Valérie has been a tourism professional since the 1990s and has spent her entire career at the Angers Tourist Office, considering herself an agitator/facilitator.
Since 2011, she has begun working on tourism projects focused on soft mobility: on foot, by boat, and above all by bicycle along our three cycle routes: La Loire à Vélo, La Vallée du Loir à Vélo, and La Vélo Francette.
Since 2020, she has taken on the direction of the Angers Tourist Office, while still maintaining development responsibilities related to cycling and gravel.
Passionate about her territory and about the new experiences to offer our visitors, the ambition to create in 2020 a festival dedicated to gravel and discovery by bicycle, “Nature is Bike,” immediately won her over.
She discovered and appreciated the unconventional DNA of the gravel practice.
Immediately, two questions became clear objectives in terms of tourism development:
– How could one, through an emerging practice in France, combine the discovery of a territory and make permanent, outside the festival, the routes created in the territory by transforming them into year-round tourism offers? Today, Nature is Bike, with only five editions behind it, is a reference event in the world of gravel and a promotional showcase for the destination.