timtak

The tag line of our forum quotes Ernest Hemingway who wrote “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.”

But some places are more convivial to cycling than others.

Road (surface) quality
Traffic Density
Other cyclists there/not there
Connected with famous race
Bike shop density
Scenic views
Cake and other refreshments
The right mix of flat and hilly (I like "rolling")
Respectful drivers
Historical / Famous places en route
Friendly people
Beautiful people
Convivial climate

My region is promoting themselves as a cyclo-tourism destination by mounting a cycle race but I am not sure that is the way to go about it. I know I love cycling here so I think that they are onto a good thing. I am trying to find touring routes which have nice views, and interesting things en route, but I have no idea if that would be any better.

Where have you enjoyed a cycling holiday and why?

znomit

I'm just back from Barcelona, and while I had a great days on both the MTB the Road bike, getting in and out of town was a PITA.

timtak

Thank you.

Being a bit of a one horse dorp Yamaguchi is rather easy to get into and out of. I will add that to the list of 'advantages'!

Why did you enjoy the environs of Barcelona?

San Pedro

Tons of great places in Japan for you to ride. In the cities, of course, a lot of traffic, but if you live anywhere near the country side there are so many excellent rolling roads.

That being said, I want to do a cycling holiday in Michigan, just to see my family and friends at the same time. For something a bit more unlikely for me, somewhere in Europe with fantastic roads, or the Taiwan KOM challenge.

donnaeastman

There are also great places in California for you to ride. Try to check some on the internet. But I bet every rural area in every place is great for cycling.

timtak

Thank you San Pedro and Donnaestaman

I am trying to find the criteria that makes somewhere fantanstic

What are "rolling roads"?
"fantastic roads" meaning smooth, pot hole free? Or scenic? Or traffic free? Or?
Is "rural" good in itself, or good because the surroundings are natural, or because there is less traffic?

I think I like semi rural, villages or the edges of cities, markets, parks, sports grounds, temples because I like to look at the doings of people, without too much traffic. I think that I might like to ride through citiies if it were not for the traffic. That said, and speaking of Taiwan, I once bought a cheap bike in Taipei and rode around it for a few days. It was wild!

San Pedro

"Semi rural" would be what I would shoot for. I like to get those pancake sandwiches from convenience stores during rides. As long as traffic is lower than the typical Japanese traffic waslight heavy roads. In America I might be afraid of rural roads because I've known some hicks in the country side (lived in rural Michigan for a while when I was young), abd some of them might think it would be funny to run a guy on a bike off the road.

Rolling terrain to me is hard to define because I tend to get more short steep hills or long and steep with perils descents, so I don't think I've ever come across many good rolling routes.
Of course smooth roads would have to be one of the conditions for me if I going on a trip just to ride my bike.

mercator

My best trips so far:
St Remy, France - great roads, food, about 90 km from Mt Ventoux
Malaga, Spain - cheap, some great climbing, decent roads
Kona, Hawaii - sublime climate, decent roads. A couple of really big mountains
Banff, Canada - great roads, a few good climbs, mega fauna and scenery
Quebec City, Canada - check out la route verte, great food

Since my wife doesn't ride, it's important to find a place with other amenities that she enjoys. All of the above have satisfied those requirements.

kbarch

Veneto, Dolomites and Alps, around the time of Giro stages, often same day and a good chunk of the same course.
So very cycling-oriented. Last year, it seemed we were the only ones on the road much of the time, except when the roads were packed with cyclists. All we did was ride, eat and sleep. Oh, we had a couple of after dinner walks, watched some stages, made a visit to the Castelli/Sportful outlet and had some long-ish van transfers, but the immersion in cycling and absence of distractions was one of my favorite aspects of the trip.
If you ask me, as a cycling holiday, unless one has a LOT of time available, it's just as well that there's nothing else around to do. By the same token, some folks like to take a break, and having cultural attractions can be a real plus.
Quality of roads wouldn't be a make-or-break issue for me - just something to consider in choosing which bike to take.
Similarly, local cuisine needn't be anything to write home about, there'd just need to be decent options.

timtak

Thank you

So the road surface smoothness is important to some,
The biggest issue may be not having to share the road with cars: the car to road surface area ratio.
And the right flats to hills ratio (some of both).
With food, culture, and nice natural scenery to look at a plus.

This route vert CM seems to push
1) Carlessness
2) Beautiful scenery
3) And in one, about the first, frame for a split second, that there are other many cyclists there.

