What do you think are the 'Classic Routes' for bike touring?

Hello riders www.cylingtheworld.org the new website dedicated
exclusively to bike tourists would like to hear what you consider to
be 'Classic Routes' for cyclist around the world in order to compile a
comprehensive selection in its tours section by including your
suggestions. What should be included in your opinion? Any links to
relevant routes will also be appreciated.
Thanks

1. The Mosel from Koblenz to Trier, Germany
2. The Danube upstream from Vienna, especially from Krems to Melk
3. The St. Lawrence from Montreal to Quebec and beyond, on Route 138.
4. The Lake Michigan shore from Menominee to St. Ignace, MI, on US 2



"gianni" wrote in message
om...
Hello riders www.cylingtheworld.org the new website dedicated
exclusively to bike tourists would like to hear what you consider to
be 'Classic Routes' for cyclist around the world in order to compile a
comprehensive selection in its tours section by including your
suggestions. What should be included in your opinion? Any links to
relevant routes will also be appreciated.
Thanks

= In Australia, crossing the Nullarbor by bicycle.
= In North Amercia, crossing the continent (many different routes in
US/Canada)

--mev, Mike Vermeulen
1. The Mosel from Koblenz to Trier, Germany
2. The Danube upstream from Vienna, especially from Krems to Melk
3. The St. Lawrence from Montreal to Quebec and beyond, on Route 138.
4. The Lake Michigan shore from Menominee to St. Ignace, MI, on US 2



"gianni" wrote in message
. com...
Hello riders www.cylingtheworld.org the new website dedicated
exclusively to bike tourists would like to hear what you consider to
be 'Classic Routes' for cyclist around the world in order to compile a
comprehensive selection in its tours section by including your
suggestions. What should be included in your opinion? Any links to
relevant routes will also be appreciated.
Thanks

What should be included in your opinion?

The Manali - Leh road in India, is clearly one of them. It goes almost 500
km (300 miles) on altitudes above 3000 m, crossing five high passes, two
higher than 5000 m. A splendid ride. Rarely had so much fun. There is a trip
report on http://www.lowdin.nu/MTB/MTB-Himalaya.html.

Any links to relevant routes will also be appreciated.

There is a page with links to other cyclists reports on the url above. Quite
a few do the Manali - Leh ride, not so it gets crowded but many enough to
create a sense of that there is a cycling community present, one keeps track
of one another, meet again, etc. There are also quite a few supported group
rides.

Per
http://lowdin.nu

"Mike Vermeulen" wrote in message
...
= In Australia, crossing the Nullarbor by bicycle.
= In North Amercia, crossing the continent (many different routes in
US/Canada)

--mev, Mike Vermeulen
1. The Mosel from Koblenz to Trier, Germany
I've done that. Not bad.

My list which of the best I've done.

1. Barcelona - Santiago in Spain.
2. Madrid, Chinchon, Aranjuez, Toledo, Talavera, Gredos, Avila, Segovia,
Madrid.
3. West Coast of Scotland.
4. West Cork/Kerry in Ireland.
5. Clare Connemara, Ireland.
6. Donegal, Ireland.
7. Malaga - Seville - Malaga.
8. Devon and Cornwall, England ( Very hard)
9. Anywhere in Alps and Pyrenees,.
10. Anywhere in Corsica.
11. Peloponnisos, Greece.
12. Paris - Nice.
13. Strasbourg - Nice.
14. La Rochelle Carcassonne.
15. Romantische Strasse and Bavaria, Germany,.
16. Dolomites, Italy.
17. Catalunya.
18. Sardinia. (food not great).

Looks like you've had lots of fun touring, seeing how long is your list,
Gary.
7. Malaga - Seville - Malaga.
Sharon and I rode there (in November) after Gary kept promoting Spain, and
Yes the area southeast of Seville was great (though we didn't try Malaga
itself).

We enjoyed the Dordogne - Lot - Perigord - Quercy region of France, and so
have lots of other people. For a "route", how about the one in Cycling
France by Sally Dillon et al (Lonely Planet). And I'd also agree with
picking almost any nice town in the French Alps and start exploring.

