For most of us in northern latitudes, the new year is a time for rest, recuperation, and planning another season of bike tours.

What are your plans for 2022 bike tours?

My current plans include a 19-day tour in May called "Brigham Young's Promised Land".

Also hopefully an 11-day tour in July called "Willamette Valley Covered Bridges".

And maybe a 14-day September tour from Spokane to Boise.

For the third consecutive year, COVID seems likely to ruin or alter some plans. But I'm optimistic that 2022 will be better than 2021.

Depending on how we count it, we’re planning for either one tour or three this year:

• Spring: 3 months in France, beginning in Nice and ending in Cherbourg;
• Summer: 3 months in the UK, beginning in Poole after arriving by ferry from Cherbourg and ending in Dover;
• Autumn: 3 months in France and a bit of Catalonia, beginning in Calais after arriving by ferry from Dover and ending in Barcelona.

Something more or less like this:

What a fun topic!

We’re planning a month in Rome in May, during which I’m planning to document my daily rides.  

In July we’re scheduled to do a “Bike and Barge” weeklong supported ride across The Netherlands.  

Then in September we will bravely/foolishly try to ride our tandem from Munich to Verona.  

At some point this year,  we’re hoping to host the Flying Andersons as they breeze through town.

And, as always, lots of day rides in our beautiful corner of France.

I hope to spend most of 2022 cycling in Europe. My application for a long-stay visa is currently under review at the French Consulate in Washington, DC - fingers crossed! Paris will be my home base for launching a variety of tours around Europe, each lasting days to weeks. 

Plans for a 5-week spring tour in Spain and Portugal are pretty far along. Other longish tours in the planning stages are Slovenia in June and Southern Italy in the fall. I'll fill in the gaps with shorter tours in France/Germany/Italy/England/???  Flexibility and resilience will be my guiding principles.

European trains have a wonderful way of compressing distances and I hope that 2022 includes more meet-ups with other CycleBlazers living and/or touring in the general area.

2022 will be my first year fully retired. I am celebrating by spending a February at an airbnb in Tucson. My goal is to ride at least 42 miles a day, a la Rachael Anderson. 

2022 is also the year of my 6oth birthday. As per my cycling mentor, Alison Stone, when you have a zero birthday you are the queen (or king) for the entire year. I get to choose where to ride this year. I have a route mapped out, visiting some favorite spots and some new spots. I've divided the route into two maps:

The second half hasn't quite been finalized.

The fall colors tour in 2021 was a success. I plan on riding it again in 2022: 

I would like to work the Gateway loop into the mix somewhere - we have ridden most of the ride - the red rocks portion of the trip on Highway 141 owes nothing to Moab. I just can't figure out where it fits. 

I tell myself I need to cross train more - but I do love to ride my bike! I can feel Father Time ticking. I feel as if I need to do it while I can. 2022 looks like a great year! It helps that we agree on spending all of our extra money cycling, it's our main  activity. I see all of the cycling as insurance on staying healthy!

We have high hopes for 2022 - there's no point in not hoping!

We have a few commitments during the first few weeks of the year around which we have to plan any cycle tours.  There are a few family commitments, the most important of which is my mother's 90th birthday.  But first off is a week long cruise with a few thousand other crazy (and most likely seasick) bird watchers to Marion Island (in the southern ocean between South Africa and Antarctica).

To fill the gap before the cruise we should be heading out for a mini tour of the south-eastern parts of the Karoo, centered around the town of Steytlerville in a few day's time.  Between the cruise and my mother's birthday we hope to do another mini tour in the Karoo.  After her birthday we might do another one somewhere else in South Africa.  Hopefully this will take us up to some time in March.

The first big tour we hope to do will be April to July in Spain overflowing possibly into Portugal and/or France.  Of course, the COVID situation in Europe will have to improve if we hope to do this.

The main target for the year will be to head back to South America to cycle from Iguazu Falls to Ushuaia.  Why Iguazu ?  Well, that is where we were cycling towards when COVID fouled things up almost two years ago.  Why Ushuaia again ?  They say that once you have eaten Calafate berries you will always return to Patagonia and we have been dying to go back again.  It will be our third tour in that wild and wonderful place.  This time we hope to follow a slightly different route starting down the eastern side of the Andes before entering Patagonia proper at Barilloche.  Once over the Andes we will join up with the Carretera Austral deviating from it at Sierra Castillo to cross Lago General Carrera to Chile Chico and rejoining the Ruta Siete at Puerto Bertrand.  We skipped the infamous crossing from Villa O'Higgins to Lago del Desierto last time so we will probably take that route back to Argentina.  Once on Tierra del Fuego we hope to take the route via Camerón  through the wild country on the western side of the island before flying out of Ushuaia.  We estimate this will take five to six months taking us up to the end of February 2023.  

