We’ve been back home a while and busy with other things, but now a quick wrap-up of the snappily named BerJog-BerWin-LeWin multi-tour, and specifically its BerWin leg. I’ve updated our map of all cycle tours and doodled a map just for BerJog-BerWin-LeWin because I’m incapable of leaving things to your imagination! Caroline The Stats has added some facts and figures for your amusement.
I said I’d comment on our experiences touring in the UK versus Europe.
Firstly, the weather! I’m hesitant to generalise from a small sample, but both our UK tours have had prolonged rainy spells. In Europe we’ve had severe weather but it tends to be one bad day and not prolonged. I guess the difference between a maritime and continental climate.
Most of our European tours have followed major rivers, and consequently our stops have been rich with cultural cities. Lots of things to see and do, lots of places to eat and drink. British tourism seems to emphasise landscape over culture; maybe because we have so many beautiful places, maybe because London sucks the life out of our regional centres, or we don’t cherish the culture in other cities (sad to see Liverpool ousted from UNESCO world heritage status).
I can’t ignore the state of cycle infrastructure. In one sense we are fortunate: there is a wealth of very low-traffic lanes in Britain. Other, more recently-developed countries might have just one way to go city-to-city, and it can be monstrous (Romania, ugh!) But we sorely lack the visionary, high quality cycleways of Germany, Netherlands and Denmark. Even France has invested heavily in tourist-attracting routes on the Eurovelo network.
Don’t want to end on a sad note though! We have happy memories of the wild and remote places, the exceedingly steep hills and extreme weather of the Pennine Cycleway 🙂
Meet us at Land’s End in September.