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Cycling in Aoteoroa – New Zealand

13 Jan

We are leaving the Canadian winter behind for a long awaited trip to the deep South Pacific, a part of the world not seen by Tara, and not by George in 45 years(!). This will be a different adventure from cycling in Europe where bike paths and trails parallel to highways are relatively common. For one, everyone rides and drives on the left side of the road. Two, the cycling infrastructure has not progressed as it has in Europe, probably because the density of people is much less in New Zealand, and Three (?). But from our research, they are busy catching up. We will be staying for 3, 4, and 5 nights in places along the route and taking day trips out and back, rather than 2 or 3 nights most commonly on our previous rides. There are 23 ‘Great Rides’ identified across the country many of which are old rail trails and many others which are gravel pathways. We will be on several of these on our planned route, which you can see above. Also we take several ferries as this is an island nation after all. With our bike we can ride on gravel as well as tarmac (kiwi word) and where we are on smaller roadways (most of the time) there isn’t likely to be much traffic.

New Zealand is bigger than we initially thought, from a ‘cycling the whole thing’ perspective. We will only be on the northern half of the north island, and even then will be using a train, and a bus, and a longish ferry (straight lines on the map) to help cover the territory. We essentially do a loop east and south of Auckland where we begin, and then a north loop up to the Bay of Islands. We are fortunate to have planned in visits with NZ friends and Calgary friends as part of the north loop.

On Saturday the 17th of January we fly to Honolulu direct from Calgary, overnighting only, before flying onward to Auckland over the dateline into Monday. This breaks up what would otherwise be a 14 hour flight, and that’s only from Vancouver. Once we are finished our seven weeks of cycling and return to Auckland, we head to Fiji for a week of rest (phew!) on the way back to Honolulu, and home. We trust that our new bike cases will be waiting for us in Auckland when we get there. Now I have trackers on the bike as well as each piece of luggage so I will be watching… (see the last blog entry and images below)

From this old single large case…
To these two stylish and smaller cases

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Touring Burgundy

14 May
La route beginning and ending in Lyon

We are in London currently, to visit Erika and help with a few light renos left over from when she moved in last year. The weather has been sunny and warm, uncharacteristically so, and looks to be about the same in Bourgogne (Burgundy) when we fly to Lyon tomorrow. After getting settled, looking around Lyon and building the bike we will ride straight north. This year’s route follows many established bike routes, either Eurovelo or national trails. Most of these are either river (Saône and Loire) or canal side so not a lot of climbing, but it promises to be very picturesque. We essentially do a 900km counter-clockwise loop around the Parc naturel régional du Morvan, which is slightly mountainous, so the hills are always close by if we’re feeling strong. This region is, of course, famous for its wines such as Beaujolais and Chablis so we will have good accompaniment at dinner for the fine food of the region … and mustard, lots of mustard from Dijon. Allons y!

We spent 4 lovely days in London replacing 5 door handles and doing paint touch ups. Erika’s door handles had been performing poorly…once she was locked in her bedroom and had to find an escape. We also attended the musical Benjamin Button, a mother’s and father’s day outing from our daughters. There was time for a few riverside walks/runs as well around Woolich and Greenwich and a Thames clipper ride between those 2 spots. While we were in London we stored our bike at Heathrow, at a cost, but much easier than hauling it to Erika’s on the tube.

Sunset on the Thames path outside Erika’s flat
A cool glass on a warm day
Meandering around Greenwich

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Det er på tide (It’s About Time)

18 Jun

Fear not, we’re not about to write this trip’s blog entries in Danish but it’s a clue to where we are going. Denmark is not only the land of my family (George) but it has a reputation for being a cycling paradise in terms of the infrastructure. I am blessed to have a huge swath of lovely cousins in Denmark and it’s time again to visit rather than merely keep in touch with Facebook. We have been warned about the fickle Danish summer by my cousins, and also a long time ago by another cycling couple to “only cycle south of the Loire”. Well here we go anyway, rain jackets onboard. The route is in a big loop going out to both west and east coasts and encompassing as many cousins, friends, and ferries as possible. Vi ses!!

Let’s Do This But Bigger

6 Jun

Yay! In a few hours we go to the airport and start a new cycling adventure. While in the past we have gone for as long as 3 and a half weeks, this will be 6 weeks. It comes courtesy of Tara’s almost retirement giving us the latitude to go for longer.

This will be a four country tour – Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and then a couple of days with Erika in England on the way home. We fly in to Venice while actually staying in Mestre just on the mainland. The routes go clockwise and sticking mostly to the coast and going as far south as Split. From there we take a ferry back to Italy at Ancona and proceed north up the coast to Mestre again. I am a bit nervous because there are so many hotel bookings and anything could throw us off schedule. However we are mostly staying 2-3 nights at a time so there is some flexibility in case we lose a day and have to catch up. Not so easy on a bike as opposed to a car though!

