I have put up a new temporary page to try and get my shed cleared before I more to Brussels.
Or rather I have promised my wife that I am not going to take “all that rubbish” which includes stuff that is over 50 years old!
Classics all of course!
Harry Quinn, Campag, GB, Williams, TA – if you know anyone into this stuff please let them know.
New page here
I am at the Eurobike trade fair for work. Mostly bike fairs involve being plunged into a morass of competing booths and emerging blinking into the light after three or four days in complete exhaustion. Click the “Cycle Shows” tab below to catch a different flavour of the shows I have experienced since taking on my new job.
But Eurobike has a treat in store. By an accident of history Europe’s largest bike show ended up in the town of Friedrichshaven on the shores of Lake Constance, the Bodensee in southern Germany. The industry types who have been coming here for 20 years or more moan and groan about the lack of access and hotels and the traffic jams because the town isn’t set up for a show in this scale.
But – but, but, but. You have to get here. And in many people’s case this means coming via Zurich. Two hours on Swiss Railways, then the ferry across the Bodensee from Ramshorn or Konstanz. As you cross the ferry you can also see the evidence of the booming cycle tourism culture building in the area, each time I come I see more and more cyclists – much better than my first lonely ride as a student visitor in 1984.
And you get to stay out in the small towns of the Allgäu with family run hotels in immaculate settings with restaurants set out on the traffic free market squares.
And demo day? A 30 minute bus ride up into a tiny town in the Allgäu hills where 2000 bike shop owners, business people and hangers-on like me get to try out hundreds of bikes on waymarked trails.
What’s not to like – especially as this year we were treated to roasting hot temperatures. We took two really nice road bikes from Ritchey out onto the road route which gave some lovely images of rolling hills, beautifuly kept farms and very smooth roads. We also tested two of the new range from Tern which were very impressive, and much more relevant to real life in Brussels!
I also noticed that even the smallest settlements had a lot of solar panels – showing just how far ahead of most of the rest of the world this aspect of German life is. All in all a picture of civilised living.
However what is unforgivable is the Australian who conformed to national stereotype and brought only flip-flops to a cycling demo day. (They are called “thongs” to Aussies – please avoid confusion with a piece of string pretending to be underwear, which could in fact be a worse sight on a bike).
Actually an even worse crime was committed here- actually trying to justify the “thongs” by telling the staff on the booth that Cadel Evans dresses like this at the weekend. Sorry – no, Cadel has some class.
This gallery contains 10 photos.
It is only since starting work for ECF that I have realised the fixation on electrically assisted bikes in the German bike industry E-bikes or pedelecs got a hold in the Netherlands first but it is the German industry that … Continue reading
The first part of last week I was working in Brussels, but I was completely thrown by discovering a Belgian public holiday on Wednesday when I had planned to work. I still can’t get out of my British habit of assuming all public holidays are on Mondays and I certainly haven’t got any knowledge of Belgian holiday dates in my head yet.
However this prospect quickly turned to optimism because the weather was forecast to be great, I was staying close to a good route out of the city – and best of all Brussels likes a lie in:
Even on normal work days I find this is a city that is slow to get started. The urban commute is squeezed into a relatively narrow window and very few people even consider early starts in their workplaces. I anticipate Brussels folks being really shocked by the number of suits already at the main London stations by 7am on most weekdays, let alone 8 or 9. I am almost always the only cyclist on the roads before 8 here and when I have been here on weekends and public holidays I know that the lie in is always extended, even better during school holidays.
I love early morning bike rides so I was up and away on Wednesday knowing that the place was going to be deserted and I could come back and knock off a few hours undisturbed work too.
First heading south through Bois de la Cambre which is a popular and attractive large park. Crazily its perimeter roads have been allowed to become part of a car commuting racetrack on weekdays, but at least they are closed on public holidays and weekends so they were very welcoming today. The park pavilion 
was optimistically offering its deck chairs to all comers, but it would be several hours before they were needed.
The mansions of the wealthy that edge the park and the surrounding routes to Forêt de Soignes looked appropriately exclusive in the morning light, but I also felt exclusive to have a four lane boulevard almost 
to myself – extraordinarily quiet for a big city.
