In 2015 I cycled from Tarifa in Spain – the southernmost point of mainland Europe – to Nordkapp in Norway – the northernmost point. It took me over 100 days. In 2019 Dr Ian Walker – an academic at the University of Bath – completed the journey in the opposite direction… in 16 days 20 hours and 59 minutes. In the process he became the fastest person ever to cycle across Europe north to south. That’s no mean feat for a man in his mid-forties who had only taken up ultra-long-distance racing a few years prior to breaking the record. I needed to find out how he did it…
“Sometimes fate – and a Michelin map – lead you and your bike exactly where you were meant to be. In this case, it was the outskirts of Pernes-les-Fontaines in Provence, where I saw this statue…”
A short but rather beautiful animation from Citroën commemorating the Tour de France ‘broom wagon’ on Mont Ventoux.
Like so many other sporting events, this year’s staging of the Tour De France has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic and although at one point it looked as if cycling’s greatest spectacle would not be held in 2020, thankfully the show is set to go on.
By Beth Riley The 2020 Tour de France is almost upon us and following the consistent success of British cyclists over the last decade, the expectations for continued glory remain just as high as ever. Given the Criterium du Dauphine is often regarded as an indication of current […]
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…
