The Venice of the Alps. Here are my top 5 Cycling Climbs from beautiful Lake Annecy.

October is a great time to cycle this legendary volcano - not too hot, although pretty chilly at the top.

The road wasn’t crowded but there were still plenty of cyclists - mainly foreigners that were here for one reason - to climb Ventoux.

Perhaps the best three days of (challenging) cycling I have ever done. Even a lousy photographer like me couldn’t help but take some great pictures - it’s paradise here.

Freshly returned from Wales, I was up at 5:00 am to pick up Martin and Barry and head to Gruyere, Switzerland for the 125 km Gruyere Cycling Tour. A challenging but fantastic route through the Alps across three medium cols. Final count showed over 2000 participants and the first hour or so […]

Col de l’Iseran appeared in stage 9 of the 2007 Tour. Formerly, the highest road in Europe, 2007 is the 70th anniversary of the opening of the road over this legendary mountain pass. The gift shop t-shirts still claim it to be the highest. Still, at 2,770 metres (9000 feet) it is […]

My Fat Cyclist Jersey arrived and i was thrilled to christen it by riding up the Cormet de Roselend, a beautiful climb that was part of Stage 8 of this year’s Tour de France via the classic north route via Col du Meraillet.
Fat Cyclist is a terrific cycling blog run by the Fat Cyclist - […]

Col du Galibier via Col du Telegraphe is the biggest climb in France in terms of altitude gain. I can get to the base of Telegraphe from home in an hour forty-five - as it starts right next to an autoroute - sweet.

What a great Bastille Day. Doreen and I cycled up the Col de la Colombiere to watch the Tour de France. People and cyclists everywhere and hot!
We rode up with Brian - his first week in Geneva and already cycling mountains. Martin and Barry took the train from Geneva and bravely […]

For the French long weekend, we drove to Provence staying in the beautiful medieval town of Avignon.
Friday I cycled up the legendary volcano Le Mont Ventoux. I have cycled ventoux before but never from the Malaucene side. This route is almost exactly the same difficulty as the more classic Bedoin route (21 […]

What a trip.  Our most ambitious cycling vacation ever.  Our first visit to the Southern French Alps.  Eight big climbs in 8 days. Every one a legendary Tour de France route.  Hard work but really fun.   it was a  dream of mine to climb Bonette (the highest road in Europe) and Izoard […]