And then into the forest (Zoniënwoud in Flemish). I have quickly discovered this area for morning and evening rides since I started working here. It is great that just 6km from the centre of the modern capital city this area there is a forest of over 4000 hectares, stretching across the southeast of the city as a green belt. It is disturbed only by a few roads and unfortunately the motorway which does bring some resented noise to the tranquillity. Wikipedia tells me that like many such forests it has been eroded over the years, not least by Napoleon but now I am told it is one of the successes of Belgian political gridlock – the forest is split over the regions of Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia and nobody is going to let Brussels expand into their territory.
I can strike out through the woods on the signposted round Brussels greenway and a number of other better surfaced tracks, or as much as my small wheeled folding bike will allow I like go off on the dirt tracks and side paths discovering dips, hollows and tranquil ponds in ancient woodland settings. I do get some funny looks from the mountain bikers, not too many small wheelers in here.
On Wednesday after well over an hour of bouncing around I returned to a recent discovery, the smooth asphalt surface of the Dreve des Tumuli, a beautiful car free route that swoops and climbs through the forest contours back to the edge of the city and my ride home.
On this day I had seen almost no one except a few dog walkers but as I returned it was approaching 9am and the first cycle tourists were beginning to wander out sleepily. By the time I got to Bois de la Cambre the jogging community was in full flow. Maybe it was to avoid the later heat, or just an ingrained daily habit which gave them the best of the day – but where are the cyclists? Perhaps by lunchtime many more will be out in Forest de Soignes along with the walkers and families however I am told it is rarely crowded.
But on Wednesday it was nice to believe it was almost exclusively mine. Thanks Brussels.
Googlemap of the area below
Simply brilliant – more from the excellent folks at Cyclestuff – and those who supplied the links to them – Amsterdamize and VoleOspeed I gather. Great!
Following up yesterday’s post (‘Those are the rules’, August 15th), Amsterdamize suggested that the picture above should be added. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, the image is so amusing that it deserves its own post and a gong at a glittering awards ceremony; …..and the ‘Best use of satirical signage in an urban setting award’ goes to………..
I wonder if the irony of the sign was lost on the council? Great stuff and biggest chuckle of the week so far.
With thanks to both Amsterdamize for providing the link and VoleOspeed for taking the picture.
Taken today on the Opel stand at the ISPOBike cycle show in Munich:
*”Wir leben autos” originally mistranslated by me as “we love cars”, actually “we live cars” – which is probably worse. Thanks Marco for the correction.
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I have posted for first impressions and the fans. There was actually some cycling going on amongst all this. As I said in my previous post I don’t have the equipment for proper sports photography, and frankly when the big … Continue reading
This gallery contains 18 photos.
Every time a world class bike race has come to the UK since the 1990s organisers have been blown away by the crowds – maybe a million in London for the Tour de France prologue in 2007. We don’t have … Continue reading
It is not possible to compare my writings with the professionalism of the journalists and photographers covering the Olympic cycling and the energy of the blogging and twitter posters. And my little camera may be good for the blog – but it can’t cope with an Olympic athlete at speed or the size of a stadium.
So instead I am going to post a few personal reflections, things I enjoyed so much about the Olympic Cycling Road Races and Time Trial last week and my visit to the Olympic Stadium yesterday for the athletics.
I have ranted elsewhere about my disappointment with the poor treatment of cycling fans in some aspects of the ticketing but I have to say now that attending the whole thing has been an organisational delight. The national cringe that somehow we would blow it because of transport, weather, surliness or lack of service has been completely disproven, everyone I have spoken to has been unfailingly positive. Yes there were the early tweets about lost bus drivers for athletes but look at it in the context of the numbers who have experienced something they will remember for a long time.
Welsh comedian Max Boyce became famous in the 1970s as a populariser of Welsh rugby fandom. His catchphrase was “I Know ‘cos I was There” – a celebration of watching live. Now I can say “I know ‘cos I was there” for the Olympics, a most extraordinary celebration.
And in case it gets lost at the bottom of the post let me say that the thing that really made the Olympic Park special was the extraordinary attitude of the staff and volunteers in their purple uniforms. Whoever it was that said to them “be an individual” deserves the Knighthood that will go to some of the athletes because this group of all ages, all ethnicities and classes were still going late into the evening with cheerful banter and smiles. When did you last leave a public event where the crowd spontaneously felt the need to say thank you and wave goodbye to the stewards?
So four events live for me.
