Itinerary check

Hank,
I am nearing 80 and don't long distance bike anymore, but from Mid-50s until around 70, I did many long distance bike rides in the USA. I have done many cross individual states averaging 70 miles a day. It is great to do these in groups of cyclists.

I have done a couple of bike excursions from a cruise ship in Europe and the routes were in areas without HEAVY auto traffic.
I live Italy, but frankly, would never want to ride a bike in that country unless it was on a dedicated bike trail. Never in a large city with traffic.

We did a great river cruise down the Rhone River in SE France and loved it and the places we visited on that cruise. I know nothing about bike trails there.
Also, have been to Tuscany several times, including Siena, Lucca and Pisa. We did a Road Scholar tour of Tuscany and Umbria, staying in Siena for six nights, using it as a base to visit small towns in Tuscany. The roads looked narrow, sorry, I would not wish to ride a bike on them.

Fair enough.

Tuscany is among the world's most premier cycling destinations, with 100's of miles of almost zero traffic white gravel roads and small lanes. There are completely separate and mostly flat riverside long distance trails. Tens of thousands of people travel to Tuscany to ride bikes every year. There is 400-500km multiday mass cycling event called the Tuscany Trail ride, thousands of riders, roads not closed, no problem. The Via Frangipane pilgrimage route to Rome cuts through the entire area north to south and has a safe, sanctioned bicyclist route option. Hundreds of hotels and businesses catering to cycle tourism. Dozens of cycle tour providers. By all accounts it is cycling's heaven on earth.

So agree to disagree. IMO no one should fear a day on a bike in Tuscany, quite the opposite

Hank,
Glad to read that bike trails are there to keep you off the highways competing with cars and trucks.
If the trails are gravel, I suppose you are not riding a road bike, but a mountain or hybrid?

Have you cycled in Lyon before ? Riding around the city is a lot of fun and very easy with bike infrastructure everywhere and tons of other cyclists on the streets. Make sure you check out the bicycle tunnel if you haven’t already been there. (It’s a unique experience) We rode to the top of Mont Thou on a weekend day with loads of other cyclists around. I think Lyon is definitely worth a day to explore by bike.

Joe thanks very much for this piece of advice. Very helpful.

The only thing that I knew about cycling in Lyon is that the first 20 or so kilometers of the Via Rhona heading south from there can be unpleasant riding through somewhat unsafe industrial areas. I've read that most people who tour Via Rhona skip that section by train.

That bit of information, along with how hectic and in my opinion still sketchy cycling is in Paris, made me assume that I didn't want to be on a bike in Lyon at all. But if there's reasonably good quality infrastructure, I will rent the hybrid that I will use for the Via Rhona a day early so I can have wheels around town.

Looking forward to it, thanks.

Geovagriffth hi, regarding the type of bike for Tuscany, which has an enormous and world famous network of gravel tracks, people nowadays ride those almost entirely on gravel bikes.

The gravel bike is a fairly subtle but imo terrific innovation in cycling. Gravel bikes generally look like a road bike with drop handlebars and a similarly sized frame. But they have room for wider tires. And also, just as importantly, they have slacker headtube angles, so the front wheel hits rough terrain more similarly to the way a mountain bike does than a road bike. Just how mountain bike like the geometry on a gravel bike is, as you might intuit, varies by intended purpose. My gravel bike at home is a Salsa Cutthroat, which has the geometry of a mountain bike from the 1990s. It's made for stability and safety on rough gravel tracks and single track. And then there are some gravel bikes that are very similar to road bikes, which are made for smoother surfaces and maximum speed aerodynamics etc. Gravel bike racers use this type more, sacrificing some safety and comfort to get to the finish line more quickly.

Because they're made for off-road where grip when climbing can be a problem, and very steep pitches are more common, gravel bikes have lower gearing than road bikes, and often run larger more powerful braking systems.

Gravel bikes have space for tires that are quite wide. They normally run tires that are narrower than mountain bike tires, but quite a bit wider and with more air volume and cushion than traditional road bike tires. And then there is a variety of tread choices available, from covered with knobs to slick and everything in between.

In the past 5 years, electric gravel bikes have exploded in popularity. I'm not sure if I will rent an e-gravel bike or regular, but the e-gravel bike is a great tool for the type of terrain that gravel tends to encompass - long, touring focus days, often loaded with overnight luggage and/or camping equipment, in places that tend to be hilly and can be quite steep. I've never ridden e-gravel, but it seems like it would be a heck of a lot of fun to go farther and see more with the same amount of effort I would otherwise spend going shorter and seeing less on a regular bike.

So, as they say, horses for courses, and the horse of preference for Tuscany's famed strade biancha white roads is the gravel bike.

No experience cycling south from Lyon, we did a day ride heading north from Lyon along the Rhône and out to a large area of parkland. It was all on bike paths and roads with dedicated lanes. Definitely check out that tunnel, it’s amazing to me that something like that actually exists.

I’m not sure how riding in Lyon compares to Paris, you might find it to be sketchy. For comparison we throughly enjoyed biking around Amsterdam — it’s definitely its own type of rodeo.

Joe I very much enjoy riding in Amsterdam. I've been a city cyclist for almost 40 years now, rode with messenger friends in San Francisco for years, sometimes riding along on their shifts. Amsterdam doesn't move too fast for my brain or body, and like you I find it joyfully amusing to ride there.

Paris though ... I've ridden a couple of days in Paris in the past five years, but it lights up my self-preservation Spidey senses too much. Bike lanes cross open high speed avenues too much, and the cars, ebikes, pedestrians, taxis, scooters, motorcycles and other cyclists often don't follow the rules. People blow and jump lights, drive in the bike lanes. I feel like I don't see what's going on as early as I'd like. Paris has done a ton to improve cycling but it's not for me.

I will visit the tunnel north out of Lyon. I'm quite tempted to add another day to Lyon and do a ride in Beaujolais, but doesn't work so well with the rest of the trip.

Thanks again