Touring Europe is about as much as we’ve so far told you of our cycling plans, and, we would be the first to admit that it’s a notion that’s just about as fuzzy as the Sugar Puff Monster and as clear as condensation. “Where are the maps?”, you ask. “Name the towns!”, you demand. Well, let’s redress the squiggly line now.
Now – whilst part of this plan is for me to escape back into his Franco-Italo-phile tendencies, it has to be said that the geographical specifics are surprisingly few and far between. Whilst pouring over old maps is perhaps one of my favourite pastimes, for the sake of this tour, the element or serendipity in deciding each turn as and when we get there has been part of the joy.
That said, the first concrete rendez-vouz comes one month into the trip, as we attend a nonagenarian birthday celebration in the countryside south of Munich. With a full 30 days of riding to get there, and it being something in the realm of 600 miles as the crow flies, we’re sure to need that month on the road.
With the hope of squeezing out around 80-100km per day, the hope is that we set off jubilantly and pedal first down to Newhaven on the south coast. From here, we hitch a ferry to Dieppe and begin the European odyssey. One hinted suggestion is that we waver around, taking in a little of Luxembourg before crossing the Vosges into the Rhone valley. Meandering a little past Strasbourg and into Germany, across the southern Black Forest before skulking along the German/Swiss border before finally plumbing a line north to Munich.
From here though, any line we trace becomes, well, faint. With only a few voiced ambitions, there’s a lot of scope for suggestion. Myself, I’ve marked out certain things I’d like to do. Crossing the Dolomites and stopping in the Val di Funes, seeing the Alps and, skirting the Cote d’Azur on two wheels are all on my list of must-dos. On Stef’s part, finding a coastline with sunshine and hugging it until our bottom brackets are crunching with sand is the way to go.
Certainly though, the intention generally is to loop at some point around and into Italy, to see the South of France, and extend the loop out into Spain via Andorra and the Pyrenees.
So, with this being the case, we thought it best to consult you folks. With the agglomeration of your travels, there are surely a few gems that we should drop by and enjoy. If you’ve people you think we should meet, places that we should see, and, things that we simply have to do whilst we’re on the road, leave us a comment, drop us a line and flip us a message and let us know!
