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I reckon Dubrovnik would probably be the place to aim for, then probably ride over from there. But when I looked it was basically try and get a train as far as Vienna, then some sketchy-looking buses down via Zagreb, which I assume would require careful checking on bike carriage policy. From London it looked like at least a day and a half travelling.
honk-
After I posted I looked at it a bit more and saw that google could get me to Budva in Montenegro in just under 2 days. And I once cycled from Budva to Shkoder in a day.
That included a Flixbus leg from Zagreb down to Dubrovnik. Flixbus have bike racks so that bit might work (for maybe four people per bus - how many entries are they expecting?), but it also included a Globtour Croatia bus. I checked their bike carriage policy the other day, and it says they take bagged/boxed bikes in winter but not in summer as they are too busy! If you pack your bike small and ask nicely, you might get on, but no guarantee.
frank9755
That's a very good point!
Fundamentally what the TCR does, which involves lots of one way movement of people across Europe, is not very environmentally friendly, nor is running events in southern Europe that are mainly entered by northern Europeans. The rest of the holiday industry does that as well so they're not doing anything worse, but the green aspirations don't sit too comfortably with what they actually do.
After the 2022 TCR they did a sustainably questionnaire to the riders, asking what they could do to reduce their carbon footprint. I said the big thing was to make it start and finish in the same place, and for that place to have good rail links and be near to where most riders live.
Making it an out-and-back would take away a lot from the core proposition of the TCR, to ride across a continent (but they have moved away from that quite a bit already with zig-zag routes and hike-a-bike parcours) but good to think outside of the box if you really want to change.
With this new one, they could have put the start and finish somewhere like Zagreb and had a couple of days' ride out and back as part of the event. Or they could put on a coach. Basically they could take some of the responsibility for the carbon footprint rather than pushing it all on to their customer.
I had a quick look in Google on how to get to Shkoder and it didn't have any ideas!