Cycling Holiday in France

http://www.cycling-challenge.com/100-cycling-climbs-better-than-alpe-dhuez/
Came across this in my endless cycle-googling and found it interesting. Might give something for some to think about planning such a trip.
(Was thinking of Marmotte next year, but maybe something like you suggest might suit better)

Some great alpine roads in Austria - just back from the Timmelsjoch. Plan was to do Stelvio too but the weather was bad. Superb vistas. Great surfaces. I would say the gradient are slightly higher than France. Easy to get to (via Munich). Cheap car hire in Munich. Fly with Lufthansa and your bike is free (as your checked bag -max 23kg.
I know where I will be going next June /July!

Jim Stynes wrote: »

Sounds perfect lads! Has he a website?

http://velopeloton-cycling-pyrenees.bike

Ah sorry. Misread your op but still highly recommend paddy Sweeney.

Kaisr Sose wrote: »

Some great alpine roads in Austria - just back from the Timmelsjoch....

That's a fantastic climb. I did it in 2013 from the Italian side. It was bitterly cold at the summit and the descent into Austria is the longest I've ever done - downhill for something like 60k.

I'd highly recommend the Pyrenees, having cycled in the French Alps, Italian Alps, and Dolomites and the Pyrenees the past couple of years, the Pyrenees are magical....

A great base for cycling their, for 4-5 days is argeles gazost....it's located in France...from here you can climb the famous climbs of the Col du tormalat, Col du Solour, Col d'Aubisque, Col du aspin, Luz Ardiden, contadors favourite the Hautacam and onto the Col du tramassal....and on a long cycle you could also reach the Pourtalat...fab cycling....

Jim Stynes wrote: »

Anyone ever rent out an apartment with 'More than 21 bends'?

Cant believe the price of rental bikes in some places!

I did, only 4 weeks ago.
Rented bikes from them too.

The apartment was very good.
The bikes were only average.
Really cheap tyres, I was slipping on the flats.
So descending was pedestrian, which ruins half of the alpine experience

They owner was not the nicest person I have ever met .
I am saying that mildly.

Jim Stynes wrote: »

A lot of love for the Pyrenees here which is surprising to me. Where is the best place to fly in? I went to the Alps and we had a 2 hour drive to get to dublin airport then a 2 1/2 hour from Geneva to Bourg d'oisans. Bit of a pain.

We flew Dublin to Lyon, think it was around 1 1/2hrs drive to Bourg d'oisans.

Check out Grenoble airport as it seems close too.

Jim Stynes wrote: »

:mad:

Would you recommend them? They seem to have their own properties and then one main cycling base?

Thanks for all the information lads. It's a great help. It's going to be tough deciding between the Alps or Pyrenees!

They have a shop in the town that is headquarters.
They seem to sublet other peoples property's.
We were in a 3 bed house that belonged to a retired English couple.
They were skiers and only used the place for the skiing season.

I would be conflicted on recommending them as the owner was a dick.
If anything went wrong it would pain you to deal with him.
I checked them out on TripAdvisor and other review sites when I got back and it seems like some had issues.

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

The Alps are higher but perhaps the gradients are steeper in the Pyrenees (I've never been).

In general the Pyrenees are a bit steeper and road surfaces while still good are not as good as the Alps. The real difference is that the climbs in the Pyrenees are more irregular. The Pyrenees are more rural that the Alps. The climbs tend not to be main roads so the traffic volume is much less than in the Alps. In either there are not many roads over 2000m. Why would you build them when they will be closed for 8 months of the year. There are some higher roads in the Alps but not many. The highest in the Pyrenees is Port d'Envalira in Andorra which is 2408m. The highest in France is Col de Tentes which is 2207m.

Weather wise the Pyrenees are further south and border the deserts of Northern Spain so can be hotter than the Alps. The hottest I have experienced was 39c in the shade. Out in the sun that is off the scale. As we are closer to the Atlantic we also get a lot of rain so the landscape is much greener that the Alps. The further west you go the greener it gets and afternoon thunderstorms are very common.

