Transcontinental Race 2016, part 4 – Storms, scars of war, a friendly dog and bears in the forest

Day 7 - sleepy before a storm, twice The morning after climbing the Giau, I was up at dawn, and started the new day in fine style by immediately losing a chunk of time to a routing error.  I decided I could save a couple of hundred metres, perhaps all of half a minute, by …

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Transcontinental Race 2016 Part 3 – Escape to Italy

Day 5 - down into Italy Getting up and quickly packing away my stuff before I got cold, I rode to the top of the Gotthard pass at about 7am, and relished the long, sweeping curves of the descent, much of it already in warming sunlight (I used the new road, empty at that time …

Transcontinental Race 2016 – Part 2a – The Mountains

While packing my bag after stocking up at the supermarket in Grindelwald, someone shouted my name.  I looked up and saw James Hayden riding past.  It was great to see that he was back on his bike and clearly moving up through the field.  We wished each other well and he sped off up the …

Transcontinental Race 2016 – Part 2, Burgundy and Switzerland on 30psi

Descent from the Col de Ceyssat I was happy that my route to the second control point, at Grindelwald in the Swiss Alps was relatively flat.  I’d made a few tweaks to help achieve this, in particular, routing slightly to the north just before the Saone to clear some hills and taking some cycle tracks …

Transcontinental Race 2016 – Part 1, retracing the route of my honeymoon

  Prologue Loaded and ready to go ‘Plastic on the wires’ meant that the last Eurostar on the Thursday night was an hour and a half late, getting Uta and I to Brussels shortly after midnight.  We checked in to the Ibis hotel opposite the station, expecting an uneventful night before heading to Geraardsbergen for …