Ever since the Olympics were announced for London I knew I wanted to be out at Box Hill for the road races. I was actually born in the shadow of the hill down in Dorking and although we moved away when I was very young I have memories of trips back from time to time. The whole ticketing fiasco annoyed me but somehow or other I would make it. I actually got tickets for the women’s race in the end which gave us access to the hill itself on Sunday. We watched the men’s race at the bottom of the hill in the village of Mickleham which was also on the main circuit of the race so we could see the field nine times and sense the whole race unfurling. In both cases we made a frantic dash for the big screen at a nearby winery – not as fast as the riders heading back to London but certainly quick enough to see the finale of both races.
On Time Trial day off to Kingston upon Thames to get some pre-race atmosphere and then just south to Surbiton to find a relatively quieter spot and great views of the riders where a friend of my brother was also offering a dash to the TV after the event too. We were in high hopes – expecting medals for Bradley Wiggins and Emma Pooley, but also enjoying the way time trials can unfold in a very different way to the road races. Perhaps one for the cycling nerds, but I am happy to be characterised that way if you insist. To round it off I had some fun riding down the course with my son before our 30 mile ride home. That was fun in itself, we got applauded on some sections and one cyclist couldn’t help but join us and start chatting about the result. The mood was extraordinary. With over 20 gold medals in the bag now it’s almost impossible to recall that last Wednesday the nation was holding its breath because we hadn’t got there yet despite some near misses. Wiggins and the rowers were like a collective release of breath that let everyone celebrate.
Sorry Fabian Cancellara fans – not your day
And yesterday we got to use the two tickets that I got from the Olympic lottery. If readers are not from the UK you may not be aware of the national fixation with the tickets, but I applied for 22 tickets across 5 sports and I got two, actually better than many people did. Colleagues in Brussels were amazed by the idea of people effectively taking thousand pound gambles, but mine came up with the Olympic Stadium for athletics.So to follow over the weekend three photo and reflection posts – the road races, the time trial day and yesterday at the stadium.
I haven’t tweeted or blogged since last Wednesday despite having a whole stack of photos and reflections from the Olympic road cycling races and the amazing performance of the British. I have felt dragged down and fed up by what I regard as the most depressing subject in cycling. For me it’s the subject that almost puts “despair” into “I do not despair”.
As a cyclist interested in sport I have lived through endless drug scandals that dragged the sport into the gutter – and the idiots that still think this is the way forward despite all the evidence that the net is closing. And I can sadly live with the need of some of our advocates to rubbish anyone who doesn’t agree with their approach.
But the discussion of cycle helmets is the cycling subject that drags me down like no other.
I feel the need to put some of this down somewhere – and perhaps to share one small ray of light I discovered in British Columbia – a place with a compulsory helmet law. So back to the blog – and of course the views here are entirely my own.
I was all fired up to blog on Thursday morning but on Wednesday evening the news broke that a cyclist had been killed by an Olympic bus, then in an interview Brad Wiggins was asked about the incident and said that cyclists should look after themselves, including wearing helmets.
It’s the evening after he has achieved something remarkable. It’s not his subject road safety. But of course the BBC has to go major on “Bradley Wiggins calls for compulsory helmets” because they have umpteen hours of news channels to fill.
By Thursday morning London Cycling Campaign and CTC are in full defence mode and even the President of British Cycling has to tackle it when he is speaking about the fantastic system for developing talent that BC has put in place. To be fair, they all did a great job. (More here)
The twittersphere, bloggers, discussion boards were full of fire and fury swamping any pleasure that could be taken from Wiggins and Froomes’s feats and the later victories of the track team. Wiggins was slagged off by the community that just hours before worshipped him.
Somehow I lost interest in the on line cycling world for a few days, I have just treated myself to enjoyment of the sport on TV and the pure pleasure of riding.
It’s not just the UK. Campaigning groups in Spain have been stunned by an out of the blue announcement by a minister to say he wanted to introduce a compulsory helmet bill causing them to have to mobilise both national and international support against the proposal.
And at Velo-city Global 2012 in Vancouver the existence of a compulsory helmet law in British Columbia and the presence of so many advocates from helmet free Europe was just the combination needed to stir the debate endlessly.
Cards on the table. I am 100% against compulsory helmets. I despise the victim blaming that characterises so much reporting about cyclists’ deaths. I have despaired with families because a defence lawyer tries to suggest that not wearing a helmet was a form of negligence by the victim.
But I also wear a helmet – for mountain biking and when I used to race.
