by Andrew G » Wed Feb 19, 2014 1:32 pm
The easiest way is to just decide where you fancy going, possibly following chats with mates or asking on the forum, and then check out areas with the benefit of maps (proper paper ones are far better for this to scan areas for good roads/climbs/terrain). After that do a few travel and accommodation searches and go from there. Getting commitments and sorting booking can be a pain with numbers so best is that you decide on days of travel and accommodation and then all book individually, if you are on different flights or a day or two different at either end it doesn’t matter.
It’s not difficult really and if you have an idea where you fancy going or go from a recommendation then people can probably help point you in the direction of somewhere reasonable to stay, although in reality it’s quite tricky to find somewhere that isn’t okay unless you have no common sense.
Acouple of us are just back from a week in Lanzarote which is great at this time of year. Okay not mainland Europe but only a 4 hour flight away and 22 degrees, sunshine and blue skies in February. Majorca is popular but better left to a bit later, and Riccione (late April early May is best as it can be wet before then) on the Adriatic coast have some good hotels (Riccione Bike Hotels) and do guided rides up in the hills included in the price if you don’t fancy the map work yourself. Both easy to get to, although for Riccione it’s better to fly Gatwick to Bologna and get a train down to Riccione as outside July/Aug not a lot flies to Riccione and it tends to be Stanstead departures, continental train travel is easy and cheap.
Anywhere in France is pretty easy to get to either Eurostar or Ferry and drive, or fly/train. I stayed near Carcassonne (just north of) and it was nice and had some lovely riding around the Pic Noire area.
There used to be a good foot passenger plus bike day trip you could do from Dover to Boulogne-sur-Mer on the SeaCat but as they’ve stopped that now the ferry takes too long. You could ferry to Calais and drive to say Wissant. From there you get nice riding around that area on the coast, between say Wissant and Etaples and a bit inland which wouldn’t be mega miles but make a nice day if you wanted a long day trip or split to a two-dayer. You can still do the day trip foot passenger thing but Calais is a dump so not so great as you need to get through there. You could do a 2 or 3 dayer though and use the Dunkirk crossing one or both ways to widden options.
If you have multiples of two then a good cheap route is to pair up and get a ferry and then drive to where you’re going non-stop, just swap the drivers around every so often. You arrive tired but do the travel in one hit and after a night’s sleep are fine. Going this way also means no bike bag pack up as with flying, just sling both bikes and your luggage in the back and off you go.