European Adventure

[Dan_seed]

Well the time for the big adventure is now upon us! Just finishing work and my mind is already on the road!

What’s the plan?
Laura and I will be heading in to Europe for a 6 week tour on the bike. No fixed route but with some roads and destinations in mind with the goal to get to Turkey and then to turn back west via a totally different route!
We have spent quite some time planning this and only final loading up is left before getting on the road towards Folkestone tomorrow morning.
We will be camping as we go with nights in hotels/guesthouses/hostels only really reserved for when we need to charge up cameras and grab a real shower!

Rough route:
France
Italy
Slovenia
Croatia
Bosnia and Heregovina
Montenegro
Albania
Macedonia
Bulgaria
Turkey
Back to Bulgaria
Romania
Hungary
Slovakia
Poland
Czech Republic
Germany
Lumembourg
Fance
Back home to the Midlands

Biggest debate for the initial route is if we should head into Paris to catch the end of the Tour De France and a friend who is about to complete the Tour the Day Before having raised money for Cure Lukemia (www.dougstourdefrance.com).

We aim to keep a bit of a blog going here, adding pictures and videos where we can. Any help and advice with any recommendations of where to head for and camp would be gratefully received.

 

[sagalout]

6 weeks? You jammy git! Sounds like an awesome trip!

You should definitely try and take Paris in - Tour De France atmosphere is amazing!

 

[transalper44]

Would be very interest in hearing about your trip as I'm hoping to do a similar one next year. Take it you'll be keeping a note of your route throughout. Look forward to hearing and seeing photo's of the trip.
Have a safe and exciting time.

 

[MattB]

Hi Dan
did this trip last year and it was great, the coast road along croatia is fab, didn't enjoy albania that much though.
We found hotels in slovinia, romania, slovakia, poland for under 20euro some as little as 12 inc breakfast. have fun

 

[Dan_seed]

Greetings from France!

We have had a couple of days now and they have been very different!

Day1: Ride from home to folkestone to catch the tunnel. Having heard reports that getting to the tunnel was very difficult due to operation stack we set off early and it was a good job we did. The traffic down the A20 was crazy. Just very glad we were on a bike as this allowed us to filter through a lot of the traffic! Wasn't too happy filtering though with the loaded bike and with the road not being that wide! We finally arrived at the terminal to find there was a 60 mins delay. Time for a brew and a Sarnie before getting in line with 4 other bikes. Great to chat with the othe bikers and their other halfs to exchange travel stories and plans.
Once on the other side we decided we would be heading to Paris to catch up with some great friends and also to catch the Tour de France on its last day into the city. We stuck to the motorway paying the tolls to allow us to get there before night fall.
We checked in to a campsite we had used before in Maisons Lafitte. A pizza and a bottle or red finished the day off!

I have some pics loaded on Flickr but am struggling to grab the link on an iPad. Any tips?

 

[Daxaar]

I have some pics loaded on Flickr but am struggling to grab the link on an iPad. Any tips?

Tap and hold your finger on the address on Flickr and a little menu should open for Copy/Paste.

Looking forward to the next instalment.

 

[Zx9man]

if you need help I could run out meet up with you and help you lucky bugger

 

[Dan_seed]

 

[Dan_seed]

Day 1 Photos!

 

[Dan_seed]

Day 2-a day in Paris

Today was a day all about cycling! The last stage of the Tour de France comes to Paris and we would also have the opportunity to meet up with Doug who completed "The Tour the Day Before" on Saturday. We had the chance to listen to his stories of 3 weeks grueling cycling, throughout France, the Pyranees and the Alps. He told us that he wouldn't recommend it, but the £64,000 that he raised for Cure Lukemia made it all worth while.
We then spent the majority of the time watching the Tour, away from the rain in the comfort of Doug's hotel, together with his teammates and friends - a real honour. We did make a dash across Paris, under the Eiffel Tower, to see the tour come into town. I would I have a cracking video to show you, if only I'd hit the start button!!
A late night ensued, spending far too much on food and drink before heading back on the train to our luxury campsite.

All in all a very surreal but fantastic day!

 

[Dan_seed]

Day 3 - back on the bike fighting a crosswind!

