Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

:-*

Start Geraardsbergen - CP1 in Claremont Ferrand
http://thehippy.net/blog/transcontinental-race-tcrno4-part-1/

CP1 Claremont Ferrand - CP2 Grindelwald
http://thehippy.net/blog/transcontinental-race-tcrno4-part-2/

CP2 Grindelwald - CP3 Alleghe
http://thehippy.net/blog/transcontinental-race-tcrno4-part-3/

CP3 Alleghe - Motel Kiwi, Bosnia
http://thehippy.net/blog/transcontinental-race-tcrno4-part-4/

Motel Kiwi, Bosnia - Bosnia/Montenegro border
http://thehippy.net/blog/transcontinental-race-tcrno4-part-5/

Bosnia/Montenegro border - Hotel S, Berane, Montenegro
http://thehippy.net/blog/transcontinental-race-tcrno4-part-6/

NEW
Berane, Montenegro to Hotel Macedonia, Lake Dojran
http://thehippy.net/blog/transcontinental-race-tcrno4-part-7/

Queued up to read.

Speaking of which, can't get the RSS on your blog to work hippy. The links you have on one of the pages no worky. Would make it much easier for me (being a lazy shite). Ta.

Sounds like you had a rough time of it in Macedonia. At least when I was there I had decent weather - slightly too hot for a couple of hours but I had a nap in a field in the worst of it. It was still utterly shite, but not as bad as when you were there.

I didn't even know it had an RSS feed.

The links all seems to work fine for me in Firefox's feed reader.

PICNIC?

Everyone got different conditions depending on their pace. Some people suffered in the Swiss Alps but it was fine for me, others got wind in Croatia but I was in Greece when I had windy conditions. Depends on route choice and timing. Perhaps in future long races I'll do more weather checking but that would require a working internet connection... wouldn't it Three Mobile?

Yes, I think I was lucky overall with the weather. Avoided most of Switzerland where lots of people got wet. Just missed the rain at the top of the Giau. And only had significant rain on one day - a storm in Italy in the afternoon and another in Croatia that night.

The wind in Croatia was tough, but one bit that you mentioned in your Croatia section was the bit where the road was being re-done. In the dark and lashing rain, it was really hard to work out which bit was actually the road.

PEBKAC more like.

I had just glanced at the date of this article: http://thehippy.net/blog/bloglines-rss-etc/ and read it as 2016. Understandable why those links don't work...

Ah, it's wordpress: http://thehippy.net/blog/feed/ is the URL I needed.

PICNIC = problem in chair, not in computer.

A much better acronym that gets heavy use here. I used to spend a good few minutes pretending to unwrap an entire picnic set and sit down for an imaginary picnic lunch when my old boss did something daft. :)

Lucky to find that lobby to sleep in in Pluzine! I got there a couple of hours before you and found nothing, except pizza and water, and ended up bivvying on the street with the dogs. Everything still wet in the morning. Warmed up nicely as I started climbing to Durmitor at dawn, in the pouring rain. Rather discusting to have my feet that soaked and wrinkly for the whole following day. But Durmitor was beautiful.

So, when does the registration for the next one open? :)

They need results for this year's event first :)

I'll see you in Turkey next year Sam 🚵

It's amusing how long these long distance events take to publish the results, same thing with the PBP and other brevets.

But shall we again be drinking Efes in Turkey or could it be Ursus in Romania or what... I think Mike said the finish could be somewhere else next year, will be interesting to see.

I thought they liked Turkey as a finish line - they said as much when they were emailing during the coup crisis.

Whatever they come up with I'm sure it'll be equal parts painful and beautiful :)

I also wondered what it'd be like with somewhere like Portugal or maybe Andorra as the starting point...

If he wants to make it tougher then north-south would introduce even more weather into the race. As awesome as Norway and Sweden are (and they really are!), they're almost as expensive as Switzerland, especially if you like a drink.

The Barents Sea to the Strait of Gibraltar would be a hell of a race though.

I also wondered what it'd be like with somewhere like Portugal or maybe Andorra as the starting point...

Someone in the office suggested that too but then Geraardsbergen has been pretty good to them.

I think the race will definitely start in Geraardsbergen again. They've got a pretty good relationship with the town. It's also one of the easiest places in the entire world to get to with the Eurostar from Britain and 4 of the worlds biggest airports pretty close by (Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London).

I'm fairly sure the race won't finish in Turkey next year even though I think everyone enjoyed Cannakale but I think a similar beach resorty type town.

The control cars drove back through Romania so I'm thinking Trans Alpina or the Transfagarsan or both. I remember Mike saying he wanted to include the latter.

A Black Sea finish would be cool and with much of it being close to Bucharest it would be convenient to get out of. It also satisfies the transcontinental element.

Personally I wouldn't want another southerly slog through France so a checkpoint somewhere a bit easterly like the Black Forest would be cool. Also having the first checkpoint close by keeps the racing interesting.

I also wouldn't say no to one of the nice unpaved passes

The control cars drove back through Romania

How do you know? I thought they were careful to remove trackers from cars :)

nice unpaved passes

fuck right off :P

Transfagarsan

Fuck yeah. Really hope I get an entry next year!

Well they uploaded a picture of some climb saying that even this might be too tough for the TCR and people seemed to think it was Romania.

A nice unpaved road like the Colle del Sommeiller would be an ideal checkpoint 2.

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I think the race will definitely start in Geraardsbergen again.

I'm fairly sure the race won't finish in Turkey

I was goint to post this, but you've thought it through a lot more. G-bergen to the Black Sea over the Transfagarsan would be a great route. Nordkapp to Gibraltar would lack the diversity that the countries of Eastern Europe bring.

The Black Forest would be good as well. I did a tour round it last year and there is some great cycling - and some horiffic rough cycle tracks for people who don't take care with route planning!

Also I expect there might be checkpoints and parcours that pretty much force people to actually stay in the Alps.

Transfagarsan

Bless you.

some horiffic rough cycle tracks for people who don't take care with route planning! hippy

Yay

So good, all of those options.

Trans Alpina

What kind of a genius builds the road straight over the top of a mountain when you could go around it as well. Or at least it looks like that looking at this side.

Yeah, looks like they got halfway up then got bored and decided not to bother with the switchbacks after all.