When I came to work in cycling back in 1998 I had no idea that this would be one of the discussions that would claim far too big a chunk of my life for the next 15 years – and no doubt will be around for the next 15. And that’s the problem – it just isn’t a subject that anybody outside a very narrow community can understand or engage with, least of all the cycle racing and MTB communities because the helmets are actually made for them – so why would people in lycra understand the issues of helmets for daily cycling?
And as a result it pits cyclist against cyclist, cycling advocate against road safety advocate, it gives free reign to the online trolls who attack cyclists and it heaps guilt on to people who have the most to give to cycling. The UK’s BBC are absolutely awful – they put all of their presenters at every level into helmets for any cycling story because they are so keen to “do the right thing” and they are part of the mindset that bullies politicians into helmets for the same reason.
Boris in helmet – Image from CYBERBORISJohnson
Even Boris Johnson was dragged into it for a brief time when he became Mayor of London, but Boris is self-confident enough to say “no” – unlike most others. I remember doing an interview on BBC Radio London at the London Cycle Show with the otherwise estimable Sandy Toksvig. Being the BBC they had to have “balance” so they got a senior industry manager from a major multi-national bike company whose company sell a lot of helmets to make the case for lids. When he totally agreed with me that compulsory helmets was a bad thing for cycling the presenters decided that this wasn’t on and started to argue with us themselves.
And perhaps worse of all is the pressure on parents and cycling supporters who feel they cannot let children cycle without the dreaded plastic lid unless they become labelled “bad parents” or “negligent”.
But I am just deeply saddened by the debate itself, the resources it consumes and the time and energy we have lost as a community on a debate we just are not winning and can hardly win without risking damage to ourselves during the fight. Because if society was based on intellect and analysis nobody would speed, everyone would ride bikes, climate change would be resolved and nobody would smoke. And despite the efforts of some researchers who are bashing away some poor studies from years ago offers the pro campaigners their academic fig leaf, along with the comparisons they make with other undoubted road safety successes like seat belts.
www.Cyclehelmets.org is an amazing resource and I am in deep admiration for the team of volunteers and professionals that contribute to it, it would be foolish of me to try and replicate any of those resources here.
But I did amazingly discover one small antidote in Canada, despite the compulsory helmets. Whistler is an interesting case study for all sorts of cycling issues and I will be blogging about it more.
But this community of hardened mountain bikers showed how life really could and should be in relation to helmets. Riders who actually understand cycling risk better than anyone behave in ways that just make sense.
Downhilling?
High speeds, high risk of falling? Big impact if you get it wrong? Then it is full face helmets and even body armour. Even the designs take their lead from skiing and snowboarding as can occasionally be seen when the two take place together.
Offroad cross country – roots and rocks creating a falling hazard?
Without the high speeds and the jumps of the downhill tracks the risk is lower and the impact speed is within the spec of the usual cycle helmet. The modern cycle helmet evolved from this world and it is entirely reasonable that it was designed for exactly this use.
The ride to town, or to and from the slopes?
Despite the compulsory helmet law this community knows that the good network of cycling facilities, traffic free town centre and the general understanding that motorists know cyclists are around means that the helmets are irrelevant to their safety.
And no sign that the local police feel any need to do anything about to enforce a law that was dreamed up by remote politicos in Vancouver, they recognise that cycling visitors are an engine of the local economy – so why should they hassle them?
Whistler – common sense helmet use. If only the rest of the debate was this easy.
I was told by a cycling colleague here in Brussels that I am “unusual”.
He explained that he found it really rare to find someone who was working in cycling advocacy and transport cycling who was also connected to cycle racing.
I suppose this means I should apologise to my regular blog followers who had signed up to this thinking they were reading about about cycling culture and travel. Instead you have just had a series of raves and rants about British success at the Tour de France.
Actually I’m as surprised as you are!
When I started this blog I expected to put up the occasional post about racing because it is part of my world and my roots in cycling. But when Eurosport commentator David Harmon said on during Tour de France commentary on Saturday “I never expected this in my lifetime” I was with him. Despite loving the success of the British track cycling team in the last 12 years and cheering all Cavendish’s wins on the road winning the overall in the Tour is something that is almost impossible to conceive for a British fan. Amazing being in Brussels this week and getting big celebratory handshakes off an Italian and being gifted a copy of Monday’s L’Equipe with Bradley Wiggins on the cover by an American.