Following a late night (and with Lou nursing a hangover!), a late start was in order. We then rushed to get off the campsite before the 11am checkout and decided to head to Versailles for a morning coffee and some route planning for the day.
From here we headed to Fontainebleau, with the Sat Nav set to avoid motorways and A roads. This turned out to be a mistake as it seemed to take forever to cover the short distance and the roads weren't even entertaining.
Once in Fontainebleau we went in search of some lunch (and a hangover cure), without having to stray too far from the loaded bike. This resulted in a trip to a strange Chinese cafe, and although not the cheapest in the world, very good food.
It was at this point we decided we needed to start watching how much we were spending on food as we seemed to stop at a cafe every time we stopped, which soon started to add up.
We continued the journey towards Sens and then onto Joigny. Here we found a brilliant municipal campsite (camping d'epizy) only 13 euros a night. Highly recommended to anyone traveling in the area, a great welcome from the hosts and fab showers! After a cheap home cooked meal we took a short walk into the historic town, only to ponder once again, where is everybody??!!

Stats so far:
Total mileage (on the bike) 901km
Total moving time (on the bike) 12hrs 17 sec

 

[Dan_seed]

 

[Rocketman]

Loving it

 

[rjsmith26]

Looking forward to this one

 

[Dan_seed]

Day 4 - A cracking day in Burgundy!

Stats:
Today's Distance: 302.4km
Today's moving time: 4hr 35min

This morning started with a cuppa and breakfast at the campsite, with more route planning based on local wine map leaflet! Not really what the area has to hold we expected a long day in the saddle with not much to see. How wrong could we be!
The roads were fantastic with some very fast flowing twisties, but with views which were not mountainous but were still very picturesque. This is definitely an area we would visit again.
We picked a route that went from Joigny through to Avallon with a coffee stop in Quarre-Les-Tombes (a beautiful French town, where we had unfortunately just missed the market. Lucky really as we haven't got any spare space on the bike for much more!) and continuing south to Chateau Chinon. Then heading east for Chalon-sur-Saone, stopping on route for a brew and home made buttie in a wooded layby.
The roads kept flowing and we eventually found ourselves in Lon's-le-Saunier, which looks like quite a big town but we headed on through to make sure we found a campsite. Luckily we found a great campsite www.camping-majorie.com, spacious plots and a good shower block.
After another home cooked tea, we're sheltering in the tent from the showers, route planning for tomorrow's adventure into the Alps.

 

[Dan_seed]

Day 4 pics.

 

[Dan_seed]

Day 5 - a wet introduction to the Alps.

We awoke at the campsite having been rained on for most of the night. It looked cloudy but that it might clear. This was not the case and only half an hour into the days ride we were donning the waterproofs.

Before we head for the start of the "Route des Grande Alpes" we hit the hills on the way to Geneva. This got us warmed up for the hairpins that were in abundance later in the day.

Once over this initial set of hills we dropped down into Switzerland for a very brief visit passing CERN along the way. Laura being a science geek thought this was rather exciting! We then dropped back in to France in search of lunch before heading into the hills again. We dropped into a nice little cafe serving turkey as their "Plat du Jour" this went down a treat and set us up for what was to be a long ride in the afternoon.

We soon started with the climb and we were going over cols I had seen on the Tour de France. We head for Morzine and Les Gets and then to Col de la Colombiere. This was awesome even if the rain was doing its best to soak us through! The next task was to find a suitable campsite to rest our heads for the evening! This proved more difficult than we imagined. The first we stumbled upon was rather expensive and we decided to give the karaoke a miss. We continued on to the next site which was packed. The next sign we spotted looked promising. It spoke of a campsite with chalets.....sounds great! We head off the main road following the signs the "road" soon disintegrated into a loose slate covered track. I thought this is the time to put my off road training to the test.......until we got to the water crossing! Time to turn around and head back to the main road and continue our search!

We followed the route as planned and eventually dropped into Beaufort where a municipal campsite was found. Still raining the priority was to get the tarp up for a bit of shelter and so Lou could put a brew on whilst I got the tent up!

A rather long day in the end but with some fantastic riding and views to match!

Stats today:
316km with a moving time of 6hrs38mins.

 

[Dan_seed]

Day 5 pics.

 

[PeterS]

Message from home

Keep the messages and pictures coming, we are loving them all.

 

[boatman]

Enjoying your trip report