Taken from The Cyclist’s Bucket List, these bike trips will thrill your imagination and holiday planning. – By Ian Dille
The Cyclist’s Bucket List
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Every experience on a bike is unique to every rider. But inarguably, some experiences remain more memorable than others. The smell of lavender at a roadside picnic, waiting for the Tour de France to arrive. The vertigo-inducing view of the Pacific Ocean from the 10,000-foot summit of Hawaii’s Haleakala volcanic crater (a 5-plus-hour climb). A crisp pale lager hitting your lips after a ride along the canals of Amsterdam, one of the world’s most bike-friendly cities. These are the sights, the smells and tastes, that every cyclist should experience before they die. These, and a wide range of other must-do rides, races, shops, and shrines, all rooted to a specific location or event, comprise the Cyclist’s Bucket List, A Celebration of 75 Quintessential Cycling Experiences. Here are seven unforgettable bike rides from the book.
The Cyclist’s Bucket List
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Leh-Manali Highway, India
Nothing really grows up here in the thin air near the top of the world. High in the Himalayas of northern India, in the Ladakh region, the town of Leh sits on the banks of the Indus River. The bare, windswept mountains rise from the earth in every direction, thrown into the air millions of years ago by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. The shifting sun casts these rock-strewn peaks in shades of shining gold. The plates still shift, occasionally making these mountains shake. Thousands of people have forged a living in this remote landscape for thousands of years, despite constant conflict amongst various empires and the disparate interests of the nations we now know as Pakistan, China, and India. Today, the Indian Air Force maintains a military outpost in Leh and a firm grasp on the region.
The Cyclist’s Bucket List
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Moab, Utah
For nearly as long as people have ridden bikes with knobby tyres, those people have brought their bikes to this small town in Eastern Utah, a rust-coloured recreation paradise of sandstone canyons and high desert mountains on the banks of the Colorado River. Encircled by federally managed lands and situated at the cusp of the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Moab is perhaps most famous for its Slickrock trail, a completely unique experience that winds 16km through a lumpy expanse of Navajo sandstone. The route through the red-rock moonscape, situated on a plateau above town, is discernable only by the white dots spray-painted onto the stone and the line of tyre marks left by the thousands of mountain bikers who’ve come here to ride across the roller-coaster-esque route.
The Cyclist’s Bucket List
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The Mortirolo, the Gavia, and the Stelvio, Italy
The Mortirolo, the Gavia, and the Stelvio: These three mountain passes rise above all others in Italy, both in altitude and in legend. The tiny, serpentine roads accessing these storied peaks wind through towering rock formations. They endlessly switchback up—up above the treeline, up above the clouds—into the craggy Italian Alps and the Dolomites, on the border of Switzerland. The Giro d’Italia, the Italians’ version of the Tour de France, first made the cycling world aware of these climbs in the mid-1900s, but the roads—originally dirt paths—date back as far as the 18th century. From the village of Bormio, nestled deep amongst these Alpine peaks, a cyclist can ascend the Mortirolo, the Gavia, and the Stelvio. A masochist may ride all three passes in a single day.
The Cyclist’s Bucket List
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Amsterdam, the Netherlands
The beauty of the world’s bike commuting epicenter—where 60 percent of urban trips occur by bike, on separated pathways with cycling-specific traffic signals—is that most Dutch don’t cycle specifically to lose weight or make an environmental statement. They ride because cycling is the city’s quickest, most convenient, and safest form of transportation. They ride because it’s just…normal. Here, bikes rule. But it wasn’t always this way.
The Cyclist’s Bucket List
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Isle of Skye, Scotland
The dark volcanic rock rises from the surrounding green slopes in towering spires and sheer cliffs, forming a 30.5-kilometre ridge down the center of the Trotternish peninsula on Scotland’s Isle of Skye. The rock formations on this rustic isle have long inspired Gaelic legend and even Hollywood directors (Ridley Scott shot his 2012 film Prometheus here), and they have also drawn cyclists from across the United Kingdom and around the world.
