Tag: Alps

More planning for our tour of the Alps

Posted on by elliebees in Alps, News, Planning

So with our 6 cycling stages roughly planned, it was time to sort out, transport and accommodation.

Our current plan is to drive from Bristol down to Dover to catch a ferry over to France. The best way seems to be to hire a van for the bikes and a people carrier or minibus for, well for the people.

Small issue. Brexit. Currently no one can tell us if we can take a hire vehicle over to France this summer. So we have put the transport issue to one side for now.

Accommodation was a slightly easier task. Online hotel booking tools are so much help with this. Hannah and Eloise sat down on Sunday and booked almost all our overnight stays. There was a bit of juggling involved when a place couldn’t be found in exactly the right town. It was important to check what difference it would make to our planned routes. It might only be 3 miles from the town we want to stay, but its no good if its 3 miles off route.

The biggest issue we found was trying to find accommodation in L’Alpe d’Huez. It is one of the bigger places we wanted to stay. It wasn’t until we received a helpful email from one of the chalets we had contacted about availability that we found out that it is Alpe d’Huzes Dutch Charity week . This a major Dutch charity event that happens every year, competitors either compete as individuals or in teams with the aim of cycling up the 21 Bends at least 6 times in one day.

We are now currently planning a bit of a re-route so that we don’t need to stay in L’Alpe d’Huez overnight.

Our first challenge of 2019

Posted on by bristolmilemonkeys in Alps, Challenges, News

This years first challenge is to conquer as many of the famous alpine climbs as we can in 6 days.

Where is the challenge taking place?

This year we are basing our challenge in the French Alps. We will be doing a clockwise circular tour taking as many of the climbs as we can. Due to logistics we will be doing the whole route on our bikes rather than getting a mini bus between the climbs.

On average we will be doing about 65 miles a day and about 10,000 ft of climbing.

Some of the climbs we will be tackling are Col d’Iseran, Col du Télégraphe, Col du Galibier, Alpe d’Huez, Lacets de Montvernier , Col de la Croix de Fer, Col de la Madeleine.

When is the Challenge?

We are planning to do this at the beginning of June, hopefully the conditions will be good and all the snow will have melted.

Who is taking part?

We currently have 6 riders taking part, some from our previous mountain challenge and some new faces.

Route Planning

Posted on by elliebees in Alps, Challenges, News, Planning

One of our first steps in planning is our routes.   We need to work out where we will be stopping each night so we can book our accommodation.  We also need to make sure that the distances and climbing each day is achievable.  There is a difference between challenging ourselves and being broken on the second day.  Its not just the riders we have to consider but also our support crew.  Their day doesn’t stop once the cyclists have finished, so we need to make sure the days aren’t too long for them as well.

So this week we sat down with the Strava website to create our routes.  We have now 6 days of routes planned with some amazing and iconic climbs.   Most of the days will be about 65 miles with 10,000 feet of climbing.  We will be doing some of the classic cols such as Col du Galibier, Col de la Croix de Fer, Col du Telegraphe, Alpe d’Huez, Lacet de Montvernier, Col de la Maderleine.

Next step will be planning on how we get to ourselves and all the bikes over to the Alps.