Tag Archives: hut to hut biking

Tour des Combins

Dave learning just how much fun carrying a bike up hill can be at 2800m
Two days of biking in mountains, on mountains, between mountains and ignoring mountains. And a hut. 130km round, 5000m up and 5900m down if you want to try it yourself.

The journey, not the destination.

It's cycle touring, not bike packing. Just because you've been tight and just strapped your shit onto the bike rather than using a pannier doesn't make it a different sport, it just means you're using the wrong tools for the job.
Tour du Mont Blanc on a road bike. Cycle touring not bike packing.

Feel the serenity.

Now THIS is where it gets interesting.
Two days on bikes playing around the Fiz range. Some huts, some climbs and some cracking descents. All that way just to pick up some content...

Tour du Mont Blanc day 1

With nothing much to write about in Chamonix this week (the weather is hot, sunny and err hot, and both the town and trails are hoaching; Les Houches, Le Tour and GM trails are all holding up well, if a bit dusty; Flegere is OK but really needs the loose stones swept off it; rained a bit today which should improve grip, but the forecast is scorchio for the next week), I thought I’d put up a wee write up on the Tour du Mont Blanc which legendary (or at least infamous) Scottish biker Sanny & I did in September … [Read full post]

Tour du Mont Blanc day 2

….. Day two – the tortoise and the hare. On the climb out of the Refuge des Mottets we’d been swapping stories and jokes with an Andorran trail-runner, out for a gentle jaunt around Mont Blanc. As he was on foot and we were mostly carrying our bikes it was only to be expected that he would say his farewells and trot off into the distance, on the flat and descents we would easily be quicker.

Sure enough, we met him again as we dropped into Italy, the descent at first on open foot worn tracks with natural berms … [Read full post]

Tour du Mont Blanc day 3

……It was a proper lightbulb moment! I don’t know what inspired it, the amazing breakfast or the surreal sculptures of the “walk of the mushrooms”  but suddenly a chain of thought occurred to me – the freehub’s knackered & I don’t want to walk back to Chamonix, high torque will only make it worse, straining up a hill in the granny ring is high torque. Therefore, I can get off and push up the hills and it’s not because the hill has defeated me, I am being a mature, reasoned rider- Get in!

The breakfast was quite likely the cause … [Read full post]