It’s occasionally interesting to have a detailed look at the statistics that WordPress (the people who make this website function) furnish me with. You’d be surprised just how much information I know about you! For example, I know how many of you come here, what you read (well, I don’t know whether you actually read anything, perhaps I should modify that to ‘look at‘), what you click on, how many pages you visit before deciding that there is more to do with your life that read my eclectic ramblings, how you found the site in the first place and, perhaps most interestingly of all… other sites that might have pointed you in this direction. I can tell you that in the last month, of those who did follow a link to get here, the greatest number did so via (of course) a search engine, then Twitter, then Facebook. After that the numbers get much smaller but in the past month, 24 of you visited because of this page about long-distance cycling routes on the Daily Telegraph website, 20 from various CTC forums, and 19 from a relatively new site called The Adventure Junkies. Following this last link backwards I found a page with a short description of the site (it’s actually the text from the top of the homepage of CyclingEurope.org) and the astonishing news that, according to The Adventure Junkies, CyclingEurope.org is in the world’s ‘Top 50 Bicycle Touring Blogs‘! And it doesn’t just squeeze in at number 49 or 48; I can reveal that you are currently reading the world’s 22nd most popular cycle touring blog. I’m humbled. If you are interested in finding out just how this ranking has been worked out then you can do so by reading the explanation given on The Adventure Junkies website. It involves ‘Alexa Score, ‘Page Authority‘ and ‘Domain Authority‘ (which I have to admit don’t mean much to me) but CyclingEurope.org comes out with a score of 100. The top blog is the excellent Travelling Two website with a score of 157 and number 50 is a site called About One Man One Bike One World which comes in with a score of 29, so 100 is not bad! The popularity of CyclingEurope.org tends to increase when I’m actually off on my travels so over the course of the next six months as I set off to live in Spain for a short period and then make my way along the Eurovelos 1 and 3 towards Nordkapp in northern Norway, the site might even climb a little higher.

But enough of this self-congratulatory back slapping! Here are the top 10 bicycle touring blogs according to The Adventure Junkies. Some may be familiar, others less so…

1. Travelling Two
2. Family on Bikes
3. Rodadas (in Spanish)
4. Going Slowly
5. The Path Less Pedaled
6. Tom’s Bike Trip (actually =5)
7. Bicycle Touring Pro
8. Life in Travel (in Italian)
9. Cycling The 6
10. While Out Riding

You can see the full list, hyperlinked of course, on The Adventure Junkies website. The rest of The Adventure Junkies website is worth a rummage around too. Here are the two people behind the site – I presume they are very good friends indeed – and this is what they have to say about themselves;

“We are Antonio Cala and Amanda Zeisset (pronounced Z-ice-et). We travel the world and write about it. Over the past 2 years we have been exploring The Americas by bicycle. What started as a well planned bicycle tour turned into a life changing journey that has led us to pursue an infinite travel adventure lifestyle. We are on a mission to help you live a life of adventure. Our pursuit of adventure has transformed our lives and taken us to incredible places around the world. We live the lives of our dreams and we want to help you do the same.”

So there you go. What are you waiting for? Go explore their site and then the World!