An 80-kilometre loop starting in the town of Portree runs along the edge of the peninsula, through rolling farm fields, and between the shore of the Atlantic and the looming ridgeline. You’ll first encounter the Old Man of Storr, a knifelike outcrop that rises more than 600 metres above the nearby sea. Local folklore tells of a giant who sank into the earth here, leaving only his thumb pointing toward the sky. More likely, lava, battered by thousands of years of wind, rain, and erosion, formed the Storr.
The Cyclist’s Bucket List
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Majorca, Spain
Close your eyes now, and imagine a paradise for cyclists. Envision an island surrounded by jewel-colored waters, with terrain that varies from soaring stone mountains to rolling hills and agricultural plains. Listen to the soft hum of your tyres on silk-smooth roads ascending cliffsides in enticing loops at ever-gentle gradients and back roads that are half a lane wide and pass through groves of ancient olive trees. Feel the warm sunshine against your skin, breath in the salty coastal breezes. Know, here and now, that such a place exists, and it is named Majorca.
Part of the Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern coast of Spain, Majorca has long attracted holiday-makers seeking relaxation and beauty, and it is increasingly a coveted destination for road cyclists from around the world. Some of the top Tour de France teams, such as Sky, train here, yes. But from February through May, you’ll also find packs of cyclists participating in all-inclusive camps, riding through the Tramuntana mountain range on the island’s western coast and congregating in the plazas of the numerous tiny towns across Majorca.
The Cyclist’s Bucket List
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Tour d’Afrique, Egypt to South Africa
The first Tour d’Afrique occurred in 2003, but the idea to ride across Africa from tip to tip had formed decades prior. Henry Gold, the man behind the seemingly mad event had travelled extensively in Africa as the executive director of Canadian Physicians for Aid and Relief. Based on his experiences there, Gold became convinced bicycles could prove transformative for the majority of people in Africa, but he struggled with how best to bring bikes and awareness to the continent.
As told in the Cyclist’s Bucket List, during a trip to Ethiopia in the early ’90s, he came across the Russian Olympic cycling team altitude-training in the mountains. A colleague, knowing Gold’s inclination to tackle challenging projects, teased him that he should organise a bicycle race from the top of Africa to the bottom. Gold laughed, but days passed, and he couldn’t get the idea out of his mind. So he went to a friend, Michael de Jong, an inventor and bike racer, and told him about the idea. De Jong became similarly fascinated with the Africa tour. De Jong planned a route and produced an informational brochure for potential participants.
They scheduled the first Tour d’Afrique for 1994, but a terrorist attack in Egypt forced them to cancel. The two men moved on, and the event went dormant for nearly 10 years. Then, on the eve of his 50th birthday, Gold found himself seeking a life-affirming challenge. He called de Jong, told him he wanted to do the Africa tour, and gave him 24 hours to decide. Eleven months later, the 2 men and 31 other participants, ranging from world-class adventurers to a 55-year-old mother of five who’d only begun riding that year, set off from Cairo and pedalled towards Cape Town.
Gold and de Jong had estimated the trip would take 120 days, with roughly 1 day of rest for every 5 days of riding. In order to garner additional press coverage and appease participants with competitive ambitions, the Tour d’Afrique was set up as (and officially remains) a race. Riders clock in individually at the start of each day and record their times at the finish. But racing is certainly not required. Packs of riders form pacelines and push for the finish each day while others dawdle, barely making it to camp before sunset.
The first Tour d’Afrique participants, whom Gold believes were the first cyclists ever to ride across the continent consecutively, would serve as guinea pigs for the tours that followed. In Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya, Gold had to depend on his previous good works in Africa and diplomatic connections to even gain access to the countries, which were in tense political conditions. Once south of Kenya, at the halfway point, they would rely solely on maps and local knowledge for guidance, as Gold had scouted the route only as far as Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.
For more about the story of the first Tour d’Afrique—and for 68 more destinations to fantasise about visiting with your bike, check out the Cyclist’s Bucket List.