It is a blustery and rainy day in Victoria. All that beautiful Italian sunshine feels like it was a long time ago, but I can conjure it up in my head as I look outside. Days like this give us lots of time to contemplate where we will go on the bikes next fall as it hasn’t even crossed my mind to jump on my bike and abandon the comfort of our gas fireplace today.

This year’s tour reinforced for us how much we enjoy this kind of travel and why we should continue to do it as long as we can. We also know how to do it now, if that statement makes any sense...and it seems to us to be an easier and more sensible way to travel in many ways. It is true that when we decide to bike tour for eight weeks we pretty much sign up to spend eight weeks outside and that is a wonderful and sometimes challenging thing to do, but we love it.

One of the things that made this year so terrific was all the climbing we did. We loved the views and the sense of accomplishment and we loved the descents too. We were very, very lucky with the weather in the mountains and the scenery was spectacular. Doing this on bikes meant unlimited stopping for pictures or just to admire. It meant we both could look around even when moving as not that much can go wrong at 7 or 8 kph! We would see cars go by with the driver’s eyes (necessarily) glued to the road and no pull outs where the driver could stop to enjoy the scenery. In contrast to that we could look around and stop anywhere we chose. We also rode in many, many places where cars are simply not allowed. Our day from Lausanne through the vineyards and our days up the Brenner Pass were real highlights.

We are already looking forward to next year. We love Europe because of the bike culture, the extensive bike paths and the bike and pedestrian friendly city centres. It is a big world though, so who knows? It is so much fun to dream.