Advice for a Newbie Tourer

[burnley822]

Hi,

So I'm planning on doing my first ever cycle tour this summer, the plan is to fly somewhere from Bristol (closest airport to where I live), and then ride back and I've a few questions.

- Realistic daily/total distance? I typically ride approx 200km split over a couple of rides per week although obviously in this case it will be constant with few (if any) rest days, and carrying all the gear i'll be needing. On other hand the cycling would be all i'm doing, not just squeezing a ride into my Sunday morning/after work. Based on this I reckon about 2000km over about 2.5 weeks is vaguely realistic, thoughts?

- Flying with a bike? Any general advice and any airlines to go for/avoid.

- Somewhat linked to question 1, suggested routes? A quick look at flights/ google maps suggests that Malaga or Pisa could be a good start point. Anyone with some experience riding in Europe got any suggestions for fun touring routes that are about that distance.

Cheers!

[stephenjubb]

https://tomsbiketrip.com/

[Cunobelin]

A couple of practice runs before hand.

Pack the bike and head off for an overnight stop, it will let you get a feel for how far you travel comfortably. You also learn quickly which kit you are unlikely to use.

The other thing is do not get fixed with distance. I have travelled 100 miles in a day, but that is travelling not touring.

Touring is allowing a detour to a local point of interest, stopping for a break just because the cafe looks friendly or the contents of a bakery window are tempting

Don't travel - tour and allow yourself to interact with the country you are passing through

[JackRabbitSlims]

https://tomsbiketrip.com/

^^ excellent site that I used a lot when I was starting out.......along with this one: - https://www.cyclingabout.com/

[mjr]

2000km over 16 days would be 125km or 78miles a day. On a bad day, pushing into a cold headwind at 8mph, that could be 10 hours on the bike and then you've got to get up and do it again the next day. I wouldn't want to do that. I now aim for stops 40 miles apart, but varying it depending on conditions: increase it for a good tarmac former-railway express cycleway, decrease it for seriously lumpy bits.

I've not flown with a bike so won't help with that. I also think the trans-Pyraneen cycle routes are incomplete in Spain so I'd look to Pisa rather than Malaga or maybe southern Germany or the Czech Republic.

[whoof]

You don't say if you are camping and cooking or staying in hostels/hotels and eating in cafes. This will make a difference to the amount of things you need to carry and therefore how far you might be riding in a day especially if it's very hilly.
If it's hilly and I'm carrying full camping gear I average about 15 kph. For 2000 km in 2.5 weeks that would mean that I would need to ride for 9 hours a day if I rode 6 days a week and 7 1/2 hours a day if I rode 6 days a week but this may be different for you.

The weather looks really good this weekend a great opportunity to have a trial run. You can test out what you forgot to bring and what you should have left behind. Also riding for most of the day for multiple days is different from doing a long ride each weekend.

As above it's touring and may require a different outlook to the 'normal' riding that you currently do. I came to touring from a background
of road racing and initially found it strange to not be 'pushing-on' or god forbid, stopping to look at something. I tour in Europe for 2 weeks each summer and found it's best to pick two point that would not be a stretch to get to in the allotted time. I find that if I get somewhere nice and what to stay a couple of days I can but if I want to ride more I can put on an extra loop.

When picking where to go in Europe I usually look at where EasyJet will fly to from Bristol. This summer I am going to Malaga, I like the weather when it's hot, last year in Porto it was touch 40 c. Everyone is different and if you find it hard going in the heat you need to factor this in to where you are going and what time of day you ride. If you look a few posted down there is lots of advice of packing bikes for flying.

[mercalia]

as some have already said you need to go on some mini tours to get a feel for what it is like carting a lot of gear on your bike day in day out, you might revise your mileage

[Tangled Metal]

Do you want to do the cycling equivalent if a daily route march? If not then chill about distance.

Pick a rough direction and cycle in it each day. See what's on your way or signposted just off it. See something of an interesting detour follow it. Just accept that you might not then reach your next, roughly planned overnight stop. So you look for a closer one and adjust.

It's not as much fun if you tour as if you're just tagging on a load of day rides between overnight stops as it is to tour without a fixed purpose. You won't know the area you're travelling through until you're cycling through it. Not everything is in a guidebook. You find interesting things to see just by the luck of taking a different turn at a junction. That's just my opinion. Possibly irrelevant because I tour with a family so we're limited by the distance a 5 yo can do (at 4 it was 30 miles, not sure what extra distance a year will result in).

[mjr]

Do you want to do the cycling equivalent if a daily route march? If not then chill about distance.

Pick a rough direction and cycle in it each day. See what's on your way or signposted just off it. See something of an interesting detour follow it. Just accept that you might not then reach your next, roughly planned overnight stop. So you look for a closer one and adjust.

That seems a risky approach in summer when accommodation may be booked up, especially accommodation with enough safe bike storage in some countries. I guess campsites have more scope to squeeze in extra tents or there's often wild camping (whether legal or not), but I don't want to camp, so that's why I like being booked ahead. I feel aiming for 40 mile spacing gives scope to detour a bit if the ride's going well or stop awhile to see something on route or try to set off early, cover it by early afternoon and then ride to see something off-route near the overnight stop.

[whoof]

Do you want to do the cycling equivalent if a daily route march? If not then chill about distance.

