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We really don't remember which one of us came
up with the idea of such a long tour, but we do remember it was
over 2 years ago, sometime in the winter of 2007 / 2008.
The original plan was to cycle from North cape, Norway to Gavdos
island, Greece, the southern most point of Europe (south of
Crete), but the cold of early May in Norway and the logistics or
returning from Gavdos island kinda put us off this plan.
There were several others, East / West, South / North, West /
East, large loops clockwise, counter clockwise, etc...
but we always found one or more flaws with these plans, they
just didn't meet our needs.So we finally came up with this 6 month 10000km plan.We start off on May 1st from Maastricht heading south to
Marseille were we catch a ferry to Bastia, Corsica and cycle
south towards Cagliary, Sardinia.
We catch the next ferry to Palermo, Sicily and cycle a somewhat
circular route around the island to Messina where we cross over
to mainland Italy and continue cycling along the coast (and a bit
inland at some points) until we reach Bari where we catch the
ferry to Corfu, Greece.
After a small tour of Corfu we will make our way to Athens to
visit family, then back to Igoumenitsa.
Greece is a bit of a
puzzle for us as we cannot make up our minds (yet) as to what we
want to see. It could be just a short tour around the golf of
Corinth, or cycle all the way back to Igoumenitsa.
This section will be decided once were there.
We should be leaving Greece around the second half of July when
the weather begins to get really hot and take the ferry to
Venice, Italy were we head in a northerly direction towards
Austria and over our first major climb the Grossglockner at
2571meters.
After Grossglockner we spend most of August cycling west through the
rest of the Alps and crossing some of the highest alpine passes,
before finishing off with Col de Iseran at 2770meters, in the
French Alps.
We than either head for the Massif Central, France, or head for
the Mediterranean for a swim before the Pyrenees.
We're not sure yet where we will cross the Pyrenees but we don't care about visiting Andorra, we would prefer
some quiet route through a national park, we'll leave
that for when we get there.
We will be cycling through Spain in September which is
still quite warm and we would like to visit the sea again
before it gets too cold, so the route to Gibraltar is also going to be
decided along the way.
We want to visit some of the mountain ranges in
southern Spain especially Sierra Nevada so we need to work that
into our plans.
After Gibraltar we either head for Cape Sao Vicente, Portugal
than north, we follow the St. James route north, or a bit of
both, all the way to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
We think the combination of the season's versus the location's
checks (most if not all) of the box's for our tour.
Spring in eastern and southern France, late spring through the
islands of Corsica and Sardinia, early summer through southern
Italy and Greece, summer through the Alps and again southern
France, late summer through southern Spain, and early fall
through Portugal.
We really feel good about this plan. |