I generally fly Ryanair direct to Carcassonne. While not the nearest airport to the haute Pyrenees it's a very small airport and easy to get on the motorway from. Car hire isn't expensive and I always like to have a car to be able to go places.

This year I flew to Biarritz, and drove down to argeles gazost, bout 2hours or so, rented a car, could fit couple of bikes! Handy to have car too if you've interest in driving to a particular climb that's a distance away!!

Also....to throw another spanner in the works.....the Italian Dolomites are stunning, and by far the hardest of the mountain ranges I've done, they are very sheer and steep! And amazing to look at, and they're close to the Italian Alps so the stelvio and gavia and that are options to do!! Fly into Venice,!

I've organised a week long trip for a gang of lads for the last 4 years. Twice to the Alps (Bourg D'Oisan), once to Pyrenees (Bagneres-de-bigorre) and the Dolomites (Cortina D'Ampezzo). Aim for us is to get famous climbs in but also have a bit of a holiday with the lads - first 3 trips were staying in a very quiet town, no nightlife, so we did the weekend in a city (Lyon or Toulouse) for a major blowout. Cortina is reasonably lively, so was the closest to a holiday week of the 3 locations.

So for us the idea of one of the tours where you're changing location every day isn't a good fit. We rent a van and a car (generally 8-10 lads), get settled in and then you can do as many or as little climbs as you like, so lads that want more beers than cycling have options. Generally, though, the chance to do the epic climbs is too tempting to miss and even with a sore head, everyone gets up and gets them done, just pace may differ.

For a van, a 9-seater can generally hold 5 bike boxes/bags and 5 adults we found and generally worked out at about 800euro for the van for the week. Good thread here on models: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=73646542#post73646542

For route inspiration, this guy's site is champion: http://www.cycling-challenge.com/ he has great guides and loads of climbs that we wouldn't have otherwise known to do, but found to be stunning.

I started out thinking the Alps were the be all and end all of cycling. Now, I'd rank it 1. Dolomites 2. Pyrenees. 3. Alps.

That said, the Alps are still absolutely fantastic and have to be done, above is just a relative comparison, in absolute terms, the Alps still make for fantastic climbing and personally I prefer the more consistent gradients they offer vs the others as you can settle into a rhythm more. While a couple of others may be tougher, the Galibier remains my favourite climb, something truly epic about it.

If going to the Alps, can't recommend enough doing Villard-Reymond, a little-known route I found in the brilliant Cyclist magazine. I mention it in this thread (which includes great info from velopeleton also): http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=89416214 - when you're down in the valley you don't get to see the full top to bottom view of Alpe D'Huez in all its glory, climbing to Villard-Reymond gives this stunning view and was one of our most memorable days out on the bike.

Would be interested in hearing more about what Briancon is like as a base for the Alps, as we will go back at some point. Bourg D'Oisan is about 2hrs drive from Grenoble airport.

For the Pyrenees, there's plenty of options on where to stay, each with pros and cons. Bagneres-de-bigorre is a nice village, tiny and quiet as it is, but does have a fantastic natural spa. So if looking for nightlife, this ain't great, but for quiet retreat, it's perfect. Argeles-de-Gazost seemed bigger but not huge, and Luz-Saint-Saveur struck me as lovely little town while riding through it. Realistically, to hit all the best climbs in a week would likely involve some driving to a starting point a couple of days, no matter where you stay as though distances aren't huge, journey times can be high given small roads and winding and hilly terrain.

The best kept secret in the Pyrenees is Lac de Cap de Long (here) - were it not for the hero that runs the Cycling Challenge site, we'd never have heard about it, but it is both a really testing climb and an absolutely stunning site to behold, the dam at 2200metres looks like something out of the Lord of the Rings. Any locals we told that we rode that gave us a knowing nod, seems very few visitors find their way to it. Unmissable. Scenery on the Col D'Aubisque is also truly amazing. Best mountain biking I've done was in the Pyrenees too.

