Calais to the Mediterranean

Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember
The time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again

We have booked a “big” trip for 2024, flying in and out of Milan, arriving early May 2024. I am researching and mapping in my spare time and lots of excitement as to the route that is unfolding.

So far it includes the Italian lakes Maggiore, Como, Iseo and Garda, the Dolomites (Corvara through to Sappada), a finishing stage of the Giro d’Italia (catching up with some of the Italy Bike Tour crew), then into Slovenia (Triglav National Park, Julian Alps) then Croatia (Istrian Peninsula).

Lake Garda is a firm favourite – that will be my third time there, and I cannot believe that I have to climb a shite hill for a third time to get out of there – first time I said “never again”, second time I said “you have to be * kidding me”), and I have mapped it to leave Torbole, shaking my head in disbelief that we will climb it with a loaded bike.

What makes it awful? You climb 100 metres in the very first km, with cold legs, with 14% pinches – no warm up, just straight up – but the view from the top is beautiful (see the video below London to Venice), plus photo taken in 2016.

The most affordable accommodation was at the top of that hill too – and that would mean multiple more climbs (as planning two nights) and I just laughed and said “that is not happening”.

Dolomites and Slovenia we have done before, but not around Corvara (maybe Sella Ronda too) and not Triglav or the Julian Alps.

Lake Bohinj (Slovenia) should be a highlight – and then the ride across to the Soca Valley. The Soca valley is super nice.

The Istrian Peninsula – rode through there in 2019 but from Trieste (Italy, on the coast) so looking to differ the route as we head to whichever port.

I need to stop mapping now as I impatiently await ferry schedules to be announced for next year to cross the Adriatic and back into Italy (hence do not know re Pula, Rovinj or Piran, and whether we will transfer to Pescara or Venice).

Leading towards Pescara as we’ve been to Venice at it is illegal to even push your bike on Venice island. We’d need to immediately ferry to Lido and ride from there….anyway all will fall into place.

Once back in Italy I am thinking Tuscany (again, but some different places and routes), the microstate of San Marino and then unsure which way we will head back up to Milan – but definitely not the Venetian plains.

We are starting near Milan airport and have secured an anchor point accomodation where they will keep our bike bags used on the trip from Tasmania. we will return there for our final night to disassemble and pack the bikes.

This process is not without frustration. I had a place identified but the owner contacted me privately requesting funds above and beyond the stated rate in Hotel.com. It was a non refundable booking, so a bit of a bind really.

It was resolved by Hotel.com in my favour, and they gave me a $250 aud voucher as a bonus!

Research continues and in that process I stumbled across two pieces of our cycle touring history:

London to Venice – 2016 (England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Lichenstein, Italy) 2200 km
Calais to the Med – 2015 (England, France) 1500 km

I used to do a video montage to music of our trips – put a huge amount of time in doing it and stopped in 2017 (Bordeaux to Barcelona) as I had some music copyright issues (but did not know which song!).

We did these predominantly for our memories, but for those that like cycling, like Europe, like music (well my kind of music that is), maybe these maybe of interest to you.

Warning – you do need some time, but you can stop and start the videos.

Both of these trips were before we did self-supporting trips. We used Bike Adventures, an English based company, who provided the route notes (yellow sheets in those days with a series of turn by turn instructions), transferred luggage, provided back up support and pre arranged accommodation.

We made many lifelong friends on these trips – and enjoy staying in touch, and catching up with some of them as we can including Graeme (recently in England), David and John (in Sydney and Tasmania), Graham (in Sydney), Geoff (Italy, Tasmania), Tony (Canberra), Brian (England, Tasmania) and of course, our wonderful friends John with whom we recently stayed with in England (and his gorgeous wife Val)and Alan and his lovely wife Sue in Wales(who have also visited us here in Tasmania….and I’ve likely forgotten someone with my post pumphead brain.

Facebook enables us to stay in touch with others including Helen, Neil, Phil, Jerry….great memories that we treasure and enjoy more and more as we get older, and have felt, firsthand, life vulnerabilities.

The links: