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Three of the best cycling holidays
Chris Carter looks at some of the best places to saddle up for the ultimate cycling holidays.
Mountain bikes rarely tackle anything more demanding than a muddy towpath, says Tim Moore in the Financial Times. But the Canvas Hotel, a yurt retreat in a lonely corner of Norway, is an ideal place to experience the real thing. The landscape is "a mountain biker's fantasy". On his trip, Moore flew "across chuckling streams and up heathery dales through thickets of pine and birch and with a reedy whoop and whitened knuckles, I swoop down and up a pendulous Indiana Jones rope-bridge laid over a bouldered chasm". He also "falls off quite a lot".
But it's not all hard work. On your return from a day's biking you're introduced to the dining marquee, where Desmond Ngoni, the "gregarious Zimbabwean chef", introduces his evening menu.The hotel also has just the thing to nurse scrapes and bruises. "One afternoon disappears in the sauna tent, and another is swallowed up in one of the steaming lakeside baths."
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The Majorcan town of Pollena is a Mecca for cyclists, says Oliver Gill in City AM. The island is "glorious, with only the odd goat threatening to cause mischief for cyclists on the long descents that follow sweat-inducing climbs". Cycling tour operator Velusso will take you there and combine "a luxurious break with a darn good workout" by organising bike tours for you alongside a professional cycling coach.
After a day's riding, tailored to your ability, you return to the firm's villas, situated just outside Pollena. These have "fantastic" views of the old port town and the mountains, a masseuse is on hand to soothe aching muscles, and a "local star chef" prepares dinner. Velusso's cycling tours "strike a great balance" you get enough exercise to "justify eating well and rewarding yourself with a couple of drinks".
"We freewheeled out of the courtyard of the Chteau de Chissay, where we'd spent the night and eaten a memorably delicious meal," says Marcel Theroux in The Daily Telegraph, who was on a four-day cycling holiday with his wife, "pootling" through the Loire Valley. "It was the chteau of a fairy tale, all echoing donjons and ancient gargoyles."
"Just beyond Chisseaux, we took a path through a deep forest to an enchanting view of the Chteau de Chenonceau (pictured above), whose two-storey bridge over the Cher is one of the emblematic images of the region." The tour finished up at L'Aubinire at St-Ouen-les-Vignes, where you are reunited with your luggage. Before dinner, try the spa it is "heavenly".
From £1,149 for the six-night Loire Gastronomic Cycling trip SeeHeadwater.com
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(Image credit: Silvrshootr)
Fatbiking at a Californian ski resort
"Fatbikes so namedbecause of theircomically thick tyres are the latest trend incycling," says MeropeMills in The Guardian. "They look like themonster trucks of thebiking world and aredesigned for riding onsurfaces you'd thinkwould be impossibleto cycle on, such assand and, in particular,snow." Tahoe Donner inCalifornia is a downhilland cross-country skiingresort that has recentlybowed to pressure inopening up some ofits trails to fatbiking.
"I found myself gentlybobbing up and down,marvelling at how it feltno more difficult thancycling on a street," saysMills. "At this point, aswe slipped betweenfreshly snow-dustedwhite pines, it allseemed beautifuland effortless", butthings got harderfurther on. TahoeDonner is stunning "plus, when you'rehopelessly out ofshape and unable toquite complete the trail on your fatbike, you can always blame it on the altitude."
$16 an hour for bikehire plus $19 a day forthe trail pass TahoeDonner.com
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