bike touring
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Tour de France dairies 2022
Twenty one bends. Any space that a camper fits is filled, many German, French and Belgians camped out, Dutch corner banging out euro pop at 9.30am, thirty six hours before the tour hits. Beers cooling in streams. A corner festooned in Norwegian flags quiet on the way up but will be belting out AC/ DC…
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Bateau | Vélo | Chemin de Fer
South France calmly rolls around the horizon… It’s good to be riding on the wrong side of the road again, a smile on my face as I spin through the streets of Dieppe for the first time in over a year. I’ve missed the sight of the illuminated red diamond tabac and green cross pharmacy…
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Normandicat
As soon as I start pedalling I relax. I know what I’m doing now. Riding bikes. Done loads of it. Cheered off by the organisers and volunteers we all turn left up the street from the Salle des Fetes just after 10pm. Most people continue straight across the roundabout at the top of the road.…
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Vuelta de Los Picos // Dia 6 // Oviedo to Asturias Airport
The alarms go off at 7am. Today should be a relatively easy day but we’re flying home tonight so to avoid any panic later in the day we’ve decided to get on the road early. There is going to be some faff as we need to ride the wrong way initially, in order to get…
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Vuelta de Los Picos // Dia 4 // Riaño to Cain de Valdeón to Riaño
We wake up to sunlight streaming through the apartment windows. It is an absolutely glorious morning, but on opening a window we realise it is really very cold. Then we remember that we’re up above 1000 metres. We put on all of the layers to pop out to get coffee back at the hotel bar,…
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Vuelta de Los Picos // Dia 3 // Potes to Riaño
The original plan for today was to ride up to Fuente De in the morning before returning to Potes for the ride to Riaño. However the last couple of days have been quite hard and the riding time is longer than expected, and I know there is a lot of climbing yet to come this…
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Vuelta de Los Picos // Dia 2 // Cangas de Onis to Potes
Whilst I breakfast on bread, ham and cheese and watch the weather forecast on Spanish telly, George is fiddling with allen keys and his crankset. The day before leaving the UK, whilst suffering with a fever and tiredness, he replaced the inner ring and accidentally bolted it on the wrong way round. He spent the whole…
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Vuelta de Los Picos // Dia 1 // Asturias airport to Cangas de Onis
As our flight descends over the Atlantic Ocean towards the Spanish coast our quarry is clearly visible from the window, the Picos de Europa piercing distant cloud. Three limestone massifs covering the corners of Asturias, Cantabria and Castilla y León, the Picos are the highest point of the Cordillera Cantábrica, the mountain range that runs…
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