I’ve wanted to do this forever, I grew up watching the Tour de France, Sean Kelly, Indurain, Hinault and Le Monde. Never forget watch the fights up Alpe D’Huez and always wanted to cycle in France.

Combine this with a love of red wine and there’s a recipe.

Both my wife and son have their heads in books at this year, our business is pretty much running itself and so when EasyJet put lots of seats on sale just after Christmas I booked a one way ticket to Bordeaux from Liverpool with the aim of flying with my road bike and cycling home : around 600 miles. The seat was £22 and the bike £45, too good to be true ? No just EasyJet.

For anyone considering Liverpool airport as a channel just book, it’s one of those gem of an airports. Small, good motorway access, well organised and reasonable parking, it’s now mainly dominated by EasyJet and they really do what they promise. Basic, cheap flights which are generally on time and transparent pricing, If you want short haul travel in Europe then EasyJet have probably changed your life. We booked a late deal to Copenhagen the week before I left for Bordeaux (£32 return this time).

After the logistics of cycling home started to sink in, I began to have large second thoughts. The distances were fine and the French leg was bliss. Bordeaux - La Rochelle - Nantes - St Malo what else could you ask for ?

It’s only when I started trying to plan the British leg that I started to lose the will to live.

After cycling for 40 years on British roads I know what to expect. 25 years ago, I spent my first student loan check on the one of the first batch of Specialised mountain bikes to come into the U.K. People just stopped and stared thinking something had landed from Mars. I’ve been hit, bashed, threatened, spat at, told to get road tax (sorry but I do have £100,000 of cars at home) and ended up in hospital twice.

Put simply British roads are not somewhere I would advise anyone to be on a bike.

The home leg worked out as 4 days through the Cotswolds, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Telford, Stoke, Warrington and Preston.

The mental image that broke the camel’s back was quite simply Warrington on a Friday evening, anyone who knows the area, knows what I mean.

It it didn’t take long to realise that I may as well take 5 strychnine pills and cut out the suspense, not fun.

I decided to simply complete a circuit around the area around Bordeaux and fly back with the bike to a Liverpool. It was the right decision.

My days of camping are are well and truely over so I bought a couple of small Ortlieb panniers (they are brilliant! and booked nice hotels for each night,

Anyone contemplating lone distance “credit card” touring , I wouldn’t do this again. The pro riders have off days and days off. Next time I’d just take my chances with hotels and do daily distances based on how I felt on the day without being committed to prebooked hotels.

Day One : Flying from Liverpool to Bordeaux then cycling to Margaux.

Very much looking forward to your report! Planning my trip to western France, should be further along than I am!

Yes, don’t mention Armstrong.

He don’t destroy the reputation of the world’s greatest race single handed but he was so high profile the effect was profound.

It’s worrying to see that he is still so far in denial that only last week he was widely interviewed stating that he thought he had done no wrong and that he had no regrets.

The current group of riders have to make race under unimaginable conditions to try to win the Tour only to have most of the world shrug their shoulders with the throw away comment “they are all on drugs”.

Flight

Flkght out from Liverpool was at 2.00pm which for me is the most civilised time. Get up at a reasonable time, get some rhythm to the day, get the bags together, drive for an hour, have lunch then fly. Perfect.

i was extremely concerned about putting a bike on a plane. As ever with the internet there’s only bad news out there and there are many stories supported by horror photographs of how X airline wrecked my bike.

My Bianchi is the cheapest they produce at £800 but it is 5 years old and ho,d huge sentimental value as it is my first road bike. Love it to bits, we have been through a lot.

I used a hard fabric bike case, borrowed from a friend and checked in as if I was handing over an 18 month old baby.

Liverpool Airport is so efficient it took 13 minutes to get from the car to the gate, all the early morning flights had left and so security was deserted.

