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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.
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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
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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
[url= http://www.bikemagic.com/news/article/mps/uan/1508 ]Article on my trip[/url]
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!!
[img] http://fotopic.net/?iid=yxqojv&outx=800&quality=70 [/img]
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[url= http://tom-marvin.fotopic.net/c1062075.html ]some iceland pics[/url]
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!
2 x week long offroad tours of scotland carrying just a change of clothes
1 week road tour of the pyrenees with just a change of clothes
300k audax when i weighed 21stone 10lbs.......my heaviest
400k audax 2 weeks later and quiting at 250k mark.
various week long tours with the ctc and rsf.
the best feeling is setting off for a weeks adventure with the bike thinking of nothing more than riding..............and food for fuel.
It might not sound as epic as a distance or endurance feat but mine is my trip to the alps this past summer. 11 different resorts inside two weeks. We covered around 70 different descents, most of them atleast twice. The combination of travel, moving accommodation many times, riding so many different trails, not crashing too often yet still riding fast to cover as much as possible and managing to keep the bikes reliable made the whole trip very hard work indeed.
4500 miles to Dubrovnik & back when I were 19, still keeping the hope of another big trip one day....
155 mile coast to coast in 12 hours, this September just gone
Whistler, enough said. Classic trails such as A-Line, Freight Train, Original Sin, Drop In Clinic etc. It doesn't get any better, plus there are no hills to ride up, all done on ski lift.
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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
Marin County, Cali
Toured in Canada's NorthWest Territories, where the nearest other people were days away.
Story and photos [url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/canol.htm ]on my website.[/url]
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Mawson Trail - 2 weeks from Adelaide, Aus into the lower Outback, 900kms. Just get up, go ride, camp, do again. Was supported so just focused on the riding.
Awesome - trying to work out what next...
21000ks round OZ,tassie and new Zealand last yr.
Going to the American Continent in 2010 😀
This:
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Just a short flight from the UK in Northern Spain:
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1500m descent if I recall.
Link goes to a bigger version that does it justice.
about 4 grand for 4 months nathan - thats everything including buying my kona jake and flights
Have knocked off some reasonable road based tandem tours over the past few years:
LeJog
Auckland to Christchurch
Sidney to Melbourne
Norway to Greece
Caen to Montpellier
Not sure about 2010. I fancy a RAM ride but Mrs Boblo is getting a bit selective....
a week backcountry riding in Iceland.
Awesome scenery/isolation 2hrs from the uk.
go cycle across a desert, round a glacier, ford stream, canyons, thermal pools etc etc.
best bike related jaunt i've done. In fact i want to go back this year and maybe do the springersands or kjouler routes (??spelling)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/polarisandy/sets/72157603866705926/
the 60odd riders i led round the glentress black a few years back. 🙂 🙂
the 60odd riders i led round the glentress black a few years back
Had the signposts been removed? 😉
it was a group ride. nice and slow and focuseed on staying as a group for all levels.
for some it was and still is their favourite ride
Lakeland Loop on a rigid Clockwork Orange.
or...
St Bees to Robin Hoods Bay carrying camping gear using a trailer.
it was a group ride. nice and slow and focuseed on staying as a group for all levels.
for some it was and still is their favourite ride
Keeping 60 riders together on that trail is good going.
I struggle to keep 6 together on the road! 🙄
then about 30 of us all crammed into the peebles curry house ran by a highwayman
Sibillini mountains in Italy. Pretty much unknown mtb territory and a great adventure!
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PQ - who used to be a regular on here - seems to be going round the world in instalments. He's got some of his adventures here.
http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/pq
I think he says he went 11 days without seeing another living thing when he was riding over the top of Tibet. Crikey - I think my record is 11 minutes.
i once asked kaesae why his ebay shed frames were overpriced...
cullen bay -
Yes there was a bit of portage on the TDMB - although I can't remember where off hand. Truely epic adventure with some great riding and views. I think there is an article in an old STW. To truely ride it of course you need to miss the lift at the beginning and the train at the end!
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C2C, Whitehaven to Sunderland, unsupported in 21hrs - fully rigid and canti's. Old School 😉
Iceland solo. Almost cried when there was nowhere to pitch the tent. Almost cried again when I met the mainroad and the guesthouse.
Can't wait to do something similar soon.
I rode from Maidstone to Ashford and back on a BMX down the M20 motorway (when the new section was built, so no traffic on it!)
The TransWales last year was pretty epic for me. Epically wet at least!
Next year me and Mrs PP are planning on touring Devon and Cornwall for 10-12 days on a £300 Trek and a £200 Carerra, towing a trailer and camping. I'm really looking foreward to it. 🙂
Wow that crazyguyonabike site is nuts - would love to do something like that one day.
Commuting in Cannes in summer. Taking the train to london, with the bike;
Managing to finish La Ruta DeLa Conquistadors race in Costa Rica in 2007, bonkers race but an awesome experience if you want to really test yourself to the limits. www.adventurerace.com
one of my best holidays ever, was when 4 of us mates, took 2 tandems around Wales.
So, funny, cycled up to 70 miles a day, going around various Youth Hostels. Brilliant.
Another epic, well, was epic for me, was spending 2 weeks with the MTB boys prior to Beijing Olympics 😀
when i was 20 i jacked in my job and bought a trailer, booked a ferry and decided to ride from london to munich. me, the bike, tent, camping stove and a big bag of weed.
didn't have a plan as such. stuck to rivers and railways as much as possible and ended up following the seine into paris. from paris to troyes - mulhouse - along the rhine to strasbourg - stuttgart - south through the black forest to lake constance (bodensee) - foot hills of the alps to füssen - munich.
about three weeks in total.
and more recently an alpen cross trip with a mate. a little better prepared but it still went tits up.
I cycled around Portugal in '89, for 3 weeks, on a fearsomely overloaded Ridgeback.
Fantastic.
Just realised that was 20 years ago; where did the time go?
Lands End to John O'groats in 6 days, unsupported (2003). Started it 5 days after coming back to the UK after 2 years living in Malawi, drinking, smoking 40-60 a day.
No training, untested bike, and 17 1/2 stone at the start. 15 1/2 stone at the end.
The first 2 days were pretty tough, but felt damn good by the end.
Touring-wise, Sappa to Hanoi the long way round is mint. Around ten days, all amazing. Best done independently with no guides or group. Off road xc, Warner Lake (BC) by Tyax float plane is hard to beat. DH-wise Nelson, also BC. Or maybe Verbier.
2nd er for Tyax float plane .I also did heli biking on Rainbow Mountain Whistler .That was the most bonkers fun thing i've done on a bike !
Colorado Trail solo with tent.
exploring the jungles of madaya pradesh and chattisghar, india on a indian roadster. combination of tiger, cobra and terrorists!! quiet, hot and beautiful.
2009 [url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartie_c/sets/72157621923321158/show/ ]Transalp[/url].
8 days (actually only 7 this year, because day 1 was cancelled due to spectacularly adverse weather).
600km, 21000m climbing and some brutally hard days, but absolutely worth all the blood, sweat and tears. Crossing the finish line at Riva del Garda was an overwhelming moment for a average punter like me.
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Only been to Afan for a weekend ... Planning on entering the MegaAvalanche in 2010 though !