Pick a rough direction and cycle in it each day. See what's on your way or signposted just off it. See something of an interesting detour follow it. Just accept that you might not then reach your next, roughly planned overnight stop. So you look for a closer one and adjust.

That seems a risky approach in summer when accommodation may be booked up, especially accommodation with enough safe bike storage in some countries. I guess campsites have more scope to squeeze in extra tents or there's often wild camping (whether legal or not), but I don't want to camp, so that's why I like being booked ahead. I feel aiming for 40 mile spacing gives scope to detour a bit if the ride's going well or stop awhile to see something on route or try to set off early, cover it by early afternoon and then ride to see something off-route near the overnight stop.

I've used this approach (start/end and not booking) on 15 European two week (or sometimes a little over) tours all the last two weeks in June. These have been in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic and Poland That's roughly 200 nights and apart from first and last days depending on my arrival departure time ( this year I'm arriving in Malaga at about 11 pm) I've never booked anything. I only once failed to find somewhere and that was the last day of the first tour and why I now book those nights if necessary.

I wouldn't try this in France in high-season (July and August).

[mjr]

That's roughly 200 nights and apart from first and last days depending on my arrival departure time ( this year I'm arriving in Malaga at about 11 pm) I've never booked anything. I only once failed to find somewhere and that was the last day of the first tour and why I now book those nights if necessary.

Please permit me to ask for a little elaboration: Are you just going door to door looking for accommodation in whatever town you reach in the late afternoon, or some other tactic(s)? Have the places you stay always had bike parking or are you more relaxed about that? And are you touring alone?

[PH]

If this thread shows anything it's that people experiences and expectations are as varied as in that other thread on modern art, and much like that art being defined by the artist, touring is defined by the rider. Ones person's route march is another's excitement at watching a country unfold, someone's security of knowing where they'll be at the end of each day is another's straight jacket, your hopelessly lost will be some else's exploration... I used to have more fixed ideas about what touring is, and suffered when my own tours didn't meet those expectation, lessons learnt.
Advice - Don't expect to get it right all the time, or that doing what was perfect yesterday will work today, that whatever plan you make you can break.
Good ideas - I feel more at ease with a back up plan. My preference is to ride somewhere and transport back - The sense of arrival outweighs any logistics, plus I don't want to be riding on familiar roads for the last couple of days. I'd be nervous of setting out on a longish tour with untried equipment. These ideas are all about the level of risk I'm comfortable with, others will find their own.
Have fun.

[whoof]

That's roughly 200 nights and apart from first and last days depending on my arrival departure time ( this year I'm arriving in Malaga at about 11 pm) I've never booked anything. I only once failed to find somewhere and that was the last day of the first tour and why I now book those nights if necessary.

Please permit me to ask for a little elaboration: Are you just going door to door looking for accommodation in whatever town you reach in the late afternoon, or some other tactic(s)? Have the places you stay always had bike parking or are you more relaxed about that? And are you touring alone?

2 people and most days it's late afternoon when we arrive. If there's a tourist information open we ask there, if not just see a sign on the street or in these days of the internet you can search. We also go on a week long UK tour each year and always book, mainly due to the problems with securely storing the bikes. I've only found one hotel in Italy that said we would have to leave the bikes outside so we when to the next one up the road. The UK seems to be a bit of an oddment about bike storage. In France asking do you possibly have somewhere to store a bike is a bit like saying do your rooms have beds. There may be some large chain hotels that won't make the effort to find somewhere (if we use a chain in France we use Formule 1 or Premier Class) but if it's a small owner run hotel they are not going to turn down the money rather than let you put your bike in their garage, cellar, spare room, your room, office.

It's not for everyone. There is always the chance we won't find somewhere. But if you book the entire route there's also the chance you have to move on from somewhere really nice, have to ride in rotten weather, not have time to visit somewhere that looks really interesting.
We once went from Pisa to Florence and Siena. The plan was to then go down to Elba spend a couple of days riding around and then ride back up the coast to Pisa. Elba was so nice we spent 5 days in the same place about 6 km from the main port and then got the train back to Pisa.

[northernrebel]

We have used the partially planned option for the past 4 years. I'll sketch out a rough route, usually circular on Ride With GPS just to sense check the distance and highlight the likely elevation profile and maybe book one or two hotels along the way if we're taking a rest day in a big city. After this we ride day by day. I have a piece of string that represents 30 miles on the map so stick this on the map from where we are and look and see where that will get us, then work around it for a likely end to that day's riding. We try and camp where we can, but if there is no campsite or the weather's iffy or we want to be near the centre of a large town we'll look for a Pension or Hotel. During tours in France, Germany & Austria in late June/early July we've always found somewhere pretty good to stay, sometimes by just turning up and asking, sometimes by Tourist Information & more recently through using a booking App on my phone. We've had a couple of close calls on Friday nights, but managed to book somewhere on the phone a couple of miles away. After a few incidents with German maps where the marked campsites didn't actually exist I've downloaded the Archie's app onto my phone for this year's trip!
It's nice to have the overall plan, but have some flexibility to vary it if you find a great location or need to sit out really poor weather.

[ossie]

One question- no follow up.

It'd be nice to know if this was a camping trip, in which case Archies camping is your answer - or otherwise.