Around Rouen

How do you drive around Rouen?

« Here the obstacle isn't a ring road. It's a river that loops, and that you can't cross wherever you like. »

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

Why driving through Rouen is such hard work

Rouen is not a ring-road problem, it is a river problem. The Seine loops through deep meanders between chalk cliffs, and the crossing points are few: most of the traffic funnels onto the Pont Mathilde and the Pont Flaubert.

Add to that the Grand-Mare tunnel, an unavoidable link on the A28 between Abbeville and Le Mans. Driving through Normandy from north to south therefore means crossing a river and a tunnel in the same place, in the middle of the city, when you were only passing by.

In practice, La Route Buissonnière keeps you off :

• the Seine bridges and the Grand-Mare tunnel;
• the A28, A13 and A150 as they close in on the city;
• the dense drive through the Rouen built-up area.

Routing around Rouen in three steps

1. Open La Route Buissonnière and enter your start and destination (say, Abbeville → Alençon).
2. Add Rouen 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: Abbeville → Alençon without the Rouen bridges

1. Leaving Abbeville, you come down through the Vimeu and Foucarmont, then enter the pays de Bray at Neufchâtel-en-Bray — a buttonhole of pasture and hedgerow set into the chalk plateaux.
2. You cross the pays de Caux through Saint-Saëns and its forest, then Saint-Vaast-du-Val and Auzebosc, well west of the built-up area.
3. You cross the Seine near Le Landin, in one of the great meanders downstream of Rouen, far from the city bridges, then reach the Roumois at Bourg-Achard and Grand Bourgtheroulde.
4. You cross the Lieuvin at Le Bec-Hellouin and its abbey, Bernay, Broglie, then the pays d'Ouche and Gacé before Sées, its cathedral and the Écouves forest, on to Alençon.

Other drives where going around Rouen makes sense : coming down from Picardy to the Maine without the Rouen bridges; linking the Somme bay to the Perche through the pays de Bray; reaching the Orne from the Normandy coast by the interior.

What you get for going around Rouen

The pays de Bray is a geological anomaly and it shows: in the middle of the chalk plateaux, a green, damp hollow gridded with living hedges and apple trees. The farms are half-timbered, the roofs come down low, and you meet more cows than cars. You drive a little slower, you look a great deal more, you wind the window down.

Then the Seine appears in one of its meanders, huge and calm, with white cliffs opposite. You cross it where it is still a landscape rather than a piece of engineering. After that the Lieuvin, the abbey of Le Bec, the pays d'Ouche: one quiet countryside after another. 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 Rouen as a city to avoid: on our verified route the Seine is crossed downstream, near Le Landin, without using the city bridges or the Grand-Mare tunnel.

On our Abbeville → Alençon example, going around Rouen adds only 7.8 km, but 1 hr 21 in extra time, measured on 4 August 2026: the roads of the pays de Bray and the pays d'Ouche are slower going than the A28.

Yes. Inland Normandy is a web of old roads linking one market town to the next. On our verified route you come down from Abbeville to Alençon through Neufchâtel-en-Bray, Bernay and Sées, without using the A28.

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