Steve0000

My partner and I are touring France, Italy and Spain in a couple of months time. I have little knowledge of Italy and Spain ito routes and things to see so I would like suggestions from readers. We will enter Italy from the Alps around the area of Torino and spend about a week before heading back into France, probably somewhere between Torino and the coast.

We will enter Spain from around the col du Tourmalet region and need to end at Santander. We may have about 2 weeks to cycle in Spain. We are looking for any must-cycle regions or sights worth looking for along the way. We will be camping each night so camping locations need to be available along the way.

Thanks for any help you may be able to offer.

jolly_ross

Find the websites of businesses offering cycle tours - they often list and describe the most popular routes. Also www.bikely.com lists bike routes near your chosen city (show ... altitude profile ... is a useful feature of the site. I think you can download the routes as gpx files if you sign up to the site - free)

chasm54

Italy. If you're coming in from the North and have a week before riding into France, you just about have time to get down into Tuscany, which is fabulous cycling, food, wine, art and architecture country. Impossible not to fall in love with Siena, for example. However, doing that loop in a week would depend on your being a fairly high-mileage tourist. If you need to stay closer to the French border, Lombardy is next to Piedmont and you could ride over there and visit Lake Como, among other places. Spectacularly beautiful.

Spain. Spain is big. If you're entering via the Tourmalet and leaving two weeks later from Santander, you probably have the option of turning east into Catalonia - Girona, Barcelona - then doubling back to the west (e.g. via Pamplona) and spending a week touring the Basque country. This latter suggestion doesn't come from experience - the Basque country is still on my to-do list - but from reports of others, all of whom rave about the scenery and the people. It's one of europe's more cycling-mad areas, of course.

dorkypants

It depends on what you're interested in…

Big Alpine climbs? Sestriere and Colle delle Finestre are west of Torino towards the border with France and have been featured in both the Tour and the Giro. Farther south are Colle del Agnello (Col d'Agnel in French), also featured in recent years in the Tour and the Giro; or Colle di Fauniera, featuring a monument to Marco Pantani carved in local granite; or Vallone d'Elva with the road going right through the mountainside ridges up a dramatic gorge; one more valley south takes you to Colle della Lombarda (Col de la Lombarde in French),which has been featured in the Tour and Giro. In these Alpine valleys they speak Occitan, which is closely related to Provencal on the French side of the border. And towards the coast is Prato Nevoso, ski resort and Tour/Giro pass.

Food and wine? Piedmont's Langhe, famous for its Barolo, Barbera and Barbaresco wines is east and a bit south of Torino. It's covered with vineyards, orchards, scenic hilltop villages with castle turrets and church steeples to rival Tuscany. And around Alba it's foodie heaven, the place where the Slow Food movement got its start.

I'm partial to southern Piedmont because I run tours there (shameless plug)agile compass cycling tours(/shameless plug).

MichaelW

The Northern coastal region of Spain is good, you can overshoot Santander and ride a big loop or take the local Feve train service back. Campsites are common, food is hearty scenery is beaches, cliffs, mountains and rolling farmland. The Picos de Europas mountains are the prettiest you will find.

raybo

Here are 29 links to information about bike touring in Italy.

Here are 32 links to information about bike touring in Spain.

Obviously, not all of these links will be of interest to you but some of them deal with routing ideas and others provide more local details.

indyfabz

The Guggenheim in Bilbao is nice. The city itself, not so much, at least when I was there in '98. Maybe it's improved since then.

chasm54

Bilbao's mayor keeps winning all sorts of awards because he has been so successful in regenerating the city. https://www.guardian.co.uk/public-lea...o-tourism-arts

axolotl

I began a tour in Bilbao about 4 years ago and I liked the town. For the OP, I went west from Bilbao. As MichaelW said, the Picos de Europa are great. There's a very nice road through a gorge in that region. Its number is AS-114 and it goes west to Cangas de Onis. The Mino/Minho valley along the northern border between Portugal & Spain, and then eastward entirely in Spain, was great, too.

MadeleineAS

Hi - would you be able to tell me what the camping opportunities are like in Piedmont? - am thinking of a cycle camping trip there with my kids (age 9 and 11) - definitely on the easy-moderate end of the scale!