Originally Posted by
RubenX
A cyclist's paradise would be a small town, where everybody knows everybody else and all the shops are small family owned businesses. All the roads would be wide and with clean paved shoulders. All roads should interconnect and there shall be no dead ends. The whole town should be built on a rolling hills area.
To the left of town, a great valley flat as a pancake, 200mi big, with a few neighboring cities. Wide roads with clean shoulders for intercity traveling. Distances no smaller than 20mi between cities. The cities should also have wide roads with clean shoulders and bike lanes through their downtowns. There should be an abundance of bike rack equipped coffee shops selling bagels and gatorade.
To the right of town, a great mountain range, with peaks up to 4k feet high and steep hills of all grades. Again, wide lanes and clean paved shoulders on all mountain roads. A few taverns in the mountains, selling food, gatorade and beer.
You're pretty much describing where we used to live in Victoria, Australia.
It was a small town, where everybody knows everybody else, and all/most of the shops are small family owned businesses. If you lived in town, as we did, everything was within easy walking distance. The roads were wide and and clean ... ample room for both vehicles and bicycles to co-exist peacefully. The town was built in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range.
But despite being in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range, there were 3 or 4 relatively flat roads which was just beautiful for evening cycling, or shorter weekend rides. And a little further away, out of the foothills, was a large flat area that went on for kilometers, perfect for longer weekend rides.
There were cities within 100 km, and small towns no further apart than 13 km (apparently the distance a horse could run in a day, I was told). The roads between were good, and often had shoulders (there could have been more shoulders). And within most of the towns and cities, the roads were wide and clean with ample room for both vehicles and bicycles to co-exist peacefully. And there were, of course, lots of bakeries, take-aways, and pubs.
Because our town was in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range, there were also mountains and steep hills nearby.
And the climate was pretty good ... still rideable, but a little chilly and foggy in the winter ... and really quite nice for 2/3 of the year.
It was lovely there, and I often miss it.