February 12, 2022
You’re not going to Bath???
No, Lynn. We aren’t going to Bath, even though we’ll pass within only twenty miles of it on our ride from Usk to Malmesbury. Nor are we going to the Cotswolds, or York, or Dinan - three of your other favorite places in this corner of Europe.
As it happens though, all four of these were on the cutting board at some point as this plan has been tweaked, spindled or mutilated over the months since we first started thinking about it.
The current plan, the final plan since it’s the one we’re basing our lodging bookings on, looks different than this first draft we published about three months ago on the day after we returned home from Rome and immediately bought a one way flight to Nice:
The plan has been tweaked and amended a thousand times since then, to the point that it’s transmogrified into a shape that only vaguely resembles the original one. We’ve reversed the direction and right-shifted the starting date by two weeks, now starting in Barcelona and ending in Nice rather than the other way around because we hope we should be getting better weather this way. We’ve dropped Ireland, because once we started plotting a route through England and Wales we just kept finding more reasons to stay longer in England and go slower. And we dropped some must-see destinations that were cornerstones of the original vision.
Take York, for instance. York for some reason has long been the first place that came to my mind when imagining a tour of England; but when it came down to picking our overnight stays it somehow didn’t make the final cut. Why? Hard to say, but partly because it’s a larger city and we don’t really care for cycling into big cities so much any more. And partly because what I really wanted to see was Yorkshire, not York specifically.
Lots of other examples come to mind. I was sure we’d be biking down the Loire and revisiting chateaus on this trip; or biking the coastline between Brittany and Normandy through St. Malo (and yes Lynn, a side trip to Dinan was planned) to Mont Saint-Michel on our way to Cherbourg; or touring the Central Massif, a region we haven’t visited in over 20 years. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve started drawing maps for candidate tours through France that included the Central Massif, but it didn’t make it this year either.
Perhaps the most painful choice for me personally was the last dream to drop off the table: Galibier. We’ll be so close to what’s possibly my favorite pass climb of all time. If not now, then when? Unfortunately the first of May is just too early in the year for it to be a good idea to plan on. Maybe we can reconsider when we get closer if they’re having an unusually early spring in the Alps this year. All our bookings are cancellable, after all.
There’s abundant compensation for all these painful choices though. We’ll be visiting many places I’d never heard of until we started planning and started staring at the map looking for likely spots for an overnight. Especially in the UK, which we’re surprised at how excited we are about visiting: Chester, Conwy, Brecon, Ely, and on and on. All places I’d never or scarcely heard of that each sounds wonderful and unique.
And that’s the magic of traveling by bicycle or other forms of slow travel, right? It enlarges the world. The slower you travel, the more there is to see. Slow down and look around, and you won’t use up France with one blitz tour of Paris, the Loire and Nice. I’m convinced that we can keep returning to France for the rest of our traveling lives and find something new each time. The next time though, for sure we’re going back to the Central Massif.
Bath though. Maybe we really should reconsider that one. There is still time, barely. We’re only up to Paris on our booking project, we haven’t even hopped the English Channel yet. What do you think, Rocky?
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Look forward to following your England - Wales section. Having lived in the UK for ~ 8 years (but 20 years ago) the thought of touring in England in particular has always caused me concern given the roads and traffic. I believe they've done a lot to add cycling infrastructure since then and I'm sure you've fully researched your route. Keenly interested to see how it goes! Safe travels.
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