Trip was pretty mega - Tenerife a gorgeous place to ride. It's been quite a shock coming back to 5C from 25C, & £6.60 from €1.20 for a large wine!
We did a rough variation of the Gran Gaunche route, plus a few extras to make up ground to where we were staying - generally at around sea level. All the gravel was at altitude, so to make our way back up we had some pretty spicy road & off-road climbs. I had the hardest gearing & the smallest tyres of all my friends, & do wish I'd gone for the 40T front ring instead of a 44T, but generally survived, knees intact.
Gran Gaunche recommends 45mm tyres, but I was fine on a wide 37mm tbh, didn't really feel like I needed more as there were plenty of fast luxury gravel sections of quick rolling stuff. In general, while the surfaces were variable but all very rideable apart from a few small sections on the first day out of Vilaflor. On the north side of the island we even encountered mud at one point which we thought might've been caused by helicopters dousing the extinguished wildfires we rode through - we were later informed that there had been huge dramatic storms the week before we came. A friend had been up to the summit of Teide the week before we'd come & found two dead bodies caught out by the same storm, must have been quite dramatic weather (though I guess it wouldn't take much at 3,700m).
One thing that worked out really well from our trip was managing bike boxes. We'd taken a roll of black clingfling & wrapped the folded cardboard boxes after unpacking bikes. With the use of an inner tube we wore them as backpacks & cycled with them to a patch of wasteground just outside the airport, & hid them among some cacti & shrubs. Came back a week later & they were undisturbed, so made sorting out getting bikes home much simpler than hunting down new boxes! Did look a bit like we'd hidden some bodies though.
Oo, got a new highest speed I've been on a bike too - 52mph on the top plateau. Perflectly straight, downhill road with a tailwind. Beat my previous top of 50mph on Bernina Pass/Pendle Hill.
Some words & pictures of mine on the Restrap blog. Also more photos on my IG - one, two.
Trip was pretty mega - Tenerife a gorgeous place to ride. It's been quite a shock coming back to 5C from 25C, & £6.60 from €1.20 for a large wine!
We did a rough variation of the Gran Gaunche route, plus a few extras to make up ground to where we were staying - generally at around sea level. All the gravel was at altitude, so to make our way back up we had some pretty spicy road & off-road climbs. I had the hardest gearing & the smallest tyres of all my friends, & do wish I'd gone for the 40T front ring instead of a 44T, but generally survived, knees intact.
Gran Gaunche recommends 45mm tyres, but I was fine on a wide 37mm tbh, didn't really feel like I needed more as there were plenty of fast luxury gravel sections of quick rolling stuff. In general, while the surfaces were variable but all very rideable apart from a few small sections on the first day out of Vilaflor. On the north side of the island we even encountered mud at one point which we thought might've been caused by helicopters dousing the extinguished wildfires we rode through - we were later informed that there had been huge dramatic storms the week before we came. A friend had been up to the summit of Teide the week before we'd come & found two dead bodies caught out by the same storm, must have been quite dramatic weather (though I guess it wouldn't take much at 3,700m).
One thing that worked out really well from our trip was managing bike boxes. We'd taken a roll of black clingfling & wrapped the folded cardboard boxes after unpacking bikes. With the use of an inner tube we wore them as backpacks & cycled with them to a patch of wasteground just outside the airport, & hid them among some cacti & shrubs. Came back a week later & they were undisturbed, so made sorting out getting bikes home much simpler than hunting down new boxes! Did look a bit like we'd hidden some bodies though.
Oo, got a new highest speed I've been on a bike too - 52mph on the top plateau. Perflectly straight, downhill road with a tailwind. Beat my previous top of 50mph on Bernina Pass/Pendle Hill.
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