You Tube

Thanks for telling me about another region that is being sold as a cycling destination. I should look that up and see how they are selling themselves.

ZippyThePinhead

What makes other destinations great for cycling holidays may not apply to the OP's region of Japan. In other words, who is the target audience? Is it Japanese, or tourists from other Asian countries, westerners, or all of the above?

If they are aiming to pull in tourist money from Westerners, that is a difficult area to get to. You fly in to Osaka, maybe, or somewhere farther away, and train it over? That's expensive, so the cycling draw has to be commensurate, and/or there has to be more than cycling to draw visitors. Korea has spent billion$ developing the Four Rivers trails, and all you have to do is fly in to Seoul or Busan, and you can start riding. But westerners are not exactly flocking to ride there, and the trails project was controversial among Koreans, because it seemed to be a solution in search of a problem, much like California's bullet train to BFE. Too, there have been horror stories in social media featuring foreigners in Korea who ran afoul of Korean laws when cycling in Korea (collisions with pedestrians and other cyclists), though I'm reluctant to conclude that is a significant factor in the lack of foreign interest in cycling Korean trails.

Too, what cycling? Road? Mountain? Both? Vancouver, BC is a pretty decent place to do either/or, and part of the draw is the scenery. But is it fair to say Vancouver is a cycling destination, even if the cycling there is really quite good? A lot of tourists to Vancouver are quite content to rent a townie or a hybrid and spin around Stanley Park, so is that what makes it a cycling destination, even if there is far superior road cycling and/or mountain bike riding available? Trek Travel doesn't do trips to that area, so far as I know, so maybe not.

timtak

Zippy

Thanks very much indeed.

> If they are aiming to pull in tourist money from Westerners, that is a difficult area to get to.
Yes. I agree. I think that they are hoping for Western, or at least foreign interest and I am not sure it is a good idea. I will check out the four rivers trails project and writing about it.

(It even occurs to me that since I a gaijin do so much cycling around Yamaguchi that they have thought that perhaps there are a lot of foreigners cycling here and that it must be doable when it is in fact just me and a very few others.)

There are legal aspects too -- the pedestrian (or the weaker road user) is always in the right law, and the compulsory two stage turns for all junctions (although this is rarely enforced) law. Yamaguchi is not even especially low in traffic, being 29th out of 49 prefectures.

The trek travel site is very useful. I see that they are also pushing scenery at least in the cover photos for their tours where expansive panoramas feature heavily. I with that there were more cyclable roads up high in Yamaguchi. The roads tend to be only along the valleys. I will make note of the MTBable mountain trails.


(& I wrote to Korean Water board to mention that "Traveling throughout Korea along with Rivers" makes it sound like "Rivers" is a person, because I am a pedant. )

maartendc

I used to live in Barcelona, and took my bike up mount Tibidabo every weekend. Amazing 600m elevation climb up the mountain, and you have an amazing view over the coastline and city from above. From the top of the mountain, you can keep heading northwest into the hilly countryside beyond. Beautiful. Catalonia in general is very beautiful, both mountains and coast.

The city itself is just a big city, so if you decide to do this, I recommend staying at the north-western edge of the city so it is easy to get out.

mercator

I wouldn't consider Vancouver to be a top destination for road riding, although there is some pretty great mountain biking there. It is a good jumping off point for some decent riding on the Island, Sunshine Coast and up Hwy 99 though.
From my perspective, there aren't any big cities that make good road cycling destinations.
Staying in BC, you could put the Okanagan valley on the list. I'd recommend Oliver or some other spot in the south but there are good roads all the way from Kamloops to Osoyoos.

Seattle Forrest

I keep going back to Winthrop, WA with my bike. I've traveled a lot of places with my bike but I keep coming back to this one.

It's rural but that's not enough, there are plenty of rural places I could be riding. Low traffic density and unusually polite drivers are fantastic touches, but also not the whole story. The scenery is fantastic, it's both jaw dropping and varied. There are good hotels, and good restaurants. All the people in town are very friendly and welcoming. Many of the roads lead to some of the best hiking and skiing trails, so there's a nostalgia to them. The area has a mix of flat, rolling, and endlessly climbing terrain, so you can do a hard ride one day and an easy one the next.

timtak

Thanks Mercator and Seattle Forest.

Expansive views like in Mercator's pic are certainly inspiring. I want to get on my bike.

