Holiday Plans 2022

Hoping for the best with regards to the pandemic and – perhaps even scarier – provided that the mad dog in the Kremlin doesn’t destroy the planet, we have booked two holidays for this year.

One will be a week in Hochsauerland (Germany) where we have rented an apartment as the base camp for another cycling week.

But the other one is two weeks of sun fun.

For Paula.

On Tenerife…

Frequent visitors of this blog will already know what’s coming next 😂

But if you’re a first time visitor, I refer to the reports on two previous such vacations on Mallorca and Gran Canaria.

You said Tenerife, my dear?

HELL YEAH!!!

While this trip to Tenerife actually gives Paula her much needed “suncation”, allowing her to lay comatose on the beach all day long, I hope once again to make friends at Free Motion, as I did on Gran Canaria.

But before we get on the plane in September, we will get in the car in April to pay another visit for what has become – sorta, Berchtesgaden not included – my favorite cycling area in Germany.

This will be our third trip there, after 2014 and 2016. I didn’t realize it had been that long until after I looked it up here myself…

I’m not complaining, as I’ve since cycled in Italy (2015 and 2020), France (2017 and 2021) and Switzerland (2019).

Not to mention that both the trips to Mallorca (2015) and to Gran Canaria (2018), as well as to the Vosges (2016) and Berchtesgaden (2017) were in between those “Grand Tours”…

Sauerland and specifically Hochsauerlandkreis (HSK) were we will reside, is really a good area for cycling.

It offers more challenges than the south of my own country. The hills are higher and the climbs often / mostly longer.

It has one of the best websites where you can find / plan you trips and unlike some other areas (like the Siebengebirge), there are more quiet country roads to be found, although they are (almost) never really without traffic.

Most routes on the site are over the less busy L and even quieter K roads, but still…

And while the hills will not make it to my “been there, done that” list, as they are below 1,000 meters, hardly anything in between is flat.

The highest summit is the Langenberg, at 843 meters – I will have to look it up, but I believe there’s only a mountain bike trail going up and there’s nothing to be had or seen – as in views – at the summit.

Perhaps because of that, the Kahler Asten is sometimes – mistakenly – referred to as the highest summit.

Then again, at 841 meters, it’s not like there’s a real difference, plus there’s a restaurant there, as I found out during my 2016 trip.

And this one does have views…

Anyway, I will not have any problem constructing a few nice trips, using the website and taking parts of my previous rides there.

As to further plans for my holiday on Tenerife, I will be going through the options in the foreseeable future.

At the time of writing, Free Motion is not “back in business” on Tenerife, but I hope they will be.

In which case I won’t have much planning to do, as I will be riding guided tours, otherwise, it will require more as I will only be able to rent a bike.

And as there are so many worthwhile places to go to and a multitude of ways to get from the coast up Teide, I have to figure out a schedule that won’t destroy me in three days, with or without Free Motion…

My only “experience” with Tenerife – and Teide – is from indoor rides on various platforms, not in the least BigRingVR that recently ran a challenge with (I think) five rides up that volcano.

And as these climbs are typically between 30+ and 60+ kilometers, with 1,500 to 3,000 meters of elevation gain, none of them are easy.

And that’s “just” Teide…