On Tour.

Have you written about an interesting cycle tour with photos and woud like it put on this website? If so, send it including your C.T.C. membership number to:sgilmartin@email.com

Click a Tour to read:

Easter Tour 2007. The Social "A" Section.

The Swiss Alps and Rhone Glacier. By Chris Blackwood.


The Corrieyairick Pass: 1939/1972/2001.By Mike Jones.

The Eureka 75th Anniversary Ride. By Alan Parker.

The Great Arabian Bike Ride. By Peter Friar.

Cycling in the Vercors with Dean and Tom.

Double Challenge. By Alan Parker.

A Pinta at Dangerous Corner. By Alan Parker.

The Lancashire Cycleway. By Alan Parker.

Some Cycle Touring advice if visiting Italy by Helen Sandelands.


This time I flew Liverpool-Rome Ciampino with Ryanair. Bike £17 each way. Did usual turning of handlebars, removal of pedals, semi-deflation of tyres. Bike in plastic bag (that furniture/mattresses come in).

At Liverpool you have to lift your bike onto the outsize luggage belt, where it's shoved along the rollers (if you've left pedals on, they'll stick between rollers!) onto conveyor belt. No problem. Rome Ciampino airport is about 10 miles south of Rome. Very small and very busy. Leave airport, cross main road at roundabout and you're in a lane. I hid my plastic bag and it was still there a month later. I bought a roll of brown tape to fasten the bag.

A great way into Rome is to go up the lane a few hundred metres to where the Via Appia Antica bisects it. WARNING: ON WEEKDAYS THIS ROAD IS A BIT OF AN OUTDOOR BROTHEL!!! (Men to the left, women to the right!) Anyway, turn right (north towards Rome, and follow the ancient route (sometimes cobbled, and sometimes cyclists are told to walk). It's a beautiful road with open fields and bits of ruins alongside. At the Rome end are the famous catacombs. This is a very popular route on Sundays, with Italian familes and backpackers on hire bikes.

Continue into Rome at Circus Maximus and you'll end up at the Colosseum. I reckon you could walk the whole thing in 3 hours. One more hour and you'd be at St Peter's! There's an newish independent youth hostel at Ciampino. 20 euros a night B&B. Strange place - some people seem to be resident workers. In fact, one night I could only get a bed in a dorm with 2 of these women. It was horrendous, and I'm complaining to the council there. The other night I was in an ordinary dorm though, and it was perfectly alright.

If anyone wants more info, contact me on nellieskem@yahoo.com I have experience of cycling alone through Central Italy: Lazio, Tuscany, Umbria, Le Marche, Abruzzo. I've flown to Pisa, Ancona and Rome Ciampino. I've stayed in official youth hostels, independent youth hostels, cheap hotels, monasteries and convents. Haven't camped.

Helen - June 2005

More from Helen:

I've just gone round the clock on my computer this year 2006 (10,000 kilometres, not miles!) While I type up tours for HQ, anyone interested may like to pick my brain while stuff's still fresh:

May/June Italy: Flight to Rome with 2 mates, train to Sulmona (halfway across country) for snake festival, then rode down to Puglia, round lovely peninsula and back up to Bari for ferry to... Croatia: Dubrovnik then gorgeous island hopping up to Split, whence flight to... Norway: Oslo to western fjells via Telemark canal, then south to coast and back round to Oslo. Flight home with Ryanair from "Oslo Torp" near Sandefjord. Lucky with weather, cos I wild camped alone every night for 3 weeks (yes, Norway is VERY expensive, and I had to budget for a few 6-quid pints to watch World Cup. Hooray for smoking ban!)

July/August/September Flew Manchester-Bordeaux with friend, train to Bayonne (SW France) then rode to St Jean Pied de Port to start CAMINO DE SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, camping and using pilgrim refuges. Took 14 days, and called in at Pamplona fiesta de San Fermin on the way. From Santiago, down into Portugal to FATIMA, dodging forest fires. (My friend flew home from Porto with Ryanair). Across horribly hot Spain to Valencia then up the coast to France and back to Bordeaux, camping with friend and using Formule 1 when we needed to dry out, mostly following Canal du Midi and rivers, also calling in on fabulous CHAPEL DU NOTRE DAME DES CYCLISTES near Labastide d'Armagnac.