Cycle Touring..

ohh, if we’re waving willymaps around, mudshark… 🙂

Outer Hebrides. If you get the weather (and admittedly it’s a big if), there’s nowhere quite like it. Stunning beaches, amazing wildlife, friendly folk. Not much there but there are a few really nice places to stay scattered about (Langass Lodge….mmmm!). Can also be done on public transport. We got the train to Oban, ferry to South Uist – rode up through the Uists to Harris and then back down to Barra and Vatersay. Ferry back from Castlebay. We did it fairly leisurely – biggest day was about 40 miles or so. Genuinely one of our best holidays ever.

The only thing i’ll say about the outer Hebrides is, you need a bloody good tent.

Edit: So get one and go, its an amazing place 🙂

And midges – lots and lots of midges….

And midges – lots and lots of midges….

Far fewer than the mainland to be fair… mainly because of the constant wind! We went in early May. Had great weather and hardly saw any midges apart from at one spot on Harris.

I have done one short tour by bike (Belgium (Flanders), in winter). Loved it. Would desperately love to go again, even for a long weekend somewhere.

Anyone here toured with kids/babies? Just wondering if it might be a way for me, Mrs North and Baby North to do some extended riding together (well, Baby North in her trailer).

Flanders is very nice for a wee tour. i did one a couple of years ago for my 30th “Beer & Battlefields” Did about 40Km a day. from Cheshire you could drive to Hull, park up and go over with just your bikes, we did 😀

Sprocket jockey you got any route maps for the What you’ve described??

DougD – Member
Couple of friends and I went from Bastogne up to The Hague via Liege, Maastricht, Arnhem, Apeldoorn and Amersfort. Really nice cycle. Got the Eurostar over to Brussels then the train on to Libramont and started from there.

Weather was great (end of May) and the cycle routes, esp in the Netherlands, were incredible.

Accomodation wasn’t overly cheap but there now appears to be a dedicated group called vrienden op de fiets (friends on the bike) that offers cheaper rates so if you’re over that way it may be worth checking out

About ‘Vrienden op de Fiets’:

Last week I got my copy of the latest edition of their yearly guide. It contains over 4500 addresses of hosts where cyclists can stay for 19 euro a night. Mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium and the very western part of Germany. Absolutely worth a try if cycling there.
Their site:
http://www.vriendenopdefiets.nl

I would recommend the Ardennes. Great cycling and due to the variety of countries there you get a good range of hotels and foods. I usually do it via Eurostar and the local Belgain trains. The onward journey from Brussels used to be free but I’m not not sure if it still is.

With regards to the onward travel from Brussels, we got our tickets to “any Belgian station” on the Eurostar website. This allowed us to travel anywhere in Belgium within 24hrs of arriving in Brussels – I think some restrictions applied but it didn’t matter to us.

We were going through Houffalize at the same time as there was a big road event on (not the Liege-Bastogne-Liege but something else) still pretty cool though.

Sprocket jockey you got any route maps for the What you’ve described??

Not route maps as such – we pretty much bought a few OS maps and strung out a route on the fly, including lots of beach riding and a fair bit of offroad 🙂

Drop me a mail (in profile) and will happily send you a route description and some pointers.

Cheers