I don’t feel unusual, but if I look around my community I guess I am. I have used bikes for both sport, travel and transport throughout my life, but in a country with only 30,000 racing cyclists and a transport mode share of 2% you are part of a fairly exclusive community to do either cycle racing or transport. In the high transport cycling countries like the Netherlands and Denmark the racing cyclists are of course a tiny minority even if the orange jerseys are part of a continuous successful racing tradition. And in reverse in Belgium, France or Italy – here the sport is king in terms of media and profile and they are struggling to rebuild a transport culture even if the numbers of daily cyclists actually outnumber the racers.
So I hope you will forgive me. “Normal service will be resumed shortly” probably means sometime after the Olympics, because despite my moaning and groaning about the tickets I will be by the roadside on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday with fingers crossed for the British team.
But for the moment let me enjoy my Tour de France moment. We have had to adopt almost anyone who spoke English as a champion for so many years – Irish, American, Australian and then a Canadian at the Giro d’Italia leaving the British celebrating crumbs from your table.
My Dad and I were sharing our reactions on Sunday and he immediately flashed back to his first entry into cycling in the early 50s when names like Coppi and Bartali were exotic gods read about in obscure magazines with black and white photos. Tim Hilton’s book “One more kilometre and we’re in the showers” (reviewed in the library) tells the story of being a cyclist in that period and paints the picture really well.
My own personal journey into Tour mythology starts at age 6 when I recall my dad freaking out when he was told “Simpson is dead”. I had no idea who, where or why Simpson mattered, but I still remember his response. We were of course by the roadside at a race start point at the time – it was a fixture in my childhood.
Then grainy TV coverage – just 10 minutes per week on World of Sport to cover the whole Tour for so many years, but much better to get the poster pages from Cycling magazine or Miroir du Cyclisme. I had a great picture of Merckx climbing in the classic Molteni colours on my wall for many years – British success was rare.
And the visits to the great event – Paris twice as a teenager, Alp D’Huez as a student and then two Tours in the UK were mainly exotic foreign fare. Sean Yates leading the peloton up Ditchling Beacon in 1994 was brilliant, as were the million people that came to London in 2007. But travelling hundreds of km across France to St Brieuc to watch Chris Boardman in the Tour prologue was more typical. He never even made it to our spot on the course, crashing out and fracturing his ankle on the wet road after less than 5km of a three week event.
I rode L’Etape du Tour in 2001 over the Aspin and the Tourmalet, then watched Lance destroy the field once again over the same terrain.
Other occasional heroes – Barry Hoban, Robert Millar, Sean Yates, Graham Jones, Paul Sherwen and the ANC Halfords team.
A fan who had travelled to meet David at the 2006 DD Challenge
When Channel 4 started covering the Tour every evening at peak time we learned so much more about the race under the smooth tutelage of Phil Liggett and later the ramblings of David Duffield on Eurosport. I certainly would not have dreamed that I would work with Phil and David later on, nor that the occasional commentator that worked as CTC’s Mountain Bike Officer would go on to be the same David Harmon who was moved by Bradley Wiggins last week
The current generation of riders changes everything for us fans, culminating in the yellow jersey this week. It’s been a long road, so forgive me for a week or two.
.#allezwiggo
Chapeau
In honour of one of sport’s legendary commentaries and to commemorate British success in the Tour de France. See you all on the road on #yellowsunday
“Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles de Gaulle, Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, Bernard Hinault, Brigitte Bardot, we have beaten them all, we have beaten them all. Francois Hollande can you hear me? Francois Hollande your boys took a hell of a beating!”
Going to tweet this over to Eurosport – sadly as an international broadcaster I’m sure David Harmon is far too professional these days to yell this when Cavendish hits the front on the Champs tomorrow, but one could dream.
Bjørge Lillelien, Norwegian sports journalist and commentator made the original when he commentated on Norway’s 2-1 victory against England in a World Cup qualifier in Oslo on 9 September 1981. At the end of the match, alternating between English and Norwegian, he proclaimed (in Norwegian) “We are best in the world! We have beaten England! England, birthplace of giants”, before taunting a roll call of famous English people.
“Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana, vi har slått dem alle sammen, vi har slått dem alle sammen [we have beaten them all, we have beaten them all]. Maggie Thatcher, can you hear me? Maggie Thatcher […] your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!”
Wikipedia has a good list of other parodies and a link to the original commentary which is brilliant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rge_Lillelien
An appeal for every cyclist in Britain to wear yellow in Sunday!
