This was a tough day: 61 miles and nearly 3,000 feet of climbing.
We’ve made it to England! London no longer feels so far away.
But if I thought Day 2 of our adventure along the Avenue Verte was challenging, Day 4 had it beat.
Continue reading “Day 4 on the Avenue Verte: What it’s like from Newhaven to Crawley”The final 55 miles in France, weighed down by a large can of cassoulet.
It’s our last day on the Avenue Verte in France. We have 55 miles to bicycle from Gournay-en-Bray to Dieppe, there’s a climb with a 7% grade, we’re now carrying a heavy can of cassoulet au confit du canard for someone in England, and we need to make the 6 p.m. ferry across the English Channel.
Can we do it without stressing?
Continue reading “Avenue Verte Day 3: We reach Dieppe and take the ferry to England”
The Avenue Verte turned decidedly rural on our second day as we continued our bicycle ride from Paris to London.
Continue reading “Day 2 on the Avenue Verte: 65 hilly miles to Gournay-en-Bray”A bike route from Note Dame in Paris to the London Eye? Of course I had to ride it.
A bicycle route from Paris to London? From the Seine to the Thames and connecting Notre Dame and the London Eye? That’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull — of course I had to do it.
Continue reading “Avenue Verte: Day 1 of bicycling from Paris to London”We based ourselves in Strasbourg and bicycled through cute half-timbered towns.
Time to base ourselves in Strasbourg for a few days and do some biking.
Continue reading “EuroVelo 5 in Alsace: A bike ride through the vineyards”For me, the highlight of this route is Claude Monet’s gorgeous garden at Giverny. Rouen was a lovely surprise.
France’s Seine a Velo cycle route stretches more than 400 kilometers between Paris and the English Channel (Le Havre or Deauville, take your pick). We chose to ride between Rouen and Paris, so most of it. Here’s what we found.
Continue reading “‘Seine a Velo’ cycle route: 3 days between Rouen and Paris”Going by bike is the perfect pace for experiencing the D-Day beaches.
I have two three pieces of advice for anyone thinking of going to Normandy and the D-Day beaches.
Mottisfont to Swanage, mostly using the U.K.’s National Cycle Network.
This ride is a shout-out to Britain’s National Cycle Network, which got us so much of the way from a few miles north of Mottisfont to Swanage.
Continue reading “Cycling in England: A bike ride from a 900-year-old priory to a Victorian seaside town”A 28-mile ride along the D&L Trail more than closes my remaining gap.
It took a crazy baseball game under black lights to get me back to Allentown, but I finally biked the final miles (for me) of the Delaware & Lehigh Trail.
Continue reading “I finally finished biking the D&L Trail!”I headed to Green Lane Park at the northern end of the Perkiomen Trail for a bikepacking adventure with the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia.
So you’re dreaming of a bike trip that lasts many days, weeks or even months … perhaps out west, perhaps Europe, or maybe just closer to home. And to keep costs down and flexibility high, you think camping is the way to go.
A word of advice: Test it out with a simple bike overnight.
Continue reading “I tested out bikepacking with an overnight trip. It rained. Here’s what I learned”