We took off on time and landed 15 minutes early, I hung back at the steps to watch the ground staff unload the bike and it was as if they were handling an 18 month old baby. The bike came through the outsize luggage section, I checked it to find it was in absolutely prefect condition.

I had felt extremely exposed in the preceding minutes as I was stuck for the first time with no car hire, six hotels booked and my only mode of transports in tens of pieces with no idea of what condition I was going to find it.

That should have have been the hard part over, it wasn’t. The hard part was tying to find the least miserable taxi driver who was prepared to take me a mile down the road to the Novotel Hotel. Four refused because there wasn’t enough money it it for them , I had to offer the fifth driver 15 euros for a 90 second journey. When we arrived he wanted 20!

Left Luggage

I see many enquiries on Fodors about where to leave luggage. I had a headache as I needed somewhere to leave my bike case for a week whilst I cycled.

I discovered Nannybag.com who have an agency agreement with Accor hotels (Ibis / Novotel) you can pay to leave your bag at the hotel in an insured environment for any amount of time. It worked really well. The hotel were really helpful and I was pretty shocked by the standard of the Novotel. In the U.K., I had them down as scruffy motels which I wouldn’t go near. The hotel at Bordeaux airport was smart and newly refurbed, close the the standards we see from SAS Radisson.

It took about 45 minutes to construct the bike and I set off to cycle the 17 miles to Margaux. It was early Saturday evening and the roads were absolutely deserted.

Navigation

Most of my friends use Strava for cycling, I haven’t used any technology in the past because I know most of the roads between Glasgow and Birmingham. Prior to the trip, I bought a £5 floppy plastic iPhone holder for the handlebars, a small tool bag for the handlebars and put a 5 x top up battery in the bag.

I used Strava for about two months prior to the trip and really didn’t like it. You all know what like is like after 50 , there’s only black and white, love to or hate it. I hated Strava.

At the last minute, I bought the worldwide maps for Kamoot on a recommendation for £30 and cannot have been more happy. My UK data plan was carried over to France and with a huge battery capacity, navigation was incredibly easy. Kamoot is very good at picking out suitable cycle paths, small roads and detecting heavy traffic, it’s a very powerful friend to have as a cyclist.

I arrived at sunset to this

Ps sorry for some of the posts , I’m using an iPhone and can’t even see autocorrect at its evil tricks.

I'm also really tired after landing back from Bordeaux on a Sunday, driving 350 miles starting at 4am on Monday to buy my dream car and then working everyday since for my sins.

Pps don’t anyone tell you that road trips in the U.K. are feasible, our motorways are dire!

janisj you were right all along.

Don’t you know Kerouac?

50 is the new 40.

You may like this one.

On the roundabout just south of Margaux on Saturday evening was a group campaigning for the EU elections. Which I found odd in itself because Britain isn’t noted for its EU campaigns not someth8ng we are used to.

I pulled up on the bike asked for an A4 sheet and wrote out

Brexit

Oui

Non

I ticked the non box and rode off. They looked as if ET had landed from another Galaxy.

Normally we take our knackered old bikes but flew Ryanair to Riga and I wouldn't trust them with a boiled egg, so yes a good hire @ €12 a day for good basic tourer. Empty roads, food bland and a bit chilly. Still chateau last night was €50 for double.


​​​​​We are using "maps me".

E12 a day is good, have you prebooked the hotels ?

Yep, agree about Ryanair. Like sleeping with the devil but I can’t be bothered anymore.

Last time I used them, when I was boarding in Liverpool I saw a passenger reading The Sun on the back seats. Bit odd because The Sun isn’t Liverpool’s most popular paper, thought nothing of it.

10 minutes later, a stewardess came over and in broadest and bestest scouse said “ that’s my paper” . The argument proceeded nicely for 5 minutes and ended with the stewardess calling the passenger a “lying t*** “.

Just like the customer service on Singapore Airlines !?!?

Am greatly enjoying your TR, there’s no way I can do anything similar and even though we walk/hike a lot we get from point A to point B on four wheels, lol!

