Europe

We took our bikes on a kayaking trip to the Pyrenees, but were largely disappointed by what we found. The Spanish and French Cycling Federations have signed loads of routes with small square white signs. However, finding the start of these routes can be non-trivial. Sources of information you’d rely on back home seemed to be ignorant. This included the local bike shops and tourist information bureaus. Sometimes, we even found the noticeboards detailing all the routes, but couldn’t find where the routes started. And of course, without a map of the route you risk losing it entirely if one of the crucial white signs is missing. Assuming you do manage to follow a route all the way, you still might be disappointed, as they are generally technically easy. They can also put all the climb at the beginning of the route. In one case, after 1.5 hours of steady climb uphill (and no idea how well we were progressing) we simply turned around and descended the doubletrack in 15 mins. Our alterative approach was to cycle up the tarmac, until we reached a path descending (outside the national park, which is actually quite small all paths are open to bikers). We ended up finding an awesome Packhorse trail which was great fun (from Enviny via Bressui to Sort). The GR19 is also fun, though probably in a southwards direction (from La Fortunada to Laspuna) as this is slightly downhill.

After realizing we loved biking enough to make it our main summer holiday, we booked a last minute trip to Verbier with a company called Bike Verbier. They provided beds, excellent food, transport, a workshop and most importantly guiding. So all we had to do was relax and get on with it. They also made good use of the lifts. I was initially a bit snobbish about the lifts, but soon realized that using lists meant I could do more of the riding which I love the most – i.e. descents! I’m not going to give away too many of Bike Verbier’s trade secrets, but my favourite tail was?, which starts from the first hairpin from the top of the list access road. It consisted of roots and hairpins, often in combination. At the start of the week this was well beyond me, but on the last day I nailed it and was really pleased.