I'm thinking of doing some more bike-related activity next year, i.e travel touring etc and i'm looking for some idea inspiration.

So, whats the best / wierdest holiday / travel / tour / endurance related thing you've done on a bike?

Megavalanche.

C2C (the sustrans one so not particularly technical) in one go through the night.
Excellent ride, assisted by absolutely foul weather and great company.

A dolphin dive

Four week meandering tour of the West coast of Scotland, taking in quite a few islands. All on an ancient Trek, horribly overloaded.

The only tent I could get a hold of was a massive three man palace – must have been five kilos on its own…….

cycled round new zealand with the missus

The first Strathpuffer was pretty surreal

snow roads audax route would be a fair challenge

and the forfar – kinloch rannoch was a fair toughy on fixed

Lands End to John O'Groats 11 days September 2009 (scenic route 935 miles) and all for charity.

Snow roads Audax and the Marmotte make for good challenges.

trail-rat : roughly how much did the NZ trip cost if you dont mind me asking? and how long did you spend there?

Tour de Mont Blanc, Twentyfour12 solo SS or Great Divide trail (some of it! without a map and scaring my wife silly 'cos I got back so late)

9 day race in the Indian Himalayas. Great as you could race the competitive stage then kick back and chat / stop at the Dhaba on the transport stages.

Its an amazing country and I really need to get back there and tour 🙂 Race entry and flight / insurance was not much more than the "gold" entry to the Trans Wales!

SSP

Tame by most standards here but it was my little bit of adventure….

Solo assault on a snowy Walna Scar.

Singlespeedpunk – tell me more. 🙂

Love those pics lowey – looks nuts!

Not really epic at all in distance but this ride over Garburn felt pretty epic at the time

Singlespeedpunk – any websites / links where I can find out more

Done a few big day rides. Cairngorms circular route was pretty good, stretched it out to 100 miles.

Rode from Blair Atholl to my mum's house in Aberlour, Speyside, in Sptember this year. Mainly off road, 82 miles. Got a lift to Aviemore the next day and rode back to Aviemore. Good memories! 🙂

6 weeks cycling around iceland was pretty ace

not a huge ride, but snowdon the other week, just as the storms hit wales was pretty epic in a way…

race wise, gotta be grand raid in switzerland.

C2C in 10hrs or someething like that
tour of the lake district 5 days of about 20m a day – one day included a tour of great gable; honister pass offroad, scarth gap pass, black sail pass, styhead pass!!! in the blistering heat (poor us you might say) but hot was too hot. that was pretty epic – the day of the 4 passes as me and my mates refer to it as haha.

0xym0ron, what is the TDMB like on bikes, i've walked it, and fancy riding it sometime… did you have to carry bikes up to the col de bonhomme?

The classic Lhasa to Kathmandu bike route visiting Everest base Camp – bloomin hard work getting over the Himalayas, lots of swearing and cursing but I definately want to go back there. Cycling in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, MTBing in Morrocco, cycling France to Spain over the Pyrenees, er, cycle to Amsterdam. There's loads of great things to do, no excuses, go and do them! 😀

hungry-monkey – how did you arrange the iceland trip? any websites / links with more info?

Surrey Hills loop taking in tea at the tower AND the stores

rode 70 miles to and 103 miles back from my parents house on my tourer, some off road in a weekend.

16,000ft of climbing

No training.

Crap weather.

My parents live in the peak district.

It hurt.

Lots.

Megavalanche for me. Craziest thing i have ever done on a bike

South Island of New Zealand (length and breadth)

White Rim Trail. I would really recomend this for the scenery, plenty of companies run trips

Article on my trip

2.5 weeks in the rockies going over 3 passae over 12,000 feet. Lots of off road, camping out of panniers

2 weeks in Southern Spain one Easter. Really good trip incluing a days skiing. Lots of touring mainly on road. 2 day rides one on road one off road both mega hilly.

