avatarworf

I've been putting together a slideshow of our trip over the past few days and looking over all our photos made me think about my favourite places. From that, I wrote this: 10 Places to Ride Your Bike Before You Die

The list, in no particular order, is:

1. Serra da Estrela in Portugal
2. Dolomite Mountains in Italy
3. Zagora to Tafraoute in Morocco
4. Shiraz to Yazd in Iran
5. Eastern Oregon in the USA
6. Molesworth Road in NZ
7. Tasmania in Australia
8. Interior Turkey
9. Lake Song Kol in Kyrgyzstan
10. Along the Mekong in Cambodia

I'd like to hear your list, so we can start planning our next trip

minneapolis.sam

A rather unknown treasure is the midwest in the fall.
Take a tour around Lake Superior in late September-October.

With that said, here's my list (having never toured yet, it may be a tad impractical however personal).

10. foothills of Himalayan mountains
9. Trans-Continental Trail
8. The Great Divide Trail
7. Israel/Egypt
6. somewhere within either arctic circle (possible?)
5. Through the Andes Mountains and/or Amazonian basin
4. Through the Cascade Mountains
3. U. K. countryside
2. Russia
1. Lake Superior shoreline

mev

Two different approaches to my list. First a few places I haven't been but that are still on my dream list:
1. Pamir Mountains through Tajikistan
2. Karakurum Highway in Pakistan
3. Lhasa to Katmandu
4. Trans-Labrador Highway to Goose Bay
5. Length of Chile to southern tip
6. Southern Island of New Zealand
7. Rajastan in Northern India with perhaps swing north to Jammu and Kashmir

Then some places I have been that I would recommend:
1. Lake Baikal; particularly after a long ride through taiga and forests to finally reach and see the lake. Stunning views and sense of accomplishment at seeing the lake.
2. Across tropics of Australia. Relaxed riding across the Outback with reasonable roads, temperate weather (during dry season).
3. Along the Taklamkan Desert in China. Deserts have their own beauty with large sweeping vistas, slowly changing landscapes, long views and big open skies.
4. Northern Island of New Zealand. Surprising amounts of variation across a small distance.
5. Newfoundland. A simpler and more rugged place to visit than more touristy areas in Atlantic Canada such as Nova Scotia or PEI
6. Yunnan Province China. "Shangri-La", Tiger-Leaping Gorge, Lijiang and other places different from populated coastal regions of China.
7. Klondike loop from Haines to Skagway. History, good riding and wild scenes of Yukon and Alaska.
8. Dempster Highway. A taste of the wilds of the Yukon and NWT.
9. Southern India. Sights, sounds, smells and sensory overload.
10. Death Valley, that thing about deserts again.

avatarworf

Wow, some great ideas here. The Pamirs are on my 'to do' list as well as the Himalayas.

Can definitely vouch for Newfoundland as place that would be great to tour. Lake Superior I'm not so sure about, having done the bottom half of it this summer. The UP was definitely nice but in other places there was a lot of traffic and you don't see the lake as often as you might think or hope.

blaise_f

I like your in-depth list of the 10 'places to visit', avatar. They go into great depth as to why, and stray from the often normal "Taj Mahal" kind of list (while an amazing place, a very touristy touch, popular for it's own reasons, but something you hear about a lot). They give me a reason to want to visit those places. My list is too vast, as I wish to see what I haven't seen. South Africa, Arctic Circle and Tibet come to mind however.

axolotl

I've posted about the following site previously, but it meshes nicely with this thread. It's one couple's list of their top 25 countries for touring. I believe they've biked in over 60 countries.

https://www.ridetheroad.com/web/world.aspx#best

I've biked in 10 of their top 20. I agree with some of their choices, disagree with others. Overall, I think they have a useful website.

I think I may have posted my top places previously, and I wouldn't be surprised if what I write today differs from whatever I wrote in the past. Having said that, my favorite touring destinations among the places I've toured thus far:

southwestern France (Lot & Dordogne valley region)
La Region de los Lagos in northern Patagonia (Chile & Argentina)
northern Rockies, USA
northern Laos
northern Thailand
South Island, New Zealand (I liked the North Island, too, and I don't think it gets the respect it deserves, but I still have a preference for the South Island)
Corsica
Swiss/French Alps
Tasmania
Hawaii (favorite islands were Kauai & Maui)

Places I'd like to tour:

southern India
parts of Indonesia (Sulawesi, Bali, Lombok)
Cuba (if my government ever permits me to do it legally)
South Africa (if my safety concerns are resolved)

Roughstuff

Arf! Now thats a challenge. I am biased toward Mtn regions. Also, I'll restrict my list to places I have actually bicycled thru. No particular order....