With acknowledgements to the wonderful Jenny Joseph poem “Warning, when I am old”
On Sunday I shall wear yellow,
And celebrate Wiggo even if yellow doesn’t suit me,
And I shall spend my money on a celebratory coffee and cake,
I will ride around and there will be no time for gardening.
I shall sit in my saddle and ride till I’m tired,
Wheel around the countryside and wave to the rest,
And know that we can shout about cycling,
And make up for the years from Anquetil to Armstrong
The challenge is on – if Bradley Wiggins wins the Tour de France on Sunday can we get every Sunday cyclist in the country to wear at least a dash of yellow? I have been folllowing cycle racing for over 40 years and this one has to be celebrated, even the BBC have noticed!
Can cycling’s poets come up with a better poem that starts with the opening line “On Sunday I shall wear yellow”?
The original: From “Warning” Jenny Joseph, 1961
When I an old woman I shall wear purple,
With a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves.
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter,
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired,
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells,
And run my stick along the public railings,
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I was quite disappointed with the lack of resources on the web when I was researching my recent cycle tour in British Columbia. It was only a short trip in summer so the risks of getting anything significantly wrong were quite low but it was quite a frustrating process.
Putting “cycle touring” or “bicycle touring” British Columbia into search engines most of what I found was commercial tour operators or tourism sites that then provided no content or links to mountain biking centres. This may be linked to how few cyclists I actually saw. It was the height of summer and I only saw three tourists despite the amazing routes I was riding.
Half a dozen useful comments might have alleviated some angst, so for what it is worth here are the things I wish I had known before I set out, written down to help any future travellers, in particular those more used to touring in Europe. It is not at all a definitive guide, it would be great if someone in BC gave some thought to this, it would really help.
Route planning – roads
My biggest fear was the fact that the bulk of the route seemed to offer nothing but main roads including Highway 1 which in any country probably indicates a very major route.
I spend time online and looking at maps to see if there were alternatives because I was quite concerned and I really couldn’t find any advice. Certainly most of the bike routes online seemed to use main roads so I guessed I would be OK.
In reality I didn’t have much to worry about for three main reasons.
However I will give this a health warning. There were some busy sections I cycled near Kamloops and Kelowna, but in both cases there were alternatives near these larger towns. My section of Highway 1 was bypassed by an alternative new route and when the two sections recombined it was much busier. The short section of a major truck route on Highway 97 North/South just north of Cache Creek indicated that this might not have been so much fun had I chosen to follow it for a long distance. And some colleagues reported that they felt that the provision of a cycle route alongside the 4 lane highway from Vancouver to Whistler just did not look safe because of vehicle speeds, but the person who rode it didn’t complain and I felt it didn’t look too bad from the bus.
However in general I would strongly say that even these specific examples were manageable and the rest were amazingly quiet and I really don’t know why I worried.
Second health warning – I wonder what this is like nearer to winter, because I guess snow could fill the shoulders even if the road is ploughed for vehicles.
I would also flag that there were really no alternatives except dirt roads in many cases. For example I spent a lot of time looking at alternatives from Cache Creek to Kamloops to avoid Highway 1. I thought it might be possible to go to Ashcroft and follow dirt roads to Savona. But I looked at several sources on paper and on line but I never really did work out whether the road went through, and one mystery line turned out to be a railway, not a road!
From the plane on my way back to Vancouver I got a much better understanding of the wide network of dirt roads in the back country because the dry weather had dried them to a yellow sand or clay colour which contrasted to the forest well. However I would not have wanted to risk them without very good mapping and a satnav or compass, and a full mountain bike because there was not a flat section in sight.
Maps and routes
I bought a map of Southern British Columbia from Amazon before I left for some route planning and stupidly managed to lose it but it was okay for planning. (British Columbia South: ITM.113)
So in Vancouver I looked for some alternatives. It was a complete disaster. The one and only map shop in Downtown Vancouver had closed and the alternative shops had a rubbish selection of town maps or maps on a huge scale that did not give enough detail for cycling. I thought I might do better in Whistler, but for an outdoor town the selection was to my eyes still really poor.
The only maps that appeared anything like the detail I would expect were a couple of atlases calling themselves “Backroads” atlases aimed at 4 Wheel Drive vehicles or Trail motorbikes. However the atlases did not cover all of my routes and would have cost me over $50 for limited benefit.
