Discovering the world on $20 per day ......................




Post 346 ...... the greatest biking roads in the world ...

If you don’t like the crowds or the cold, then you could always head south into Croatia. The beautifully surfaced E65 hugs the Dalmatian Coast all of the way from Rijeka in the North to Dubrovnik in the South. It would make the perfect opening scenes for a Bond movie ... it’s California 1 without the traffic .... a few hundred miles of riding bliss and my favourite road in Europe.

Continuing on the theme of E-Numbers .... the E75 in Macedonia is well worth a mention. As a motorway, it shouldn’t get a sniff at the best biking roads in the world, but the E75 is a motorway like no other. The part that I love is a toll road that’ll cost you the grand sum of £0:40 to ride on it .... but it’s an investment not a cost. It’s not the smoothest tarmac in the world, but it’s quite possibly the fastest. It clings to the side of mountains that I couldn’t name, South bound on one side of the mountains and North bound on the other. It’s never straight and it’s never slow, it’s a public racetrack without the public. I don’t know how long the road is but the only other vehicle that I passed was a police car .... fortunately it was a Lada

From the North of Scotland to the Southern tip of Europe, there are some absolutely amazing biking roads. But let’s be totally honest, there are an awful lot of crappy roads that stand in between them. When it comes to high density biking heaven ... there’s really only one place to go .... Northern California.

Ok ...when it comes to biking roads you might think that I’m slightly biased towards Northern California .. but that’s only because I’m right. I can think of no other place on earth where there’s such a density of amazing roads. Add to that a year-round climate that encourages riding and you’ve got biking utopia.

My favourite stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, California 1, runs from Legget down to Mendocino Beach. At Mendocino Beach, take time to wander around a wild beach strewn with the skeletons of ancient redwoods. Camp there, build a fire, drink some local wine, roll up a smoke and make merry.....

From Mendocino Beach, turn inland on the ‘128’ through the giant redwoods to Boonville. The perfectly surfaced road twists its way through the trees, riding in darkness with perfectly clear blue skies above. From Boonville turn West onto Mount View Road twisting back to the coast and then head south again.

At the hamlet of Stewarts Point turn East onto Skraggs Springs Road and let the fun begin. The first fifteen miles is pleasant and relaxing ...... the second fifteen is awesome and intense. Climbing and dropping .... always turning. The view is probably spectacular but if you’ve got time to take it in then you’re either not riding a bike or your mid-way through crashing. As you finally pass Sanoma Lake, turn around and repeat as often as time allows ...... It really is for me, the best technical biking road in the world.

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