The Cortina D'Ampezzo gave us something very different - staying in what's closer to a city than a town and has plenty of good restaurants and a few bars. And we stayed in a slick apartment from AirBnB. Everything about Cortina, flights, accommodation, car/van rental, food etc. was noteably more expensive than either the Alps or the Pyrenees though. But it has such amazing scenery (the view from Cortina is like being in Sound Of Music), and offers a broad range of activities (hiking, amazing mountain biking, all sorts of water sports and other outdoor pursuits), as well as more going on in the social side of things, we felt it was worth it.

Due to flight schedules, we flew into Milan Bergamo and it's a long drive - easily over 4hrs. Ability to chop down that journey time is minimal as it's narrow roads for the latter half. Venice would be better.

In and around the Dolomites what looks like a short journey on a map is generally not - there is no such thing as flat road around there, it's all steep terrain and journey times go up as a result.

It's hard to describe the scale of the scenery in the Dolomites. It's like the most jaw-dropping other-worldly sheer cliffs of the Galibier. But everywhere. As you climb, you find yourself distracted from the hurt by the beauty of it. And boy is there plenty to cause hurt. There is no end of brilliant climbs everywhere you look. We did an adjusted version of the Maratona dles Dolomites route which added in an extra 5km of climbing from Cortina to join the route which made it 4750metres of ascent in 140km vs 4850m in 174km for La Marmotte. Given that you go over 2,200metres elevation 5 times in that route, we all found it a tougher challenge than La Marmotte, which is saying something (we've done both routes in 37degree heat).

Another Cycling Challenge hidden gem was Tre Cime di Lavaredo (here) which finishes with easily the toughest 4km section I've come across. Gradient maps always seem under-stated vs the more accurate barometric altimeter on a Garmin, but never moreso than in the Dolomites where the phrase of the week was 'average gradients mean nothing'. Those last 4km never seemed to go below 14%, even on the hairpins, they were utterly unrelenting but made for a great sense of achievement when you get to see the view at the top. As a keen descender, this was the first time I've ever been really nervous as that gradient had 2 of us blowout on the descent, thankfully we were both scratching off all speed in a straight line before entering the hairpin, so were able to control it. Be careful though.

The peaks of Lavaredo and Falzarego climbs both have treks or cable cars up to open air World War I museums where you will be stunned to find the scale of the tunnels the Italians and Austrians dug into the mountains up to 2800m up to fight each other and control the valleys below. One of the best touristy things I've done in Europe, a real bonus.

As advised here, it turns out Cortina isn't a good location for Stelvio, Mortirolo and Gavia. But we did an epic day trip to Passo di Stelvio - about 4.5hrs each way. But so, so worth it. Having done almost all the biggies in the Alps, Pyrenees, Dolomites (excluding Gavia and Mortirolo, which I believe is a monster), and also done Ventoux & Lagos di Covadonga (an Alpe D'Huez equivalent in northern Spain), the debate about what is the toughest climb we've done generally rages on and on. Until Stelvio. It is just quite simply the Daddy of them all. When you get to the restaurant near the top, the sight to the finish is incredible, you've got about 6km left to do and about 700m more to ascend, but yet it feels like the finish is within touching distance. It is almost as if a ladder has been leaned up against the mountain, such is the zig-zagging steepness of the road ahead. And you have done about 19km of climbing before that point, most of it above 9% gradient. For me, there is no combination of climb length, gradient and awe-inspiring scenery to match it that I've come across. Definitely worth factoring into your choice of base, or planning a day/overnight trip to.

We'll be back to hit up Gavia and Mortirolo at some point for sure.

Anyways, just wanted to share these thoughts in case any of it is useful for boardsies planning trips to these areas as we benefitted from plenty of advice shared by posters here when originally planning the trips. Bottom line is, you'll have a great time in any of these locations.

Hey OP, I'll be in France cycling in July 2016 also. Thanks for commencing this thread. I'll be ticking two-definite-cycles off my bucket-list but have given myself extra days in around certain areas from the research I've been doing.
Still plans to finalise and some current plans are off-the-wall unless I kick my ass into gear, however,

Thanks for this thread and Thanks all for the replies & guidance thus far,
kerry4sam