In the end I navigated using Google Maps, Bikely and pages torn from tourist guides for each region. This was of course possible because of my first point above – I was sticking to the main roads and so very large scale maps were all I needed. And in reality the maps on sale tended to meet that need – a country where the long distances mean people need big maps just to travel between population centres, or detailed local maps for the back country trails used to get into the woods or hills. Neither of these really work for the cycle tourist, but in hindsight I was not significantly disadvantaged by a lack of maps.
Real credit must go to online bike route website Bikely. Almost every road I wanted to ride had been covered by someone who had done it before so maps and profiles were available. It occasionally took some detective work to isolate just the section of road I needed and combine it with others to get an overall profile. But other sections were a perfect match, another rider doing just the same section. The key elements I needed were the confidence that the main roads were rideable and the route elevation profiles which told me the climbing. I also found mapping site geokov map maker which was great for topography.
The other thing I didn’t really find online but I now know exist are some interesting long distance cycle routes which might well have been good to try and incorporate had I known. Simple but bonkers fact is that the Trans-Canada Trail web site does not contain the word “touring” anywhere so will never be found in a search engine looking for cycle touring routes.
In Whistler I discovered that the Sea to Sky route which comes from Vancouver is being extended beyond Whistler and is intended to go on and link up with other Trans-Canada routes which form a greenway network across Canada. The section to the East of Whistler is going to be an offroad trail running away from the main highway. However it will be much slower than the road route because it climbs more and the surface is rougher but it will be great for those looking for leisurely and scenic riding.
I also found that I was riding close to an amazing cycle route called the Kettle Valley Trail which is part of a whole network of former railway lines. The “trestles” or wooden railway bridges and tunnels have in many cases been restored and apparently provide some great cycle routes. There are published guides and histories which would have made a good pre-read and I could have aimed to include some of them in my route had I found them beforehand. Doh!
Planning services
This route was in Southern British Columbia which is the relatively densely populated part of the province. Despite that there were long sections that had absolutely no services. I could easily have made some big mistakes and left myself without food and drink because these sections did include access to camp grounds and provincial park centres but unlike similar venues in other countries most of these had no public services such as shops or cafes. The ubiquitous RVs may partly be to blame, even campers travel with a week’s supplies on board.
However I am told the real reason even quite big and popular camping grounds have no services is because the season is so short and it isn’t commercially viable to open a business based on just a few weeks’ sales. Therefore I carried extra food and even put a filled a Camelback bladder with extra water in my panniers for a couple of legs.
The best guide I found was the web site Mile by Mile which actually specified what was available along a number of the roads I used but I would suggest caution because opening times can be a bit hit and miss too.
Bikes
The roads I used were in excellent condition and could be tackled on almost any road bike. I only experienced a couple of dirt roads and generally they were good too, but steep, up to 13% gradients.
However I would strongly recommend consideration of a 26 inch wheeled mountain bike set up as a road tourer. The roads are steeper than continental Europe with 10-13% encountered on several occasions so the lower gears of the MTB would be useful. I was over-geared on the bike I bought, I should have got the freewheel changed as it was probably only about a 25 tooth on a road triple which wasn’t enough. But perhaps more importantly the BC mountain bike scene is vibrant and you will find spares and repairs much easier to find, even in small towns. If you are going to buy a second hand bike as I did the range of MTBs on offer is much wider too.
That doesn’t mean foregoing dropped handlebars, I have regularly adapted them on to MTBs but I used some bar ends to get a different handlebar position.
Accommodation
I stayed in motels booked through web sites apart from the Alta Vista chalet run by Bear Back in Whistler. No real plans to carry camping gear around or buy it in Vancouver.
The advantage of the motels were:
Alta Vista Chalet would be worth using as a base (if not booked out) even if you are passing through Whistler on tour. It is a little cycling mecca – everyone on the staff and visitors is a cyclist, there is a really good workshop in the basement and the food is of the type and quantity that we love!
Three new “songs of the rides” from my British Columbia Tour on the Music to ride Bikes by page.
I really do have very little idea how my mind works with these songs of the rides. I have six days of cycling and three of them had their own theme tunes. Each song totally different in tone and origin, one just a fragment that stuck as it passed.
But each is as much a memory of the day as the words and photos in the main blog.
I hope you are singing as you are riding.
Enjoy.
I Do Not Despair 