BTW, we were at a wedding reception last Saturday and the vin du jour was am excellent Château Giscours, to die for...

Geetika

It’s a pretty classy place that offers Giscours as a Vin du Jour, it’s expensive !

Sunday

Woke at 6am and got on the road within half and hour. The weather was perfect, like most mornings we experience in Charleston during Autumn. No wind, no clouds just so peaceful.

i hate cycling to timetable, you just spend all your time looking at the clock rather than enjoying what’s around. Unfortunately, the ferry a cross the Gironde estuary was 50 miles away and the timings were either 11:45am or 1:45pm , really wanted the morning sailing.

The route through the Medoc is just stunning rolling hills with very gentle inclines with just opulent Chateaux producing the world’s most famous and expensive wines.

The D2 road is know as the Route Des Vins for good reason.

First was the old British favourite, Chateau Margaux. This stuff was the tipple of the drunken upper middle classes 40 years ago. Your average medical consultant or lawyer had a bottle every week with Sunday lunch. Then the 80s appeared and new money invaded. Prices now are ridiculous for Premier Growth Left bank wine or Premier Grand Cru Classe Right bank - around e500 a bottle. Not something I’m ever going to enjoy.

Chateau Margaux just looks magical like a Oxfordshire Georgian mansion, immaculately maintained

There then is a chain of around ten villages, the names of which many may recognise Tayac, LaMarque, St Julien, Pichon Longueville, Pauillac, Saint Estephe.

They are all immaculate toy town villages with a functional boulangerie and many, many stunning Chateau all of varying sizes. I love classical architecture and have this silly habit of greeting any nice property in France with “Bonjour”. There were lots of Bonjours that morning of varying degrees of magnitude.

After all the messing around and stopping to take photographs, my average speed had dropped considerably and I had to get a move on after Saint Estephe. The countryside north of here is fairly uninteresting scrub but the coast is dotted by a huge number of fishing shacks with photogenic hinged nets. They are so symbolic of the Gironde




I made the ferry with 20 minutes to spare.

The area at the head of the Gironde reminds me so much of the areas of North Carolina near Wilmington. Vibrant, middle market seaside resorts, marshes and ferries. Love it.

There’s very little to Verdon sur Mer on the south side cross on the ferry and Royan is very busy, solid middle market, lovely beaches and many, many restaurants. There’s little history but it looks like a good place for a seaside break.

The cycle up to La Rochelle was around 50 miles through beautiful marsh land and quiet roads. 000s of wading birds, many Osprey and Black Kites, deer crossing were a danger on two occasions. This is where we get things wrong in Britain. We don’t know how to effectively develop our coastline to enjoy it. In this area of France, there are many, many shack and up market contemporary restaurants which seem to do nothing more than throw out fishing nets or keep oyster beds and serve up what they catch.

I only wish I could have spent more time in the area.

One really interesting feature was in Rochefort. I really didn’t like the town itself but it is home to a stunning piece of industrial architecture




The transporter bridge is one of the few remaining left in France, it isn’t currently operational but is being renovated. It’s an impressive sight from miles around, there is a small boat ferry to get you across the river.

From here there’s a string of seaside resorts up to La Rochelle, I arrived there about 4pm to stay at The Novetel, booked as it had a pool which I needed. As in Bordeaux, the hotel was newly renovated and the room was well above the e90 I paid.

You Tube

You Tube

>> It’s a pretty classy place that offers Giscours as a Vin du Jour, it’s expensive ! <<

“Vin du jour” was a euphemism. This was a big wedding and they only had three kinds of wine, a white, red (the Margaux) and champagne... trust the French to get their wines right! Needless to say I partook liberally of the latter two.

We’re looking to spend about a week in the Bordeaux region in September 2020, would ideally like to go for two weeks and include Dordogne, but that looks a little difficult.

Nothing I would consider doing myself, but enjoying reading about it.