With age creeping up on us we don't have too many chances to tackle Patagonia again.  Hopefully the predictions of COVID becoming endemic come true in time for us to realise our plans.

My plan for 2022 is to do this, starting on 2 July and finishing in early October, probably.

To get ready, as well as to field-test my gear and identify opportunities for improvement, I'm contemplating a late-May or early-June repeat of an 8-day tour in eastern Pennsylvania that I previously attempted in 2014, but which I had to abandon after 6.5 days due to incredible saddle sores.

Keith,

You cross country/not cross country route is interesting. What sparked that exact routing? I've always felt as if I *should* do a cross country as all of the big boys and girls have ridden across at least once. Some how, I lack the desire. I do love a long ride, such as yours. 

Hi Kelly-

I want to make use of the ACA routes where it makes sense, especially out west where resources are sometimes scarce and far between.  Knowing that the ACA routes hundreds, perhaps thousands, of touring cyclists through those areas provides me a degree of comfort since I know that it's all been done before, and that there is a huge pool of experience on which to draw.  I also want to use relative's houses in the mid-continent region as extended stopovers.  

One of those is in Brookings SD and another in Olathe KS.  I can string together parts of the TransAm, connecting to the Parks Peaks and Prairies route to get to within an easy day's ride of Brookings, and then after a two-day/one-night off-network "bridge" to get from Brookings to Vermilion SD I'll pick up Lewis & Clark headed for Kansas City.  There'll be a bit more off-network routing needed to get to Olathe and then around the south side of the KC metro area.

In MO the Katy Trail is an obvious choice and, since I'll be in the area anyhow, why not?  The Katy will deliver me to a point where I can use the Great Rivers South route as a bridge to get back onto the TransAm for the next leg.

I lived in southern Illinois for several years as a graduate student so I have nostalgic interest in passing through Murphysboro and Carbondale where I was in school, and where I worked intermittently at The Bike Surgeon.  Even in the mid-80s the Surgeon was a nationally-known resource for cross country riders, and I was pleased to have hosted a couple of them during their journeys.  I hope to finally be able to inscribe my name on the Guest Book as a through-rider.

East of there I'll revisit places I rode for fun "way back when" until I cross the Ohio at Cave-In-Rock IL and join the Underground Railroad route.  Having read numerous journals that talk about the rigors of the climbs in eastern KY and SW VA (not to mention the coal trucks and other less-than-joyous factors) I elected to use the UGRR and a bit more off-network routing to avoid those harder climbs.

By the time I reach the Pittsburgh area I'm practically on my home territory.  Although I've only ridden a shortish stretch of the Great Allegheny Passage I know it to be a very manageable option.  It connects to the C&O Canal at Cumberland MD.  I've done the Canal several times end-to-end as a three-day ride, and it runs within ten miles of home.  I'll exit the towpath before that point, though, to get back on hard-surfaced roads I know very well- they are part of my day ride playground- in preference to the gravel-and-packed-earth surface on the Towpath.

There you have it!

So far in my cycling life, my 'touring' has consisted mostly of brief overnights from home, and the occasional car trip to some location in the eastern US, where I've then spent a few days doing day rides. I'm hoping 2022 is the year I break out and do some more extended trips. There's three possibilities I currently have in mind, and the hope is to do at least two of them, if not all three.

1) A trip around the perimeter of Vermont. I live in the southeast corner of the state, so the plan would be to head west to Bennington, travel up the VT-NY border, possibly popping back and forth across the border utilizing some of the Empire State Trail, then across the top part of the state close to the Canadian border utilizing Adventure Cycling's Green Mountain loop, then down the VT-NH border back home. I've had this mapped out for a few years now, but so far haven't quite made it happen.

2) The next possibility would be to ride the Erie Canal Trail in NY from Buffalo to Albany. I grew up in northern NY so the area has lots of memories for me, and I really haven't been back there very often in the last 30 years or so. 

3) Lastly, I've really enjoyed the journals of all the Cycleblazers who have done the GAP and/or C&O trail, so the idea of doing that has intrigued me for awhile. 

The Vermont trip is my first priority, and I hope to do that as soon as spring has sprung. 

Oh, and one last thought... If I ever get tired of Vermont winters and want to break out of my northeast US bubble, you all have made Tucson look pretty appealing.