Bicycling
Mountain biking in Gatineau Park
Spring blossoms in Virginia
Click here to see photos of bicycling in
Click here to see and read about our bicycle
tours in Italy: Across
Umbria and Tuscany
or
Apulia
Read about
Jeanne’s tour in the Netherlands with links to photos on Google on
Netherlands
Read about our
tour down the Danube with links to photos on Google on
Danube by Bike
Ok, so we are roadies,
except that we bought mountain bikes one year to enjoy
the trails in the nearby Gatineau Park. We have been
members of the Ottawa Bicycle Club (OBC) since moving to
Ottawa in 1992. In fact, Ray spent four years as
president.
What we like best is bicycle touring. We
have taken advantage of and helped organize several of
the OBC road trips. The season begins with a casual get
together for keeners in March in North Carolina and
follows closely with a popular Inn-to-Inn tour in
Virginia. We have enjoyed the early spring in both these
areas.
The biggest event for the OBC is the
Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour (RLCT), a two day back-to-back
century ride from Ottawa to Kingston and back. It is a
lot of fun with over 1,000 cyclists participating each
year. For the novices or those who like a more relaxed
week-end, there is a metric century option.
Summer finds us in Vermont for a week
long Inn-to-Inn tour. We get to climb hills and explore
the numerous backroads in Vermont and the neighbouring
states of New Hampshire and New York. In August 2001, we
took our bicycles to Prince Edward Island. We had five
beautiful days, staying in Bed and Breakfasts and
exploring the rural country roads and almost deserted
beaches.
For more information on OBC rides and
tours, see their web site:
Ottawa
Bicycle Club
We have explored several other parts of
North America and Europe by bicycle. We have taken our
bicycles to San Fransisco and toured the Napa Valley. We
travelled to Portland, Oregon spent nine days bicycling
down the Oregon coast. We have toured four times in
France, the last time in 1998 when we stayed in Limoux,
at Le Monastère and explored the land of the Cathars
south of Carcasonne with Chris Georgas (highly
recommended).
For more information on Chris Georgas
trips see:
Le Monastère
April 26, 2001 we left Canada for four
weeks bicycling in Italy. We flew to Venice and bicycled
down the coast to Rimini, where we met up with our
friends Joan and Ric Potter. The four of us headed across
Umbria and Tuscany, ending in La Spezia on the west coast.
Yes, we carried all our clothes in panniers and made our
own route. If you wish to learn more about our adventures:
see
Italy.
In May of 2013 Jeanne explored the Netherlands for two weeks on a guided
bicycle tour, staying on a barge each night, with Bike
and Barge company out of Seattle, Washington. It was well organized and great fun. Read about
Jeanne’s trip with photos on Netherlands.
June 2015 found us biking down the Danube from Passau to Budapest, with
our friends Marg and Jack Dunphy, from Calgary. We did a self-directed
tour with our hotels booked and luggage taken from town to town. We
highly recommend
biketours.com who arranged our trip.
Read about our tour with links to photos on Google on
Danube by Bike.
Two years later, in 2017, we took advantage of
plans to join a group of our friends in Italy to arrange for a week of
bicycling in the heel of Italy, theprovine of Apulia. Read and see an
album of photos of our trip on
Apulia Bike Tour.
Another two years and another group get
together, this time in Portugal. Rather that bike in Portugal, we
arranged to stay in Alcudia, Mallorca, Spain, rent eBikes this time and
take day trips from our villa. Read and see an album of photos about
this trip on
eBiking in Mallorca.We have gained quite a bit of information
from internet writeups of other people’s trips and we
hope to be as good an inspiration for other prospective
bicycle tourists.
Return to
Introduction