Aviemore to Fortwilliam. Lots of off road for the first few days. i used a book called exploring scottish hill tracks to plan it

Can't beat touring for an adventure

Cycled from Buckinghamshire to Northern Ethiopia with my Girlfriend in 2004/05. About 10000km over 7 months. Great trip.

i went to spain in the summer with a friend. turns out it was too steep and slippy for my mate so he ended walking most ups and downs, while he had to wait for me on the ridable climbs cos i'm unfit. we clocked a nice looking riding, for which we left at about 11am. we'd never ridden it before, and we didn't get back to the car til gone midnight. the only lights we had were the flashes on our cameras. we were lost and i was scared. to compound issues, there was a storm brewing on the coast. we lost the paths and had to basically climb up scree slopes for hours in the dark. i entirely envisioned a helicopter trip. we made it back finally, but it was the most intense (not to mention stupid!) thing i've done on a bike. and i lost my sunglasses too!

My NATS summer solstace ride in the peaks back in about '97.
4am start in Bamford, up to Whinstone Lee Tor for the sunrise, then 70+ miles and 6000ft total climbing before finishing about 8pm. Utterly knackered, but fantastic memories. Must go and find the photos……..

Rob

we used to do a 60 mile ride when I was about 13, riding from home in Middlesbrough out to Rosedale in the middle of the North York Moors and then back home again
been further since then but it's never as epic as when you're a kid

24 hour solo

single speeding up and down a snowy snowdon in november,,,

or going to les gets world cup downhhill in 1999 and spending a week looking after 5 of the uk's top girl DH riders and their bikes, ok Tracey did have a cannondale mechanic, I just looked after her,,

coast to coast, tim woodcock stylee, classic ride

nathan – not a huge amount of planning to be honest… was useful having a contact in iceland who could store our bike bags while we were there (and attempt to sort us out with some ladies just before we left 😉 )

other than that, we'd posted some of our kit ahead (trailer and some luggage) and we posted it back – about £100 each way, but still worked out cheaper than excess baggage (as far as we could work out).

then its just go and find where you want to go and see… we went clockwise, but left the circular route to go to the north west, which is a lot less touristy, but fantastic. got to lake myvatn in the north east, then doubled back and went across the interior (kjoller route), then along the s coast for a bit…

might be worth looking for a local anglo-scandinavian society (york has one). also 'coscan' (might actually be the same thing) although their website seems defunkt. we got a travel grant from coscan of a couple of hundred quid… (we were in our gap years).

any more specific questions i'll do what i can… but can't promise much as it was about 4 years ago!!

some iceland pics

Many during a trip to NZ in 94/95, including 80 mile night ride to East Cape lighthouse only with a petzl head torch (and the company of Clause, if ya watching – Hi!), 3 day excursion around the Marlbro' Sounds and a 3 day epic around the cape of Corramadel via Stoney Bay to Fletchers Bay (though I ended up walking many-a-mile). The Negev Desert is another epic through Palestine/Israel (take ya pick)and nearer home Shap to Osmotherly while on the coast to coast in one day, Ouch!

2 x 24 solos.

I would love to do something really massive like the great divide, but that's a kind of pie in the sky dream really.

Mine was this years holiday, probably not as epic as you guys but it was superb for me!

In June this year i face planted, serious concussion for a few weeks, over 20 stitches around my lip and chin area, and serious nervousness over biking again.

In August i faced my fears, did the Red Downhill at Nevis range, and on a 100mm full bouncer! for me felt immense to get down the route in one piece and it helped me recover my biking fears, also i rode Wolftrax Red and Airs Rock which was also a great experience!!

So i spent a summer at Fort William, probably the best biking trip of the year!

I did the South West Randonnee on the day it got cancelled due to storms – no one else did. It wasn't really epic – it just felt it to me due to wind, horizontal rain, bursting streams, hill after hill. Pretty trashed at the end, legs probably only had one hill left in them. Very little pink skin visible!

Fun to do something stupid occasionally.

Want to do some mountains.

Follow the Dog in 10 hours

222 miles in 2 days, on road. Glasgow to Leeds. I'm hungry just thinking about it.

Geneva – Porstmouth in 4 days (well 3 days, a morning and an afternoon) , following the Loire through as much of France as possible. No planning was involved.

Camino Austral in Chile – that was pretty hard – two weeks of weather challenges and big hills with no support….but brilliant!
Then went on to Costa Rice and cycle toured for 2 weeks, then over to NZ, hired a camper van and bought the MTB bible for NZ -Kennet Bros guide to mtbing in NZ, and travelled from trail head to trail head – grrrrrrreat!