Hello!

We’re Julie and Ken and we’re keen cyclists.  We moved in 2007 from the UK to live in Spain where we are lucky enough to spend most of our time outdoors, and much of it on our bikes. We like nothing more than to spend our time cycling in the mountains around our home in the province of Málaga except, perhaps, cycling around Europe on our touring bikes – tough one to choose!

Our first experience of cycle touring was in 2009 when we joined an organised group for a 14 day tour of Cuba, where we rode hired mountain bikes and our luggage was carried for us.  We followed that up the next year with a similar organised tour in India.  Our first independent, fully loaded tour was in 2011.  I can’t actually remember when I came up with this idea but, nevertheless, it happened.

I avidly read hundreds of inspirational accounts written by experienced cycle tourists, some of whom have been around the world several times over, all of whom seemed to have undertaken journeys far more adventurous than the one we were planning.  For us, to undertake a four-month trip around Europe covering 6500 kilometres was a big adventure – a really big deal.  We decided to set off from our home in Málaga, cycle through Spain and France to Nottingham in the UK to see our family and friends and then take a longer route back, visiting Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland, as well as travelling back through France and Spain.  I still remember that as we set off our heads were full of doubts….are the bikes too heavy?….can we climb the mountains?….is it too far?….the questions were endless.  It was during this trip that I acquired the blog habit, posting a daily account of the tour on Biketrippin.com.  I have since reposted the journal on this website.

We have since undertaken two more tours.

Our tour in 2013 took just over 6 weeks and covered  2500 kilometres.  Our route started from Málaga, headed to Portugal and then northwards to Santiago de Compostela and returned back to Málaga following the Via de la Plata. Our last tour was in 2014, once again starting from Málaga but this time cycling to Santander in the north of Spain.  We caught a ferry to the UK, cycled across to Harwich and caught another ferry to Hoek van Holland.  Here we picked up the Rhine cycle route which we followed through Holland and Germany to its source at the top of the Oberalpe pass in Switzerland.  The tour was 9 weeks long and covered 3600 kilometres.

The journals from these trips have also been reposted on this website.

We’re now planning and looking forward to our 2015 tour due to start around the middle of April.