I had a look at Winthrop to up past Ross Lake via Route 20 on Brian Foits street view player, and that was pretty dramatic too. Here is the shortened link for the virtual ride.
https://tinyurl.com/winthrop2rosslake

My morning ride is nothing like as dramatic. Here is half of it on Brian's player.
https://tinyurl.com/timtakshalfmorningride

In the unlikely event that anyone wants to see my whole morning route, here is the gpx file which can be uploaded to Brian's player. https://nihonbunka.com/temp/201805031...55028-data.gpx

The gpx was created by creating directions on google maps, and then pasting the URL to GPS Visualizer: Convert GPS files to plain text or GPX as instructed here
https://www.bedsforcyclists.co.uk/art...our-phone/(the site is an interesting UK cyclo-tourism portal with cheap places to stay, no affiliation)

kbarch

I suppose what makes a GREAT cycle-tourism destination - one worth flying across an ocean - is an abundance and wide variety of outstanding routes. I mean, if I'm going to spend a day in transit just to get there, and another day to get home, I'd want there to be a lot more than just one special course and a handful of merely decent roads to ride. But that's me: I generally loathe traveling (in the sense of packing up, flying, etc.), so it really need to be worth the hassle.

ZippyThePinhead

Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. I went up to Vancouver last year (admittedly, for fishing, not so much for cycling), but I rented a road bike and had three days of really nice riding. Compared to what I'm accustomed to in southern California, I gotta say, it was pretty d@mn good. I would very much like to go back and ride Seymour Forest/Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve once again. The saltwater fishing on the Pacific side of the island couldn't have been better, and the cycling was icing on the cake.

Not to hijack the thread, but I view Japan as an expensive place to travel. I've wanted to go for a long time, but it is a long, expensive flight from the left coast of the USA, and as @kbarch observed, you're probably going to give up about 3 days for travel to and from. There's got to be some spectacular draw in order to motivate that kind of sacrifice to get there.

San Pedro

Not many people speak English here as well. The food is awesome, and the women are beautiful, and it's super safe, but I don't see it as a cycling vacation hot spot. Okinawa might be real nice because of the weather and beaches, but I have no idea about the riding conditions.

timtak

Thanks kbarch and Zippy
Yamaguchi has quite a few routes in varying scenery, Biggest bridge in Japan,
Sea of Japan with nice shrine,
Welsh x the moon, but not enough to get people to come across oceans for.
I don't think that there is, alas, but Yamaguchi prefecture is I think only aiming to draw people from Kyoto and Tokyo. Most travellers to Japan, of which there are now nearly 30 million, mostly from East Asia, only go to Tokyo, Kyoto, and Fukuoka. Yamaguchi is hoping some might consider a bit of cycling as well. Caucasian tourists stand out and have a tendency to create further tourism via the "Well if it is interesting to (white?) tourists, it must be good" effect. There are going to be a lot more tourists coming to Tokyo for the Olympics in 2020. I am wondering if some of them can be enticed. It takes about 5 hours to Yamaguchi on the bullet train from Tokyo, so it is still a long way.

The other thing that I thought I would concentrate on is dark tourism. There is quite a lot of it, such as POW camps, and Christian martyr sites (c.f the Scorsese film) but the Japanese tend to keep it a secret. I wonder how that merges with cyclo tourism.

San Pedro

The problem for Yamaguchi is it is too far from Tokyo, and there are so many other great places to ride before one makes it that far.

Is cycling popular down there? It seems to be exploding in my Aichi.

timtak

I think you are right. rat. I will however, fight the good fight, and keep on providing information regarding cyclist things to see and do in my region. Perhaps people may come due to the information available.

I'd like to cycle around Mt. Fuji and all along the Sea of Japan coastline.

San Pedro

Let me know when you swing by southern Aichi. I'll give you a rare draft opportunity.

trekmogul 

What keeps me going back to the same country year after year after year is the awesome hot tropical weather and the indian ocean coast line of SUNNY SRI LANKA. Just returned back 3 weeks ago from when we left in December. This year we are staying even longer then ever before..I am already counting the days until my return..

Dan333SP

Hi Tim.

To me, the most important criteria would be, in this order:

Interesting scenery and varied terrain
High quality roads with limited traffic
Popular with other cyclists
Consistently good weather (which, for me, means warm and sunny but not too humid)
Access to other non-cycling activities (beach, hiking, etc)

This is basically my dream destination for a cycling holiday-


My wife and I were very close to pulling the trigger on tickets to fly there this summer, but ended up backing out. Maybe next year. It certainly seems to check all the boxes for me, and I absolutely love Spain and Spanish food so it's pretty much ideal.