Pyrenees

October 17, 2016October 17, 2016

Planning 2017 Bike Trips

It’s that time of year. Tomorrow the ISO will announce the official 2017 Tour de France route. Rumors are flying on Twitter and Facebook about some of the stages being more than 400 kilometers. Ugh. When will they learn from the Vuelta and the Giro that shorter stages are more competitive? The race is already an endurance test. As a fan, the main reason you should tune in to the route announcement is to begin planning your own adventure–especially booking your hotel.

You can cycle or spectate with an official tour, such as Trek Travel or Thomson Bike Tours. Or you can plan your own adventure. I recommend looking for places where there are starts and finishes close together. The Pyrenees are also terrific: beautiful, many viewing spots within reach, lots of hotels to accommodate teams and fans.

The catalogs for bicycle trips are also arriving. Trek Travel’s beautiful brochure arrived and I spent several happy hours looking at the possibilities. With Trek you know your hotel will be fabulous, the food fantastic and the guides/support reliable, and you pay dearly for this top of the line experience. The Adventure Cycling Association tour catalog also landed in my mailbox this month. These trips are less expensive, generally a bigger time commitment and a bigger physical challenge than your typical bike tour. Two people in my RAGBRAI 2015 group met while riding across the USA with Adventure Cycling Association and they had all positive things to say. You can select from fully supported, Inn to Inn, self contained or van supported rides (and more).

I’ve been dealing with some health issues so my goal is to work my back to the place where I can consider one of these adventures. My ideal trip in 2017 would include the start of the Tour de France in Dusseldorf, Germany in July. What destination is in your future?

August 23, 2014

How to Dine Alone “Adjacent”

Traveling alone is a choice that I make regularly. Sometimes people tell me, “I could never do it.” When I ask why it is sometimes because they cannot bear the thought of dining alone. Experience has taught me that sometimes the best encounters with the place and its people happen because I am seated alone and so I am more accessible and open. And the food tastes the same.

Recently my friend Ray shared with me how he uses opportunities to eat alone as a date with himself. While in France and England I had the chance to enjoy dates with myself on several occasions and it does change the atmosphere in a very positive way. Or travel with a group for a long period and suddenly dining alone, eating just what you want, taking only the amount of time you want to take, leaving before or after dessert and coffee. It is divine.

On the last page of the September 2014 issue of Bon Appetit, actor Jason Segal shares his “Rules for eating out alone:

1. Bring a book. When you have a book You aren’t really alone. It’s more alone adjacent.

2. Don’t be bashful. The other people alone probably feel the same way you do. You’re all “alone together.”

3. Think of it as a date with yourself. Get to know yourself. If you get along with yourself, there is a very good chance you will get to go home with yourself.”

I’ll toast to that!

July 20, 2014

Finally! Picture Postcard France

Watching Le Tour with Thomson Travel staff in hotel Mercure St Lary Soulan.

Since I arrived in Lille, France for the finish of Stage 4, I have been travelling almost non-stop. Today we drove 8 hours and arrived at our hotel in time to see the end of Stage 15 in St Lary Soulan in the Pyrenees. (spoiler alert) What a tragic end for the brave breakaway! Congratulations to the Norwegian phenomenon Alexander Kristoff with his second stage win.

Took my camera and my wallet and walked into the village. At last! The France you see on television when you watch the Tour de France. I walked from one end to the other enjoying the Sunday afternoon summer crowd. I stopped at Nos Tapas du Terroir for a simple and delicious meal of bread, cheese and cured ham thinly sliced. It is the first great quality meal I have enjoyed in over a week.

The hotel Mercure St Lary is positively luxurious after the ski lodge in Albertville. I feel like I can finally truly rest, relax and recover. Tomorrow is a rest day for the Tour cyclists. All of the Thomson cyclists will be arriving (something like 63!) and they have a “warm up” ride of either 38 or 58 km with some uphill. So glad to be a VIP spectator. Jacinta and Jordi will be rolling in by lunch time with a new group of spectators. I already miss my Australian and American friends from the Alps and I look forward to making new friends.

The best part of a rest day is there is nothing pressing to do–well, some laundry. I have put in a request for a massage in the afternoon. I will do some more exploring on foot. Mostly I will let my molecules catch up with one another.

November 9, 2013

Planning My Tour de France 2014 Adventure

Not sure if it is the caffeine (and sugar) I consumed at lunch or the sheer thrill of booking two legs of my Tour de France Adventure earlier today. I am stoked. I put a $100 deposit with Thomson Bike Tours so they would send me an announcement about their spectator tours as soon as they came available.

I received the email this morning and already booked two tours! I previously determined that mountain stages are easier to view with help from a tour company. I learned on October 23 that le Tour 2014 has 3 mountain ranges! I looked at the tour operators sanctioned by the Tour de France and zeroed in on Trek Tours and Thomson Bike Tours as they are English speaking.

Thomson especially offers more for spectators in the mountains. This morning I spent some time looking at the itineraries of the Alps trip and the Pyrenees and Paris trip. The Alps trip offers better access to 3 mountain stages, but substitutes site-seeing instead of Stage 12. They organize it so we will stay every night in Albertville and then transport us to the various stages. I can spend my travel energy on le Tour, not shifting hotels. I weighed not viewing the start or finish of Stage 12 with the upside of a tour operator worrying about the details for me and pressed “Book this Trip”.

The second trip is longer and tackles more challenging logistics. It offers 5 nights in St Lary and 2 nights in Paris. There is another trade-off: travelling to Paris instead of viewing the 20th stage, the time trial. By this time I will have been travelling for a month and I anticipate appreciating anyone who is willing to sort out my details.

I have not gone on organized tours very often. It can be challenging moving about with a group of people (any number greater than 4). Yet there is also built in camaraderie and professional guides offer greater knowledge and access.

I also plan to start le Tour with Trek Tours. This is a trip for cyclists, not spectators. For this trip (not yet published), I am improving my cycling ability and endurance. I am purposefully planning it for the start of my adventure when my energy level will be at the highest level (and before the mountains). I am so excited about riding from Cambridge to London that I want to jump up and down.

One of the great benefits of planning your own travel is that it increases your overall enthusiasm and anticipation for the adventure. I will be traveling on my own until I get to Yorkshire, and then again when I leave Trek Tours (probably in Reims). I have to sort out hotels, and transportation between towns (I am not worried about food in France!) until the first rest day on July 15, about 2 weeks into my trip.

The good news is that my friends the Watson-Lovells will be coming from their Germany adventure to join me for one or two days during that period. Brian is very good at travel planning, so it is good to have someone to consult for part of that on-my-own section.

I also have a couple of other gaps that I will need to sort out lodging and/or transportation. Then I will stop planning the details because I want to leave room for the spontaneous delights of the unexpected.