Fantasy Touring

pneumatic

Given that we are currently under half a metre of snow here, I am reduced to daydreaming with maps, rather than actually riding my bike.

Last night, I came up with a cracker but I'm not sure what to call it: :?

Take the North Sea Route from London to Shetland, ferry to Bergen and back down to Rotterdam; then take the Rhine cycle route to its source at Andermatt; then ride along the valley to Martigny, over to Chamonix and take the Route des Grandes Alpes to Nice.

I reckon it is about 8000km. If I left on 1 June and reached Nice on 30 September, I'd get the best of the weather everywhere on route.

I put it to the other Pneumatics. :shock:

It'll never happen!

but at least I had a happy couple of hours dreaming about it.

GyatsoLa

Sounds a great one.

I was daydreaming even more this weekend while snowed in, I came up with two fantasy routes. One I call '26 in 30, a weird convoluted route to take in all 26 counties of Ireland in 30 days. The other I call my French Sawday ride - trying to link up a good route to include all the delightful looking B&B's and Guesthouses in the Alasdair Sawdays Guide to French guesthouses and B&B's I got for my birthday...

MichaelW

I did Hague to Bergen this July/Sept. I met lots of riders doing it the other way. I'm pretty sure I did it the better direction, the scenery gets gradually more interesting, hillier and harder and less familiar. There is an awful lot of dead-straight concrete road alongside dykes.

Hoopdriver

No fantasy - just a golden memory: Many years ago I did a 10,000 mile solo trek around Australia - nine months on the road, staying in mining camps, Aboriginal communities, million-acre cattle stations, and camped alone in one huge empty vastness of spinifex after another. I still think back on those long sunny and oh-so-utterly-free days with huge longing even after all this time.

Best thing I ever did.

Dr U Idh

I don't think the Shetland-Bergen ferry runs anymore.





You could always kayak across?

psmiffy

I dreamed last night that I cycled down to the med from here - then up to the tip of Denmark and across Sweden and Finland and then back across most of western Europe

MichaelW

How about an 'Endless Spring" ride from Greece to the Arctic Circle, maybe via Italy, perhaps the Balkans, then up the Alps, across Germany and Denmark to Scandinavia.
Followed by a Follow the Fall down to S Portugal or Spain.

pneumatic

Dr U Idh wrote:

I don't think the Shetland-Bergen ferry runs anymore.

Damn it! That puts the lid on my "Norse to Nice" tour, then.

At least I have an excuse!