Cycling UK Forum

I did it in late June - hot but manageable, stunning scenery. Lot of cars and coaches, towns a bit tacky. Only place in Italy where the food was mediocre and the coffee was crap! It's also worth heading a little further south to Paestum.

As a rule, if BW say a stretch is not open to cyclists, it's best to take notice of them, unless you feel confident riding on hardcore, mud, or dirt paths six inches wide! Otherwise, generally pleasant riding, but certainly expect much lower mileages than you'd do on the road.

Needs to be done very cleanly, I understand. What's the best way?

I've toured thousands of miles, on bikes a lot cheaper than a Karakum, with thirty-two spoke wheels, loaded with camping gear, and never had a problem. As long as the wheels are in reasonable condition, I think you can relax.

Sheep, fish? (plural the same as the singular). It's those words ending in -is, from Greek, that get you.If it's any help, I'm told the plural of clitoris is clitorides, though I've never come across more than one at a time. Not much to do with dérailleurs either. I still like deurailia best!

Holy Mike, you'd need a degree or two in bike engineering to figure all this out!
Just to add a little confusion ... I'm trying to upgrade from downtube shifters on a nice old Cannondale tourer that has a Suntour X-1 triple front mech, which as near as I can measure pulls 16mm of cable to go from little to big ring. I'm wondering if a 2008 Campag Mirage shifter will work this: I can't even figure out if it's indexed or not - when we've decided what 'indexed' may mean. Anyone got any idea?

I’ve just rebuilt a wheel (first attempt), reusing the rim and spokes but upgrading from a freewheel to a freehub. I got it all trued up to within not much more than a millimetre, radially and laterally, and then decided the dishing was a couple of millimetres out. Slackened off all the nearside spokes half a turn, tightened the drive side half a turn – like Sheldon says – and found the whole thing was worse than when I started – like 10mm out laterally! I’ve more or less got it back true, though I’ve rounded off one or two nipples, and have to wait till the LBS opens to replace them; so where do I go from here? Am I being too finicky? Is dishing a couple of mm out neither here nor there? Is truing +/- 1-2mm good enough? All advice appreciated.

Sheldon writes 'derailer', and I've just seen a 'deurailia' on ebay. Any other interesting variations?

I did London-Rome three years ago on (approximately) the Via Francigena, and camped at: Calais, Bruay (wild camping), Bapaume, Peronne, La Fere, Guignicourt, Chalons-en-Champagne, Dienville, Clairvaux (hotel), Langres, Champlitte, Geneuille, Pontarlier, Orbe, Vevey, Martigny, Brig, Mergozzo, Orta, Vigevano (wild camping) Fidenza (hotel), Berceto (wild camping), Sarzana, Pisa, Montopoli, Siena, Lago di Bolsena, Vetralla (hotel), Roma. Captain Morgan’s right, north-east France is a bit dull, and Paris is pleasant to cycle in.
Personally, I don’t find campsites in France to be quite as ubiquitous as people say. You nearly always find one, but it can get a bit anxious at times: might be worth looking them up before you go (unless you’ve got mobile internet!) The southern French alps are lovely, nicer I thought than Switzerland; I did the Col de Larche this year, and would recommend it if it fits your route.
Campsites in Italy are easy to find in touristy areas – alps, coast, lakes, honeypots like Pisa, Florence, Siena; otherwise I saw very few, and yes, wild camping is not easy. I think the coast of Liguria is extremely hilly, whereas if you follow the Po valley, it’s utterly flat and you can really eat up the miles. The SS62 over the Cisa pass is a nice way to the coast.
The Italian coast is easy riding, but shockingly over-developed; might be worth considering a harder but more interesting inland route south of, say, Pisa (which incidentally has an excellent campsite).

I came up through eastern France (Basel-Nancy-Metz-Valenciennes) a couple of months ago, and while I did find campsites, they were far from ubiquitous: I guess it's much less touristy than areas further west. I'd recommend checking locations before you set off, rather than just trusting that they'll turn up.

Petehenry's right - if you can do sixty miles a day for three days, you can go anywhere.

There's no such thing as a free lunch: if you accept someone's hospitality, you're under a certain moral obligation to interact with them, hang out and chat, talk about what you're doing, sing for you supper as it were. If that's how you'd recharge your batteries after a day of solitary cycling, it should work; if - like me - you're a more introverted type who just wants to be silent when you're tired, it sounds like hard work.

As far as I can remember, most of the 45km from Martigny to the top of the pass is perfectly pleasant, and very scenic. The nasty bit is the last 7km or so up to the main tunnel (which is at about 2000m): there’s one actual tunnel, and about 6km in partially or totally enclosed galleries. I came through it (downhill!) at around 7.30am, when traffic was very light; the road – particularly the uphill lane – was narrow, with no shoulder to pull off onto. I think it was reasonably well lit. if I was riding it uphill, I’d try to spend the night just below that stretch so as to hit it first thing. In light traffic it would just be rather unpleasant, but if the traffic was heavy, I think it would really be quite scary.
Very much not recommended is sticking a tent up at the top like I did: the weather can change very fast, and I spent most of a sleepless and anxious night wondering if the tent would survive the battering of the wind and rain! The Italian side, downhill, will be an absolute delight, given reasonable weather.

I went into Italy over the Col de Larche, up from Barcelonette, last month. It’s a long, steady climb, never more than 5%, pleasant scenery, café at the top, and by the time you’ve cycled across France, you shouldn’t find it gruelling (I’d hardly been on my bike all winter when I set off). When you’re in even moderately hilly bits of France, you can spend the whole day climbing fifty or a hundred metres or so, and then straight down the other side; you can easily be climbing five or six hundred metres every day. Alpine passes, by contrast, are uphill all the way, so every metre climbed is a metre gained: if you want to catch your breath, you stop, or wheel the bike for a stretch. I suspect you’ll find the very hilly landscape around Genoa (which I’ve driven, but not cycled) more exhausting. And remember, even if it takes you all day to get up there, you’ve then got fifty or sixty kilometres to hurtle down!
The Great St Bernard is a good route to come back on, though it’s a good bit higher. Mostly good road on the Italian side, wide sweeping curves, though I found the scenery a bit gloomy – I kept thinking of trolls, or Rip van Winkel! But the climb on the Swiss side would be a nightmare – a lot of it’s in galleries, sharing the road with the heavy traffic for the tunnel, noisy, gritty, smelly, and very narrow. Fine to come down on though, early in the morning when there’s not much traffic (there’s cheap accommodation at the top).

The *shortest* route to Rome is via Besançon-Lausanne-Great St Bernard pass: that’s the route the pilgrims take on the Via Francigena, and if you’re walking you find the shortest way! However the Great St Bernard is ghastly if you’re heading south, with about seven km of steep climb in snow sheds (tunnel in all but name), narrow, smelly, gritty, impatient trucks snorting behind you. Better option on the way back though. The next road to the east is the Simplon pass, which is a nice steady ride.
Newhaven-Dieppe is another ferry option, train from Waterloo, pleasant riding straight away in France, as long as you don’t mind a 4.30am start the first day.