Lyon to Barcelona ?

[bad dancer]

Heading to Europe for the first time ever this October.
Flying into London early Oct and will be heading to Paris and beyond with the plan to ride from Lyon to Barcelona.
It is a shortish trip I know, but its what I have to work with. Planning on cycling from Lyon to Barcelona in about 7-9 days.
Early recon says to just do the Rhone river route South and then onward to Barcelona.
What say the collective ?
Not a stranger to touring on the fly but never have I been to Europe.
I have mostly biked in Mexico, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and the entire Pacific coast from Vancouver to Puerto Escondito in various stages.

Any feedback welcome !

[jorion]

I did a similar route 20 years ago (as part of one of several multi-month trips), so no recent or specific beta, but France had the nicest touring country-wide of the 10 or so countries I’ve toured in.

I hope it’s largely the same. There were plenty of country roads in great condition but with minimal traffic. They were everywhere. (Italy on the other hand has tons of roads but they were way busier and the country was far denser. Spain was much less dense than France, but fewer roads to choose from.)

Back then I carried around an atlas, and on breaks would figure out the towns along the way, and then just follow the signs to those towns. There used to be plenty of postcard perfect villages. Navigation was pretty simple even before smartphones. I think I’d actually prefer the old way over pulling my phone out every few minutes.

I’ve biked the north part of Spain as well, but never in Catalonia. I enjoyed it but not nearly as much as France.

The guy who got me into bike touring had toured in literally dozens of countries all around the world and then kept coming back to France despite no particular previous interest in the country other than the Tour.

Anyway, the Rhone route is good. If you’re at all interested in wine you can pass through some of the famous wine villages there, like chateauneuf-du-pape, gigondas, that sort of thing.

Lyon has great food, I’d be happy to go back.

Orange and Carpentras have cool Roman ruins, like amphitheaters and aqueducts.

Avignon is/was a charming mid sized college city.

Montélimar is famous for nougat, but you’ll see that when you pass through.

You’d be in range of the mont Ventoux if that’s of interest to you. I climbed it with a fully-loaded touring bike (ah, the foolhardiness of being in your early 20s!) which I don’t really recommend, but it’s an incredible, hallowed climb. Tougher than the Alpe d’huez I think.

I’ve been wanting for a while to go to the Catalan countryside. Some wine people I know go visit some winemakers in a town there every year and it sounds fantastic.

I’ve been to Barcelona three times over the last 20 years and it gets sadder every time. A wonderful city that’s over loved by tourists.

I’ll try to dig through my journals and old photos, nice to see this and reminisce.

[XXX-er]

France along the TDF route into the pyrennnes was beautiful the mist rising in the morning, the sycamore tree every 100meters and there was at least one camp ground in every small town, touring with camp gear we could do one col a day to the next town, the 5 cols that the TDF racers do in one day took us 5 days, went as far south east as Carcasonne and back to toulouse on the canal du midi, there is definalty some thing about France worth going back for bike touring


a few years later bike toured narthern spain along the Camino, we started in France from st John Pied de Port and it was as beautiful as i remembered until we got up into spain where it was more barren than France and there are not a lot of camp grounds, so while we had the camp gear the rooms for pilgrims were cheap/ plentiful, so thats where we stayed, the food was cheap if i had it to do again i would leave the camp gear at home for the Camino