Professional Cycling

There are a lot of ways to explore countries by bicycle, one of the most popular ones is watching the tour the France and let al the professionals ride you through the country. Commentators on television will tell you everything about Cycling, the region, the food and drinks and all to other interesting stuff, you get to see a lot of people along the roads and with a little imagination their cheering for you as well.

that’s the easy way, sit in your arm chair and eat lots of food… you’ll probably get fat, got no condition after the 3 weeks of touring and probably no sun-taint or muscles as well.

It’s better to go touring yourself, you can follow in the tracks of the tour riders and try to ride as much of the tracks as possible from the official tour, ignoring all the highways that had to be shut down for the competition of course, and choosing the more accommodating inland routes in-exchange.

sleep in hotels and use the credit-card for money, maybe ask the wife to follow with the kids in a car and have an whole array of spare-parts on the roof. or…. bring your own little cart which you can hook up behind the rear wheel and cycle yourself, your clothing and spare parts totally self-dependent through anywhere you want to go.

To give you some ideas of cycling routes in Europe, or to help you on the way, here is a link to the European cyclists federation.

try the cycling routes in the middle first, so northern Italy and southern France, good weather, nice people and lots of place to stay.

have fun

To give some examples of exceptional riding, here are some you-tube videos showing what it means to be a professional cyclist.

evade colleagues….

Some advice for exploring more of the you-tube movies, make sure you’re finished with what ever you where doing before entering the site… you wont get back to what you were doing anytime soon.

And when you start cycling, always bring your helmet, in most countries a cycling helmet is mandatory anyway.

A few good spots to see lots of cycling in real life are the local competitions of course, but if you get the chance to go to Europe and visit the alps or any other western European mountain range, you’ll meet a lot of cyclists and even some professional cyclists.

Most of the professionals have houses in france, northern Italy or spain. and if they’re not active they’re running a hostel or restaurant where you can gape at old cycling pictures or listen to stories from the past.

I went in the off season to one of the most beautifull cycling places in europe (Briancon) and had a hard time not encountering fellow cyclists that were trying to beat me reaching the top of the mountain…. The amount of cols that are ridden in the tour each year are huge, the sun is always shining and places to stay are plenty.