Wrap Up and Reflections

It has only taken us a little over two weeks to get to posting this.

We are both very happy with this tour overall and there’s not much we’d change if we did it again. Not that we would do it again as there are heaps of other places in Europe and elsewhere we’d tour before doing areas we’ve done before. If we did have to do it again, we would ride away from Lyon; the Loire does flow from East to West, so we would be riding downhill. We would prefer to ride downhill with a headwind than uphill with a headwind, which is what we did this time. We would then train from St Nazaire/Nantes to Lausanne, ride to Geneva and fly home from there.  This means dumping your bike boxes at Lyon and having to source more at Geneva. However, you could unpack the bikes at Lyon airport and ride away to your hotel.

Although extremely expensive, Switzerland is a great place to cycle tour and we would have been happy to spend some more time there. We would have had time too as we spent a few days waiting in Lyon to catch trains since it was so busy, and we couldn’t get tickets for us and our bikes sooner. Some trains do not take fully assembled bikes and we did not have bags to pack the disassembled bikes into, so could not catch those trains. So, if you know where and when you want to catch the train from and to, try and book before you leave home.  

The length of the tour (about nine weeks) was just about right. If you are going to spend all that money and time getting there you might as well make the most of it. Although Greg would be happy to just wander around Europe for ages, Wendy is the more homely type and nine weeks was plenty. Depending on where we were going, she could probably push it out to 12 weeks, or longer if we were on e-bikes.

With age and health issues catching up with us both, it’s probably time to think about touring on e-bikes. This would have plenty of benefits. You would be able to ride further in a day without the issue of tiredness. It also provides an extra degree of flexibility regarding booking accommodation, in that if there was no accommodation in the town you planned to stay at, you could easily ride onto the next town that has a vacancy. Wendy booked all accommodation before we left home, but with free cancellation. Whilst this gives some flexibility, the room rate is higher. Greg likes the idea of not booking accommodation at all in most situations as that way you can make the decision where to stay when you actually arrive at a suitable place. Not only would where you stay be flexible, but also the route could be modified as you go to take in places that you didn’t originally consider, and sometimes when talking to fellow touring cyclists you often hear about different places or attractions that are worth going off the planned route to visit. E-bikes would also assist in being able to tour the hillier areas, that we currently try to avoid.

Gear. While both of us have managed to keep the amount of clothes and gear we take to an absolute minimum, Greg would like to reduce it even further. Wendy does not agree but that is only because she doesn’t want him dressing in cycling clothes to go out to dinner. However, Greg has solved this issue by planning to ditch the cycling clothes altogether and just ride in normal street clothes. That way they would be multi-purpose and OK to wear when he’s off the bike. This idea also fits with a lot of peoples’ preference in Europe where most people cycle in normal street clothes. We are talking about saving probably less than 1kg of weight, but every bit counts when cycle touring, unless you have an e-bike.

Both of us went through the whole tour without experiencing any illness or injury. Neither of us had a fall or accident, pretty pleasing for nine weeks away. We saw no sign of COVID, nor did we hear anything about it while on tour. We were very fortunate in this respect. There was the knee soreness, but that is age-related and not a direct consequence of the riding. 

Flying in Business Class was amazing (Greg’s first taste for long haul) and as long as we can afford to travel that way we will. It definitely contributed to our quick transition into the new time zone in France because we had the opportunity to have a good sleep on the way. 

The refugees in France, and to a lesser degree in Switzerland, have not done the countries any favours. They tend to stick around in the bigger towns and cities, where accommodation is already tight, to sleep rough and use the streets as rubbish bins, and toilets. Many of the public toilets we tried to use were closed, probably due to overuse. Most of the smaller towns and villages we rode through had plenty of vacant accommodation and probably work available for them, and public toilets that were useable!

We only saw five mobility scooters in our nine weeks. We saw plenty of older people shuffling around to get groceries, coffee, etc. In our little town of Howard alone, there are at least 10 people getting around on mobility scooters. Does this make Australia the ‘lucky’ country?? Additionally, the e-bikes and scooters in France seem to not be limited to 25km/h as they are here, and very few people wear a helmet.