The statistics report of our trip from 26 April to 26 September 2022 for our lovely ‘Dates, Figures & Facts’ fans.
143 nights in a tent. The cheapest stay was in Le Gurp on the French Atlantic coast, on the pitch of our friends Uwe and Trixi who welcomed Marburg’s cyclists. In France we sometimes stayed for less than 10€. The most expensive campsite cost around 35€, both in Italy, France and Spain.
We spent nine nights in four walls. The most expensive stay (= 125€/night) we had in Bilbao where we slept directly on the river opposite the Guggenheim Museum. We stayed for free in Lisa and Peter’s holiday home on the Noirmoutier.
We have passed eight countries: Austria, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands. New additions are the dwarf states Vatican and Andorra.
We conquered five mountains: Apennines (I), Abruzzo(I), Cevennes(F), Pyrenees(F/S) and the Picos de Europa(S).
On 112 days we cycled. On 25 of them we sat more than 7.5 hours (= working day) in the saddle.
Three train trips: 1st across the Alps to Villach on 26 April, 2nd on 25 September from Ghent to Antwerp and 3rd the return journey on 26 September from Venlo-Kaldenkirchen (German/holl. Grenze) to Marburg.
Six ferries including two night trips to Naples(I) – Sardinia(I) and Sardinia(I) – Toulon(F).
On 22 days we had (mountain) hikes over 10 kilometers, three of them were over twenty kilometers long and the longest had 1500 highmeters.
What did we do the remaining 28 days? Garmin and Astrid’s pedometer did not record it 🙂
Average speed 16.5km/h – the average speed of the flat stages does not differ significantly from that of the mountain stages. Maximum average speed 20.0 km/h – Puigcerda (S) on 04 July 2022, 82 km stage.
Longest stage 135km in Friuli on 29 April 2022
Maximum altitude 2005m – to Ordesa National Park
Maximum speed 61.8 km/h – Departure at the Apennine crossing towards Tuscany
Maximum highmeters 1738m – L’Aquila
Maximum gradient about 15% – much more is not possible, then it is time to push.
We drank about 450 l of beer, even more well water, < 2 l of wine, < 2 l of cider, mostly cooked and ate at the tent. There were pasta with tomato sauce, spaghetti carbonara, chilli sin and con carne, sometimes potatoes or mashed potatoes with vegetable curd and sausages. Traditionally always full breakfast with milk coffee, fresh bread, butter, jam, cheese, orange juice, egg and yogurt.
In addition to the ten days of severe renal colic due to kidney stones in Central Italy, there were two hours of stomach cramps in Northern Spain, rarely mild back pain, a wart under the foot, watery eyes from pollen, sun and wind and itchy rash from sweating. This results in three days of illness including one day of hospitalization in Rome.
Useful links
rapl-kiste.de/gpxviewer/Reise22.html Interactive map with the track 2022
park4night.com/ Shares beautiful places, campsites and RV parks
http://camping-municipal.org/camping-france.htm France’s municipal campsites. Especially recommended with the sign ‘Accueil Vélo’. As a cyclist you can find a fridge, a cooking facility or covered seating. They are always cheap.
https://wp.peic.de/ D radld Oiner – Michael Peic – Great blog of another crazy travel cyclist who we met in the Pyrenees
If you are looking for more information, please do not hesitate to ask us. We recorded a lot of data and we are mor than happy to share them with you: tour details, addresses of campsites; our overnight bookings are in our Booking.com or AirBnB accounts, and much more.