The PezCycling Travel & Tours section hosts our own personal accounts of cycling travel, top rides and places we've visited, places to stay, eat & drink, compiled over more than 14 years of chasing pro cycling. Be it a Classic, the Giro or Tour, the Worlds or a national Tour, riding your bike on the same roads as the pros is a luxury that sets cycling apart. Let us know if you've got a Top Ride or Travel story worth sharing with other readers at Content@PezCyclingNews.com.
This time next week - Saturday the 1st of July - the 2017 Tour de France will set off from Düsseldorf in Germany for the three week wheeled battle. As the 'Vaterland' is the home of some of the best sausages in the World, we look back at the Pez Grand Tour appreciation of the sausage.
TOP RIDE: Inside the last 3km to the summit of the 21.5km Col du Glandon, the air gets thin as we approach 1924m elevation, the road tilts to 11% grades, and each meter seems longer than the last one. There's a reason they call this one 'Hors Category'.
Prudential RideLondon is the world’s greatest festival of cycling, taking place on the 28-30 July 2017. Created as a legacy of the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games to inspire more people to take up cycling and showcase London and Surrey, if offers seven different cycling events to participate in or watch over the three day festival.
Negroni Week on PEZ wouldn't be complete without homage to a true maestro of mixology. I speak only of Marco - proprietor of the legendary Barolino in Levanto Italy. I vowed after first discovering his bar at the 2009 Giro to return one day with Mrs. Pez - and order two of Marco's best Negronis.
During an awesome week of cycling in Italy, I stayed at the Lungomare Bike Hotel, where bartender Andrea poured me a perfect negroni - here's how he did it.
Travel Feature: If you’re anything like us, the twists, turns, and drama of this year's Tour de France can’t come soon enough. The Tour has earned its reputation as one of the toughest sporting events for good reason.
The 100th edition of the Giro d'Italia opens with three stages on the island of Sardegna - and then quickly logs a rest day to transfer to Sicily at the tip of the boot. I was there in 2008 for the Big Start, and discovered a city and island unlike any other place in Italy, and after my initial shock, my fondness for the place grew 'con molto veloce'.
For thousands of years, intrepid spirits have crossed the Pyrenees, Alps, and Dolomites—from Hannibal with his mighty elephant herd to the campaigns of Charlemagne and the humble treks undertaken by medieval pilgrims. Today, you’ll see spandex in place of chainmail all over these ranges as cyclists challenge themselves to conquer the bucket-list giants.
What surprised me most about the Fleche Wallonne parcours was just how hard this 200km ‘semi-Classic’ is. There’s nothing ‘semi’ about it… It deserves the prime time and throws up 11 rated climbs, including 3 passes over a 1300 meter brute called the Mur de Huy. Here’s how it happened to me…
Top Ride: The culmination of my visit to Holy Week was the long anticipated, much feared, and never completed ride across the parcours of Paris-Roubaix. Finally I learned what it was like to battle the toughest roads in northern France and earn my own lap of honour at the Roubaix velodrome.
Fancy yourself a hard man in the truest sense - the 'Belgian' sense? Then riding the famous bergs is a must do. Among the countless cobbled strips that dissect the hills of the Tour of Flanders, a few have become famous as cycling paths of the Gods. PEZ takes a ride up the best, and nastiest of them all.
The PezCycling Giro Trip 2017 indulges the culinary senses in some of north west Italy's best restaurants. Peter Easton has hand picked these favorites - as our daily reward for riding some of Italian cycle sport's best stages.
The first day of the PEZ & Velo Classic "Giro della Gazzetta" cycling trip this May opens with a day in Milano - watching the Giro d'Italia final TT stage in one of the world's most fashionable cities. The entertainment never stops here, and viewing the race will be just part of an awesome opening day.
The 2017 Tour de France visits southwest France with a stage finish in the medieval town of Bergerac, and a stage start in nearby Eymet. Allan Reeves of FranceFromInside.com cycling tours is looking to combine his family's nearby Chateau de Pitray and Le Tour for a week of cycling, wine and French living.
How's this for something completely different - a mid-winter trip to Minneapolis to ride stud-tired commuter bikes around the city's vast network of bike paths? It was part of the new bikes for guests program by Le Meridien Chambers Hotel featuring Priority Bicycles.
The opening riding days of the "Giro della Gazzetta" - the first Velo Classic Tours & Pez cycling trip this May starts with two days riding the final 175km of the monumental Milan-San Remo corsa. After a day watching the Giro final stage in Milan, we leave the Lombard plain and cross the coastal mountains. Smelling the sea-salt air of the Mediterranean for the first time is an amazing experience.
I'm looking ahead to my big rides for 2017, and there's no better place to aim for than Italy. I've always loved the Ligurian Coast, and its mix of hills flats, sea-salt air and palm trees, and have logged many a top ride here - including this hilly jaunt over the Passo del Termine from Levanto.
Join Pez & Velo Classic for the 100th Giro d'Italia and an Italian cycling holiday we call the "Giro della Gazzetta", from May 27 - June 4, 2017. We start in Milan to see the final TT stage of the Giro, then ride south to the sea and two days on the Milan San Remo route before turning inland to climb through the Alps on some of the cycling's most iconic climbs, peaking with the gravel switchbacks of the Colle della Finestre.
The Hotel Lungomare in Cesenatico offers a top bike hotel experience on Italy's Adriatic coast - daily guided bike tours for all levels through hills, vineyards and olive groves, tough climbs like the Carpegna, packages for gran fondos like the Nove Colle, and Italian hospitality in a family run hotel. Here's a closer look...
Riding across the Pyrenees from cost to coast and back is one of the all time epic rides - eat, sleep, ride, repeat. It's a road cyclist's dream that PEZ-Fan Richard Watson lived for two weeks 2016, and now takes us along for the ride.