Here is the overall route, starting at Mestre and going east

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Let’s Try This Again

22 Aug

After two years of delay because of you-know-what we are going on the road in Europe once again with the tandem. In the meantime we did go to the West Coast in 2020 of course, and for a few rides in the Okanagan last summer, mais ce n’est pas la même chose! This trip, or something like it, was planned for 2020 but going south from Bordeaux and touching down briefly in Spain to rendezvous with Margo and Dean. They finally went home so no rendezvous, and we decided on a different direction.

We are flying direct to Paris on a Westjet 787, then taking the TGV to Bordeaux soon after. After settling in, building the bike, and investigating the sights of Bordeaux we go north alongside the Gironde river to begin la grande aventure. We cycle in roughly a counter-clockwise loop in 11 stages over 28 days. There will be many additional rides including a couple of island visits. But first, it’s off to pack…

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Strange Days Indeed

5 Sep

This is not France, but it is our annual tandem bike trip nonetheless. We’ll hope for Aquitaine next year but in the meantime let’s see some Canada. There’s not that much territory in this vast country that meets our ideals for a cycling holiday. Requirements like guaranteed warm/hot and dry weather, good selection of cafés and restaurants every 10km or so, and drivers who actually give you some space on the road.  However, with a small change of mindset we think what we have planned will be just fine. There are also advantages such as no bike assembly/disassembly, passports, air travel, foreign currency, and new cell phone carriers to deal with. So, with masks in hand, off we go.

We are cycling in a loop up the Sunshine Coast from Horseshoe Bay, across to Vancouver Island and south along the east coast with multiple excursions to some of the Gulf Islands. Here is a map of the route.

2019 The Rhine (mostly) Route

15 Jun

Hello everyone from Le Grand Hotel in Strasbourg France where we are about to embark on another tandem bike tour. This time we are not in Italy – crazy right? We start here and go clockwise in a loop which includes the black forest, the Danube, Lake Konstanz, follows the Rhine to Basel, and then tours Alsace Lorraine on the way back to Strasbourg. Phew!

Today we flew Westjet’s 787 Dreamliner direct to Paris and then hopped on the high speed train (TGV) to arrive 200m from our hotel. This is a very good thing when you are lugging 32kg of bike in a box plus everything that goes with it. It was a nice flight on the new aircraft with those sexy slender carbon fibre wings waving at the moon.

We went for a walk through the maze of pedestrian streets which begin right by our hotel. We had to try and stay awake besides needing some supper and wanting to see a bit of Strasbourg.

The streets were busy with tourists and locals out for their evening stroll, as well as countless (not kidding) bike meal delivery dudes zipping around the pedestrians. We ate at a crêperie, one of our go to favourite type of restaurants. Hmm, will have to actually cycle in Brittany some day… Here are a few of the things we saw.

Riviera Dei Fiori 2018

15 Jun

We’re finally on vacation again and headed to Genova for a cruise up and down the Italian Riviera from the French border to the Cinque Terre and slightly beyond. Here’s what it looks like below. We start in Genova in the middle and then go east and come back part way to Lavagna. From Lavagna we take the train to Ventimiglia (that’s the straight line). A little look into Monaco for a day and then we go up the coast back towards Genova. That’s three weeks in a nutshell!

riviera2018

2017 – Catania May 22/23

22 May

We made it to Catania without any problems with flights or luggage, a smooth trip via Gatwick. We arrived in the evening so other than getting to the hotel near the stazione centrale via the local bus and finding some supper we headed to bed after a long trip.

Today we spent the morning visiting some of the sights on foot and on the tourist train. We were able to climb up into the dome of a church for a great view of the city, experience the sounds and smells of the daily fish market and attend the Strauss opera Salome in the famous Bellini opera house.  We also put together the tandem so that we’re ready to ride tomorrow.

For supper we had some delicious pasta dishes, mine with sautéed eggplant (alla Norma) and George’s with gamberetti (small shrimp)  and pistachios. For dolci we ordered some mini canoli but they came with pistachios sprinkled on top so I had to pass.  Sicily is justifiably famous for it’s canoli.

Catania seems to be a bit of a gritty city. Sidewalks, if there are any, are narrow and full of holes and there’s lots of garbage strewn about. The roads also are quite potholed and we’ve noticed more cobbled roads than in other parts of Italy. I make a point of not looking or walking in places where I suspect there are rats. Hopefully things will improve outside of the city. Our hotel is just fine though.

About to enter Il Teatro Massimo di Bellini to see Salome
Tuna anyone?
The piazza duomo taken from the cupola of chiesa Sant’Agata.
Etna dominates from under the cloudy halo.
That’s us! In front of the Teatro Massimo Bellini.
The pescheria area where fish are as fresh as can be.

2016 – Rientro in Italia

18 Jun

We are in the airport in Frankfurt enroute to Verona so I thought I’d get this year’s blog started. We are very excited to be on the bikes again with our tandem companions Katharine and Rob. This year we are doing a counter clockwise (lefty-loosey…) loop of the Veneto starting and ending in Verona. Here is an image of the route and a link to the google map. Ciao a tutti!

image
2016 Veneto Cycling Route
https://goo.gl/maps/wG5JTH5QM1R2

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