Tag: Eurovelo 1

A Wanda Around Europe, Explained

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Earlier today some of you must have been scratching your heads just a little upon seeing the Twitter post or the Facebook post or the Instagram post relating to my decision to ‘tweak’ the route of my upcoming cycle around the Baltic Sea. It is, admittedly, one hell of a tweak. So much of a tweak in fact that the only remaining part of that planned Baltic Sea Cycle that remains in the new planned cycle is the rather short journey from the ferry port in Rotterdam to the Hook of Holland. And yes, even that section is nowhere near the Baltic Sea. The new route will see me not turn left upon arrival in The Netherlands but turn right in the direction of Belgium, then France, then (after quite a while) through Switzerland, then Germany before finally returning to the Hook of Holland and my return journey across the North Sea to Hull. Mmm… Perhaps ‘tweak’ might not have been the most appropriate of words. So why the change?

The Cycling Europe Podcast: Episode 048 – A Mountaineerโ€™s Guide To Cycling From Spain To Norway

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The Cycling Europe Podcast mainly features, well, cyclists. The interviewee in this episode, however, is first and foremost a mountaineer. But heโ€™s not just any mountaineer. His name is Tim Ralph and heโ€™s a seven summiteer; a man who has climbed the seven highest mountains on each of the continents. In the last few years, heโ€™s also taken up cycle touring and has just published a book called โ€˜A Life Accomplished: From Spain to Norway on a Bikeโ€™. So what can mountaineering teach us about cycle touring? What can cycle touring teach mountaineers about climbing mountains? And what happens when an experienced mountaineer sets off to cycle from Europeโ€™s geographical southernmost point at Tarifa in Spain to its northernmost point at Nordkapp in Norway?

The Cycling Europe Podcast: Episode 044 – The Canal De La Garonne & Canal Du Midi / Trikesย 

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Declan Lyons trained as a zoologist but after several years working as a journalist and management consultant he started to research and then write two Cicerone guides for people interested in cycling the Canal de la Garonne from Bordeaux to Toulouse and the Canal du Midi from Toulouse to the Mediterranean coast at Sรจte. Together the canals are known as the Vรฉloroute des Deux Mers – the โ€˜two seas cycle routeโ€™ – and in this episode of the podcast he talks about the history of the canals and how they have been transformed in recent decades into one of Franceโ€™s most popular cycling routes. Also: we hear from Ian Yarroll, an experienced cycle tourist, who, after developing balance problems, took up a recumbent trikeโ€ฆ

Escaping Europe… In Europe: France / Albania

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In a week when the news here in Europe has been dominated by… well, let’s not go there other than to note that Putin needs to ride his bike a bit more often and shed the macho persona he so loves, I have been transported off to France and then across the whole of Europe courtesy of two conversations that I have recorded for upcoming episodes of The Cycling Europe Podcast.

EuroVelo: The State Of The Network Address

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Like Chris Packham of Springwatch fame, I love a good graph or visual that says something in one glance that would take a thousand words to explain. And the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF) – the Brussels-based organisation that is responsible for the EuroVelo network have just produced its first ever ‘Route Development Report’. Basically, it’s a ‘state of the nation’ address but limited to the EuroVelo long-distance cycle routes rather than the less important topics such as education, health and defence…

Cycling Day 26: Cardiff To Bath

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A long, flat day… it started here in Cardiff: It finished at 9pm at the Youth Hostel in Bath. There was a transporter bridge: And a catch up with Paul Gentle in Bristol who joined me for the cycle along the old railway path to Bath where we […]

Ceri Middleton: Bikepacking Across Spain In February

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Ceri was one of the cyclists who submitted their photographs to the recent cycle touring photo competition and he even made it to the shortlisted final ten photographs. It was a cracking image (shown above). It was taken during a trip in February 2019 along the Ruta de la Plata in western Spain. In fact, his route from Seville to north-eastern Spain brought back good memories from my own cycling trip along a very similar route back in 2015 as I made my way from Spain to Norway…