5. Clare Connemara, Ireland.
6. Donegal, Ireland.

If these are on a list of "classics", then the Hudson river valley of New
York belongs on it too. Because other than a few seaside views, the good
routes in the Hudson valley are superior in every other way: variety,
house-architecture, farm-architecture, food, road quality, color, variety.

Going village-to-village, bakery-deli to deli-bakery thru the farms of
Columbia county and northern Dutchess is great, and a loop thru there would
be a classic of its own, definitely superior to Vermont, as some bicycle
tour organizers are now discovering (http://bikenewyork.org/HVRR.htm and
http://bikeescapades.com/hudson)

But here's a one-way "classic" route which is supported by major train and
bus lines:

New York City to Glens Falls - (? and on to Montreal ?)

by way of: Seven Lakes Drive, Storm King Mountain Highway, New Paltz,
Woodstock, Rhinebeck, Kinderhook, Rensselaer, then secondary roads mostly
alongside the Hudson river up to Glens Falls. And for a great "prologue",
spend a day riding
around New York City itself.

details below.

Ken
__________________________________________
Details of route
Different local riders have their own favorite roads for visiting and
connecting the great places -- mine are on Bike Hudson Valley
(http://roberts-1.com/bikehudson/r/map), and that website has links to other
people's routes.

- - prologue: New York Harbor Circle (NYH on map)
- - NYC to Bear Mt (BMA on map, sections A + B) (variations might be the
"river road" under the GWB to Nyack, or a visit to the delightful paved
off-road Saddle River trail in Bergen county NJ)
- - Bear Mt / Newburgh-Beacon loop (BNB, second half = west side)
- - Newburgh - Beacon / Mid-Hudson loop (NBM, reverse first half = west
side), but there's probably some better way to get to New Paltz (and those
who don't like hills should skip the ridge-top orchard views).
- - New Paltz to Ashokan Reservoir (NPA) to Woodstock around Ashokan
Reservoir (WoA), then some secondary roads to the Kingston - Rhinecliff
bridge. (shorter is to take NPK)
- - Rhinebeck to Tivoli (RhT) to TG to LoF -- though reversing the second
halves of those routes might be more fun.
- - Rip Van Winkle / Albany loop (east side) (go to River Routes map, RVD)
- - Albany-Rensselaer to Glens Falls: see reports on
http://roberts-1.com/bikehudson/v/no.../river/reports
and the Mohawk Hudson Cycling Club website.

- - Glens Falls to Montreal? someone else will have to contribute that.

Trying to keep the route simple by just taking major roads is not going to
provide a "classic" route thru the Hudson valley -- unless you like seeing
lots of strip malls and truck traffic. The official New York state "Bicycle
Route 9" is generally good, but by trying to keep the total mileage and
hills lower, it misses some of the really great riding in the Hudson valley.

Ken

I would list the following among true "Classic Routes" (though not
necessarily my absolute favorites rides):

Big Sur (central California coastal road)
West coast of South Island, New Zealand
Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia
Puerto Montt, Chile to Bariloche, Argentina
Carretera Austral, southern Chile
Icefields Parkway, Alberta, Canada
Going-to-the-Sun Highway, Glacier National Park, Montana, USA
Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA
Loire Valley, France
bike path through the dunes in coastal Netherlands
Chott Jarid, Tunisia


My favorite routes, OTOH, include:

Dordogne/Lot/Cele valleys in southwest France
Grosse Scheidegg pass, Switzerland (1 day ride)
Going-to-the-Sun Road (see above) Montana, USA (1 day ride)
almost anywhere in Corsica
Puerto Montt, Chile to Bariloche, Argentine (see above)
road to Hana & beyond, Maui, Hawaii, USA
north coast of Kauai, and Waimea Canyon, Kauai, Hawaii, USA
Golden Triangle region, northern Thailand
Tasmania, Australia

(Eric) wrote in message . com...
I would list the following among true "Classic Routes" (though not
necessarily my absolute favorites rides):

Big Sur (central California coastal road)
Icefields Parkway, Alberta, Canada
Going-to-the-Sun Highway, Glacier National Park, Montana, USA
Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA
Loire Valley, France


I'll see those five (BTDT) and raise you

Coast of Michoacan, Mexico (Tecoman to Playa Azul, imagine the Big Sur
in Hawaii! The only place on earth that I ever went back to on a
Touring Bike.)

