August 26, 2021
Getting Ready
Two years ago in June we retired and it was our dream to cycle tour as much as possible. Then Covid 19 hit. We did manage to get in a wonderful six-day cycle trip in September 2020 around the breathtaking Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia (our first Cycle Blaze blog) . Much of the winter found us in British Columbia skiing at Whistler, rediscovering Vancouver and hiking/camping the Juan de Fuca Trail.
Now finally we are ready to embark on our first cycle tour in retirement. The itinerary has changed several times as travel restrictions in various countries come and go, but now we are booked Montreal-Paris on August 29th, returning from Lisbon on November 9th. Ten glorious weeks on our bikes!
WHY DO WE LIKE CYCLE TOURING?
“Bicycle touring is like no other type of travel. You are physically and emotionally connected to every hill, every storm, and you travel slowly through every little town along the way. Though riding and camping on the side of the road is full of hazard, amazing things can happen when you embrace the uncertainty and vulnerability that accompany the open road.”
Anne Mustoe from her book: Lone Traveller: One Woman, Two Wheels and the World
Anne Mustoe was born on May 24, 1933. She died in 2009, still touring at age 76, in Aleppo, Syria. “When she resolved to cycle round the world, Mustoe was 54, somewhat overweight and unfit, and without any idea of how to mend a puncture. She had not ridden a bike for 30 years, wobbled when she tried again, and she hated camping, picnics and discomfort.”
She gives us the confidence to think that we can do this too. We love touring because we get to spend most days outside, with lots of fresh air and it is the best form of transportation for sight seeing. One cycles through places at a perfect pace to take it all in, but fast enough to cover quite a bit of territory in a day, or week, or month.
Ann loves reading cycle blogs and books about other travellers adventures cycle touring.
HERE IS THE PLAN FOR THE TRIP
This is our fourth European cycle tour and it still surprises us how much planning and time the packing for a bike tour takes.
Thanks to other bloggers’ reports, (Andersons, Grampies, Tricia Graham and others) we have researched and planned an itinerary, but are open to change as we have no bookings. From Paris we traverse France to Bordeaux, then along the coast to the Spanish border and continue to San Sebastian and Bilbao. We plan to train from Bilbao to Salamanca and then cycle across Portugual to Coimbra and the coast. From there, depending on the weather and temperatures, we will go north to Porto or south to Lisbon. We will camp as much as possible for the first month and move indoors when the weather gets cooler in October.
So that’s it, we are into our last few days in Montreal. We are moving out of our condo, putting what we don’t need for the trip into storage and making sure that we have everything we do need for life on the road. Steven has secured bike boxes and Ann has found an old suitcase at a second-hand store to transport our camping gear that we will then leave behind at the airport in Paris once the panniers are loaded. Three days left! Yikes! Let’s GO!
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Good luck
Tricia
3 years ago
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