The Route

February 25, 2023

On some of our past tours we have been very clear about where we intend to go, and have mapped out every step of the way. This may still be our preferred way of doing it, and as I write this we still have time to make some decisions, blow up some maps, and download some tracks. But we have been struck by a strange lack of motivation for doing that. It's not some bold new philosophy of devil may care heading off into the void, so maybe it's just laziness?

Of course, it's not as if we have no idea of what is out there. The way has been blazed quite recently by several Cycleblaze journalists.

2013 Tricia Graham The Tractors between London and Lisbon

2019 Brent Irvine: Some More Portugal: Not Just Kicking the Tires (Tour 18)

2019 Scott and Rachael Anderson : Vuelta a Iberia

2021 Scott and Pat Fenwick: (We have their Portugal tracks).

2021 Jacquie Gaudet: Escaping the Rain--In Spain

2022 Ann and Steve Maher-Weary: More Dreaming - Lisbon to Barcelona

2022 Kathleen and Keith Classen: Poking Around Europe 7.0 Portugal and Spain

Most often our Cycleblazers could be found sticking to the coastlines of Portugal and Spain. However the Andersons did delve a little deeper:

The Classen's recent tour looked a lot like this:

The Classens on the southern coast of mostly Portugal

We got together last week with the Classens, and as always happens, had a grand three hour chat. But we are not sure we came to any definite route decisions. The Classens did pass us the latest Portugal/Spain map, which is always a great help. They also gifted us two books on Pedaling in Portugal, by Huw Thomas. Below we see the books, one of which is being hopefully clutched by Keith before leaving on their trip:

Keith clutches the book. The discoloured thumb is from an attack by a rat trap!

Although these books look great, they are actually mostly comprised of text description of the route - like "climb gently until you reach the roundabout by the yellow post office, and turn right". We find there is no way to actually follow something like that while riding. The same is true for the text from our various bloggers. That's where the gpx files are invaluable. Fortunately there is gpx for the books, and the routes look like this:

Pedal Portugal circle routes - in the Algarve and Alentejo

We saw the Classens off just as a hail storm was beginning. We hoped they were still fairly tough from their recent trip.

The Classens head off, after a so enjoyable three hours of chatting!

We will try to read and learn from the bloggers that have come before us. Specifically, we will try to see where they have struck off to avoid bad cycling conditions. Generally speaking, they and we follow the "official" Eurovelo routes.

We have three major Eurovelo (EV) routes in Portugal and Spain. There is EV8, the Mediterranean, EV1, the Atlantic, and EV3, The Pilgrims Route. These look like this:

Finally we realize that Spain and Portugal (and France and the rest of Europe) are crisscrossed by pilgrimage routes. All roads lead to Rome, of course, but those that don't lead to Santiago de Compostella in the northwest corner of Spain. There are routes to Santiago from France through northern Spain, from Portugal, going north along the coast, and from Barcelona, passing by the Pyrenees. Bike routes, especially EV 1, loosely correspond to these pilgrimage foot routes. We may end up on some of them in addition to EV 1.

Many roads lead to Santiago, but they may also take us other places we need to go.The map is also very helpful, because it clearly shows the main towns of the Iberian Peninsula..

Of course there are many other known and not so known regional routes. We are looking at those too. Right now our heads are spinning more than our wheels. But tune in next for the exact tracks we'll use, and how we decided on them, assuming we have been able to reach any decisions. Or maybe we will still be drifting aimlessly by the next page, or even when we start pedalling to ... somewhere!

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Jacquie GaudetThere’s something to be said for just drifting. We did that on our first cycling trip in Europe, buying Michelin local maps as we went along, deciding each day which direction to head off. When we ran out of time, we took the train back to Paris and our flight home.
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Jacquie GaudetWe consider that every tour but are too OCD to ever follow through.
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1 year ago

Jacquie GaudetTo Steve Miller/GrampiesI rather like doing it that way but since I no longer have a hard limit on vacation days, I need to work out a proposed tour in order to figure out my flights, and then I find I follow it. For that first tour, in 1992, we had to wait until we got there to buy the maps, and the only thing we really knew was that we could take our bikes on French trains.
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1 year ago

Janice BranhamThanks for the great roundup of references on where to ride Steve. We'll make our first visit to Spain this fall and don't know what we don't know.
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Janice BranhamIt really is great to be able to have a community to offer support and guidance, isn't it?
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1 year ago

Scott AndersonTo Janice BranhamSo you’re still thinking of Spain this fall, are you? We are too of course, and have already bought our flight to Bilbao. Let us know if you’d like an overview map of the planned route and timeframe.
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1 year ago

Janice BranhamTo Scott AndersonYes please!
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1 year ago

Scott AndersonTo Janice BranhamOK. I can’t include an image here, but I’ll email a map and link to the event to you.
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1 year ago