How do you create a beautiful cycling route?
An itinerary is not a simple thing to make! Here we explain in a few words how we do it at Cyclodyssées. Of course, if you are thinking of organising your own cycling holiday, this article can be useful too!
DESTINATION
To be well planned, an itinerary must first of all take you through beautiful landscapes, as these are ultimately what will accompany you throughout your days. To avoid becoming monotonous after a few days, they must also be varied. But what would be the value of magnificent landscapes without discovering its inhabitants, its villages and its traditions?
So, first of all, we need to find a region that can offer us a good mix of landscape quality, interesting cultural discoveries and diversity of the places we visit! All this without losing sight of the fact that this region should not be too complicated to access – whether you go by train, car or plane.
ACCOMMODATION AND LOGISTICS
Once you’ve decided on the region, it’s time to find suitable accommodation. In the city, finding hotels with a room or garage to store your bikes is not always easy. In the countryside, the problem is more often related to the lack of adequate accommodation facilities: in some villages, when there is not simply nothing, there are sometimes just a few gîtes that only rent for several days, or small guest houses that you can never be too sure of being able to count on because they only have a few rooms. In high season, some hotels even sometimes require a reservation for at least two nights, unless they have “gaps” to fill! So that’s the first headache!
You also need to find service providers who can transport your luggage: sometimes the accommodation will do this, but more often it will be specialist companies or taxis.
And of course, find a bike rental company with quality, fully equipped bikes!
ROUTE
Then comes the time to design the route itself: find nice quiet roads that do not lead to major roads, avoid steep slopes, keep the difference in altitude as small as possible without skimping on the quality of the route, make sure that the gravel roads – which are sometimes excellent side roads – are passable with “classic” bicycles, find out about hunting or raptor nesting periods (during which some roads might be temporarily closed), etc.
All of this should be done in stages of between 35 and 60 kilometres, so that it is neither too short nor too long, thus leaving time to make many stops along the way.
Once the route of the bike tour has been agreed, we often also think of sporty variants (which we also test!) so that cycling aficionados always have something to eat !
ROADBOOK
Then we’ll write an exciting roadbook to accompany you on your cycling trip! In addition to technical details about the route, our roadbooks are full of cultural information about the places you will be riding through, recommendations for visits, suggestions for detours, information about places to eat and drink, and interesting anecdotes!