Durango-Mazatlan, Mexico (Close to impossible in the opposite
direction.)

Baja Peninsula, Mexico (Todos Santos side arrival in Cabo, the other
side is illegal for bikes these last five years.)

Oregon Coast

Mendocino Coast

Skyline Drive-Blue Ridge Parkway in the Fall.

Anywhere between Tacoma, Washington and Prince Rupert, BC (Islands or
Mainland, ferry boat rides inclusive.)

Anywhere in the Balearic Islands

Anywhere in Nova Scotia (but especially the Cabot Trail.)

Anywhere in the wine country of France with the paved cart paths for
grape extraction that can run for fifteen miles.



In the category of "too hairy back then and probably too hairy to be
recommending now as well" I would submit the Cantabrian Coast of
Spain, coast of Guerrero and Oaxaca States, Mexico, and Northern
Guatemala. (In order of ascending hariness during the politically
conflicted eras during which I rode a bike through them. The upside
was that I had major highways completely to myself for days at a time
due to dynamited bridges, bombs planted along the road, and buses
crashed and blocking the highway.)

In the category of "really wish I HAD done it back then" I would
submit the entire coastline of what was formally known as Yugoslavia,
(which was, believe it or not a very common destination for yuppie
cyclotourists in the 1980s and that was pretty much why I kept putting
it off,) and the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec (because it was still a
19th century theocracy with awesome paved roads up there thirty and
forty years ago when I was there in a car and in a world where there
is now fast Internet access in the middle of nowhere in Costa Rica I
just can't imagine such a thing being possible any longer,) and the
Valle Nacional, Mexico.

As for Costa Rica, well the Paso De Los Muertos will be made into a
backwater by a major coastal highway in the next decade and thus be
vastly improved as an epic ride for all but those with an insane
objective of saying that they rode down the Pan American Highway
(which I did in Chiapas when that was a place that people escaped TO
from Guatemala.)

So the moral of the story is that if you wait fifteen or twenty years
to go somewhere described in this thread it may not be there for you
to go to when you finally get around to it. I very much doubt than
anyone has ridden a bicycle from San Cristobal de Las Casas to
Palenque via Occocingo and Agua Azules in the last dozen years, but
twenty years after I did I can still remember just about every foot of
it.

I agree that the networks of little "tertiary" paved roads in agricultural
areas of France are pretty amazing.

logarto wrote
Anywhere in the wine country of France
with the paved cart paths for grape
extraction that can run for fifteen miles.

Anywhere between Tacoma, Washington and
Prince Rupert, BC (Islands or Mainland,
ferry boat rides inclusive.)

I think you've gotten the boat rides merged with the bicycling in your
memories. Or maybe you toured there a long long time ago when the roads in
the San Juan islands were different.

Except for a few nice miles on Lopez island, Sharon and I were unimpressed
with the actual bicycling in the San Juan islands. We could see how it
compared favorably against the mainland roads around Seattle and Everett and
lots of places in the USA -- but we could easily think of ten routes in the
Hudson valley of NY that were better than most of the San Juans. And the
best of Europe that I've seen so far is like two tiers above.

Ken

Interesting thread.

Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA

Yes, lots of altitude, and change of ecology, splendid ride.
http://www.lowdin.nu/MTB/Colorado/Rmnp1.jpg

The Million Dollar high way is another Colorado ride that deserves to be
listed as classic http://www.lowdin.nu/MTB/Colorado/Molasspass1.JPG and that
can be said of the Independence Pass (between Aspen and Leadville) too
http://www.lowdin.nu/MTB/Colorado/Independence5.JPG

Anywhere in the Balearic Islands

That has to be qualified. Classic routes, routes one should do once in a
life time, on Mallorca is a complete traverse of the Tramuntana mountains
from Andratx to Porto Pollenca, and of course the Sa Calobra climb.
http://www.lowdin.nu/MTB/mallorca04/...June_2004.html

Where is Jobst Brandt? He can list the classic routes in the Alps better
than anyone. A few that has to be included:

Passo Stelvio,
Col Du Galiber,
Route Napoleon,
Passo Sella (preferably, to be classic, on should do a complete circuit of
the Sella Massif),
Furka Pass (watershed between the Rhone and Rhein).


Per
http://lowdin.nu