Banff/Jasper highway
Going to the Sun Road
Central and Eastern Alps
Central and Southern Peru
Karakoram highway
PanAm thru central america
Source(s) of the Euphrates
Grand Trunk Road
Appalachians at Foliage Time
North Cascades National Park region
Sayan Mts/Lake Baikal Region
Chilean Lake District

roughstuff

stevage

axlotl covered the only ones I can think of:
- GDT
- tasmania (maybe tasmania trail, maybe on road)
- nz south island
- french/swiss/italian alps
- elsewhere in france
- some or all of the bicentennial national trail here in australia

Well, there's lots of places, really. But the location isn't everything.

niknak

I've been to Iceland and New Zealand and would highly recommend both. To stick with the island theme, I'd like to tour in Madagascar, Japan, Tasmania and Cuba. I'd also love to do the continental divide, and I wish Colombia was safer.

Al Downie

Scottish Highlands and Islands
Norwegian Fjords (would love to do this from Murmansk to Southern tip)
Hokkaido
Rural China
Almost anywhere in the USA
Patagonia (only with guaranteed tailwind!)
Almost anywhere in France, but would love to include Canal du Midi

avatarworf

Everything we've heard about Colombia from cyclists in the past year or so is that it is now safe and is an absolutely wonderful place to tour. My impression (without having researched this in depth) is that the situation has drastically changed for the better in the last 5 years.

avatarworf

+1 We used their site a little bit on our tour. While slightly outdated in some parts now, they do have some good info. Definitely worth looking at.

stevage

Wow, they're so scientific about it. But I don't understand how they gave Laos a 5 for information ("In general, it was hard to get any information about the roads."), and France only an 8 ("There is a plethora of excellent guide books on France and specifically cycling in France.") Huh? And so they don't like French people...(4/10) hmm.

>As a general rule, the French have more respect for the bicycler than you will find anywhere in the world.

That's kind of true...but France is also the only country I've ever had a car deliberately run me off the road. Twice in 5 minutes. My crime? Riding the wrong way up a one-way street...

Hmm, can't wait to go back now.

Al Downie

So is that not *really* a crime if you're a cyclist?

Machka 

-- The Canadian Rockies. I'd suggest a run from Calgary, down around the Black Diamond/Turner Valley area, on into Banff, across to Radium Hot Springs on Hwy 93, up to Golden on Hwy 95, on up the Icefield Parkway to Hwy 11 (Saskatchewan River Crossing), and out and back on Hwy 11 to Nordegg or Rocky Mountain House, on up to Jasper, west on Hwy 16 and down to Valemount, on down Hwy 5 to Kamloops ... and then either a meander over to Vancouver or back to Calgary. Something like that.

-- Vancouver Island. I've done a bit of cycling there and loved it, and want to go back to do more.

-- Tasmania. I spent 3 weeks cycling there, and 3 weeks driving around, and I love it!

-- Queensland ... from Cairns up to Cape Trib and over onto the Atherton Tablelands. I'm not sure I would want to live there, but I love the tropics up there!!

-- France. I've cycled from Brest in the west to Strasbourg in the east, and some areas north of that. France is a great place to cycle in general, but I especially enjoyed cycling along the canals between Nancy and Strasbourg. There are, I believe, 175 km of tow paths along the canals in that area.

-- Wales. Who knew you could be so remote when England, right next door, is so busy. I've done the southern part of Wales, but have seen enough pictures of the northern part and along the coast to make me want to go back.

-- Manitoba. OK, this one may seem a bit odd because it doesn't have spectacular mountain scenery or anything like that, but I loved cycling there and the friendly people out in the country are wonderful and the beaches are great. I'd recommend taking in Riding Mountain National Park, then going down to Spruce Woods Provincial Park, maybe up to St Ambroise on Lake Manitoba, over to Birds Hill Provincial Park, up on the west side of Lake Winnipeg to Hecla, making sure to stop in at Gimli, of course, and then up the east side of the lake to Victoria Beach, and then you could make your way down to the Whiteshell Provincial Park, and on into Kenora in Ontario.

-- Wilsons Prom. I have cycled to Wilsons Prom twice and I love it there ... but I'm not sure what sort of condition it is in now that the fires have come through and have burnt 50+% of it. It was a lovely place with very little human traffic and a lot of wildlife.


And places I want to go ...

