Michael and I are off on a big cycling adventure to Europe this summer. We are flying to Dublin, Ireland for a cycling tour of the British Isles. Once we get to London, Mike and I will take off on our own, riding to the coast of England to take a ferry across the English Channel to France. Our route will take us south through France to the coast where we will see the final day of the Tour de France bike race in Nice and then join a cycling tour of the island of Corsica. After Corsica we will cycle north into Italy as we make our way to Venice. From Venice we plan to cycle down the eastern coast of Italy along the Adriatic Sea, finally ending up in Naples. We will finish in and fly home from Rome.

This is an especially exciting trip because we are traveling with our own bikes. For our other bicycle trips we have always rented bikes but this time, since we will be flying into Dublin and out of Rome it is not possible to get a bike rental. We also usually use a luggage transfer service to take our luggage from hotel to hotel, leaving us to ride free of extra weight. This time, however, we are going to be carrying all of our belongings (scared face emoji).

With so many new things to learn, we decided to practice pack to see if all of our belongs would fit in our new panniers and how heavy it would be. I was concerned about my ability to handle the weight. Could I pedal with the added weight, would it pull me down and how would the bike handle with the additional weight? After our practice pack we took a practice ride. We were happy and relieved to see that we and the bikes could handle the weight and we were able to cover the miles without too much difficulty.

Now it’s time to get going! I hope you enjoy following along with us.