Tjs recovery ride 5. The low countries and France

I have had my R&R in Amsterdam stsying with my sis and hubby

Ive plucked up the courage to head south. Bilbao is the destination. Another 5 weeks riding

I can get a ferry from there back to the uk

Aiming to set off again on Tuesday

Woohoo, part 5.

Woohoo, part 5.

Exactly.  It also appears to be somewhat of a long way and weather is set to be rather toasty next week

Fancy joining us in Les Gets at the end of August?

Arrrgghhhh

😀

Wow, that is a long stretch! Love it TJ, looking forward to the updates.

Ace!
Enjoy the ride tj, and thanks for this. I’m really enjoying the updates! (Mainly as I’m jealous, I can live vicariously!)

Bonne voyage!
(Not sure that’s spelt right)
I am quite jealous I have always wanted to cycle to Spain.
May be I will pluck up courage.

I haven’t tracked miles on this ride but i must have done 1500 or more. Bilbao is another 1100.

Im going to head down the coastline roughly. Eurovelo has a coastal route marked. The coast should be cooler as well.

Mrs Boblo and I did that Eurovelo 1 a couple of years ago on the tandem.

It’s not hilly.

It’ll be hot.

It’s very family friendly; lots of cycle paths.

It’s quite near (aka ‘in the middle’) of a lot of the recent fires.

It goes through a nudist beach so that might suit you 😊

South of Hendaye ‘the corniche’ is really beautiful.

Enjoy.

Safe trip Teej. I’ve just put Amsterdam > Bilbao (cycling) into googly-maps, and it routes you through Paris 😂 Coastal route sounds a safer bet.

Coastline? Presumably that means heading towards Normandy then cutting across to the Atlantic coast of France?

@molgrips That’s it. Eurovelo 1 goes from Roscoff to Hendaye or Brittany to Spanish border if you prefer. 👍

Eurovelo has a coastal route marked. The coast should be cooler as well

It was v hilly through the Basque Country.

It goes through a nudist beach so that might suit you 😊

It appeared that *all* the beaches we visited on North coast were pretty free for all… 😳

a nudist beach

were pretty

Not often you hear those phrases together

You should go n see Chipps

a nudist beach

were pretty

You should go n see Chipps

That took a dark turn

Bonne chance et bonne courage

The Dutch do beach life and bars on the sand quite well (cycle paths taken for granted). About a mile S. of Europoort it becomes sand dunes and holiday places, flat but pretty and chilled with bars and beaches. San Sebastian to Santander was great (if hilly) when I rode it a long time ago as a student. Bit in between has ample wine and croissants. Enjoy the summer beach life 🏝️
Sounds a great plan.

There can’t be any complaints about hills for a while, but I predict they will be replaced by complaints about wind!

complaints about wind!

ample wine and croissants

Looking highly likely 🙂

Have I missed a section ?. It was Wales, now its suddenly mainland Europe 😕

Tjs recovery ride part 4. Im in England heading for Hull.

Have I missed a section ?

You will get to catch up when then make the budget Brit-film on Netflix of the journey.

Excellent. A handy phrase for you.

Je voudrais donner un coup de pied à votre chien dans la tête s’il vous plaît
👍

donner

Erm, saucisson surely? No one ever heard of a kebab dog

🙄🤣

Je voudrais une tranche de ton cochon d’inde

Good luck! I’m inspired by your travels and it got me to researching routes and ferries etc. One thing I noticed when I had a brief look at the price of Bilbao to Portsmouth ferries this September is that there looks to be no bookings available for cycle passengers. I hope I’m wrong or you’ve already got a ticket because that might be a nasty sting in the tail of a long journey.

If that’s the case, I can highly recommend European train travel, although you need to check bike availability before rocking up at the station.

There is a ferry from Santander to uk as well. I did spot that with Bilbao

Bear in mind the forest fires that have devastated areas of Gascony, particularly in the Arcachon area. We had to upsticks, middle of the night in our van from somewhere near Bazas when we smelt the approaching forest fires. This was two weeks ago.

YAY! Have been waiting on your next episode of travels TJ. Just wanted to come on and say how much I have enjoyed the previous threads (and putting faces to STWers). Happy travels, enjoy the continent

One thing I noticed when I had a brief look at the price of Bilbao to Portsmouth ferries this September is that there looks to be no bookings available for cycle passengers.

We have just been on Santander/Plymouth ferry.
You can’t currently book as pedestrian only. You can phone up or turn up as cyclist. One couple took bikes on their annual whale watching trip – so as not to pay for car – and did the return journey back to back just buy wheeling bikes on, off, back on and then off…

All packed up for the off. Totally shitting myself. Hopefully it passes once im turning the pedals

Heading for the coast this moning then down the coastal route

Best of luck TJ, i’m sure you’ll have an awesome time.

Totally shitting myself

That’s partly why we love this thread. If you had been ‘stoked’ it would be zero fun.   Hope the wind is behind you all day

Bon voyage, the gravity of Belgian beer and frites may prove hard to escape

This sounds brilliant, apart from the camping bits – I like a nice comfortable B&B, me. Riding through Belgium is lovely, worth considering a trip to one of the WWII cemeteries on your way through – an awesome and sobering sight. We had a lovely trip round there staying int Ghent, Bruges and Ypres – all lovely, each in a different way. If you can overnight in Ypres and catch the Menin Gate ceremony at 8pm then I’d strongly suggest trying to do that, it’s quite overwhelming (they close the main road through while they play The Last Post. I fill up whenever I hear that so how I didn’t just collapse in a bucket of tears during the ceremony, I have no idea)