-- the Canadian Maritimes
-- NWT/Yukon/Alaska
-- New Zealand
-- Japan
-- South America

axolotl

Some of their individual category ratings are definitely odd. They only give Roads in France an 8 although they have no criticism at all. French roads are the best I've ridden on anywhere from a surface, engineering, and network standpoint. British roads inexplicably get a 9. Sri Lanka gets a 7, and a lot of the roads there were pretty bad. Another problem is that each category gets the same weighting, whereas I'd argue that certain categories are "more equal" than others, such as Safety, Roads, and weather. If you fear for your safety, the other categories become irrelevant. If the roads are unrideable, it's game over. If it rains all the time (like during my tour in Ireland), that's a major negative in my book. Fluids? Unless there are no fluids available at all, who cares? But nevertheless, I've found it's a useful guide. I think it probably influenced my decision to go to Sri Lanka. While the roads were sometimes pretty bad (and others were fine) and the cycling was sometimes great, sometimes not so great, the country itself was one of my very favorite places I've visited.

Roughstuff

How about ten places to tour after you die?

By the way great to hear about Colombia being 'safe' for touring again. It was 'safe' when I was there too.

roughstuff

raybo

For what it's worth, Friedel started this same thread at lonelyplanet.com and it has lots of responses there too: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntre...40326&tstart=0

My list would look something like this:

UK end to end (next May)
Fall Colors in New England (next September?)
New Zealand
Southeast Asia
Icefields Parkway
Italy
More of France
Germany
Tasmania

Ray

Machka 

A lot of people suggest the Icefield Parkway. I love the Icefield Parkway ... it's gorgeous and a great place to ride. But as I suggested in my post above (Post #15), I would include a lot of the surrounding area.

-- Hwy 93 between Castle Junction and Radium Hotsprings is much quieter and just as scenic.

-- Hwy 95 between Radium Hotsprings and Golden is a gorgeous, easy highway with no challenging climbs but lots of scenery.

-- Hwy 11 from Saskatchewan River Crossing to Rocky Mountain House is a breath-taking road in terms of scenery ... and has wide shoulders and next to no traffic.

I'd even suggest following the "Cowboy Trail" (Hwy 22) in Alberta which runs along the east side of the Rockies (I ran my brevets up and down sections of that road)
https://www.thecowboytrail.com/

So yes, definitely take in the Icefield Parkway ... but don't forget the surrounding area. You could easily spend 2 or 3 weeks cycling in the area.

My Icefield Parkway and surrounding area collection of photos:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/1430288...7619203595712/

NoReg

The problem with a good percentage of these places is they sound like an oxygen set and those pills that gave Cayote the big guns would be required for most of them. It's always easy to come up with an answer like "nepal" (just guessing). The list I am looking for is "the 10 best flat empty places next to water", and "the ten best offroad trips with lots of wild camping and minimal development", of at least 1000 miles.

avatarworf

I like your ideas! I will put them on my ideas list Would you believe there's a place in Holland that fits into your second category? Well, maybe not 1,000 miles but easily a few days of camping, no development and all off road.

Machka 

You must have missed my post where I suggested Manitoba then. Go back and reread Post #15.

And also in my post just above yours I suggested the Cowboy Trail (Hwy 22) in Alberta. It's 700 km in one direction and is not actually in the mountains, it runs along side them. It is hilly, but they are rolling hills, not massive climbs, and the area is pretty remote.

Ekdog

Avatarworf,

It's nice to see someone mention Portugal for a change. I tour there frequently as it's close to where I live and I absolutely adore the place. Lovely people, beautiful architecture, great cuisine, low prices as compared to Spain. In June I rode the coast from Lagos to Sagres to Caldas da Rainha and was amazed at how pristine most of it was. Surprisingly, I didn't see another touring cyclist during the whole trip.

Went back in September and did some riding in the northern part of the country: Puebla de Sanabria (Spain)--Bragança--Mogadouro--Freixo de Espada à Cinta--Barca D' Alva, then back into Spain and over to Ciudad Rodrigo.

Having read about your adventures in the Serra da Estrela, I'm thinking that might be a nice place to go in the spring.

mev

It isn't all next to water, but the Nullarbor meets criteria of flat empty places. While there are hilly bits, I found a lot of Australia to be fairly flat. Avoid Tasmania, the Blue Mountains and some other places and you can find some flatter riding in Australia e.g. from Brisbane northwards to Cairns or from Darwin to Perth.

It isn't empty, but cycling through the Baltic States, Denmark and the Netherlands would be good candidates for flat and next to water - though you'd have to circle some to get to your 1000 miles. (I did 900 miles in the Netherlands, on one trip but ended up going through all provinces). Florida also isn't empty but some of the riding through the interior is surprisingly good compared to the busier coasts.

niknak

Believe it or not, Iceland meets that description if you stay on the ring road. We only had one big climb in 5 weeks of riding. Once you get away from the capital, traffic is sparse. And there wasn't a day that went by that we weren't riding along the coast or along a river.