It will soon be 10 years that I set off to cycle along the Mediterranean coast from Cape Sounio in southern Greece to Cape St. Vincent in southern Portugal. My route was inspired by the EuroVelo 8, although it was much less developed back then than it is today. I saw some EuroVelo 8 signs in Catalonia but aside from that, I’m not quite sure I saw any elsewhere. And after Valencia, when I was beginning to run short of time – I needed to be back at work at the beginning of September – I headed inland, away from the coast in order to complete the journey without resorting to jumping on the train.
If I wanted variety after having cycled along the seemingly endless disused railway tracks of the Veloscenie, I certainly got variety today after my day of rest / escape from the heat. The cycling was varied, the landscape was varied, the weather was variedโฆ
France is a top destination for cycle tourists and, with its great diversity of landscapes – from windswept cliffs in the north to vast swathes of forest in the west to sun-drenched villages in the south to vertiginous climbs in the east – it has (almost) everything that a traveller on a bicycle might want to discover. Lyn Eyb from FreeWheelingFrance.com has been exploring and writing about France ever since she arrived in the country over a decade ago. She shares her thoughts with The Cycling Europe Podcast and takes time to answer listenersโ questions about the practical aspects of being a cyclist in France.
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.
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…
The ECF have just published a ‘press pack’ of information about the EuroVelo network. Here are a few snippets. They complement perfectly what Ed Lancaster said on the The Cycling Europe Podcast that was published last week.
If you listened to Episode 015 of The Cycling Europe Podcast you will remember that Paul didn’t make it quite as far as Nordkapp, for fairly obvious reasons. But he did make it as far as Nice in France and will hopefully one day soon return to complete the journey. But here in the written world of these CyclingEurope.org posts (as opposed to the spoken world of podcasts), Paul has just arrived in France and is heading in the direction of Nice…
If you listened to Episode 015 of The Cycling Europe Podcast you will remember that Paul didn’t make it quite as far as Nordkapp, for fairly obvious reasons. But he did make it as far as Nice in France and will hopefully one day soon return to complete the journey. But here in the written world of these CyclingEurope.org posts (as opposed to the spoken world of podcasts), Paul has just arrived in France and is heading in the direction of Nice…
