-de-Bretagne and Martigné-Ferchaud, into a bocage of hedgerows and ponds, as far as Saint-Julien-de-Vouvantes.
3. You meet the Loire at Ancenis-Saint-Géréon, well upstream of the city, and cross it there rather than at the Cheviré bridge.
4. You cross the Sèvre-et-Maine vineyards — Vallet, Gorges, Gétigné — then the Vendée bocage through Les Landes-Genusson and Essarts-en-Bocage, before La Roche-sur-Yon.

Other drives where going around Nantes makes sense : coming down from inland Brittany to the Vendée without the Nantes loop; linking Anjou to the bocage through the vineyards; reaching the Vendée coast from Ille-et-Vilaine on small roads.

What you get for going around Nantes

Two hours more is two hours given to a country nobody crosses on their way to the sea. Above the Sèvre the slopes carry low, tight rows of vines; Muscadet grows on a gneiss soil that makes the light harder and clearer. The villages have quays, washhouses and mills. You drive a little slower, you look a great deal more, you wind the window down.

Then the bocage closes in, the hedges rise, the lanes sink, and you enter the Vendée from the inside: the Vendée of isolated farms and bell towers you can pick out from far off. The coast arrives as a reward rather than a relief. 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 Nantes as a city to avoid: the route then crosses the Loire upstream, around Ancenis, without using the N844 or the Cheviré bridge.

Yes, frankly. On our Rennes → La Roche-sur-Yon example, going around Nantes adds 57.1 km and 1 hr 54 compared with the expressway route, measured on 4 August 2026. That is the deliberate choice of leaving the through-route for the vineyards and the bocage — not a shortcut.

Yes, upstream of the city. On our verified route the Loire is crossed at Ancenis-Saint-Géréon, some fifty kilometres from Nantes, which avoids the loop and its single bridge entirely.

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