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jmg412
After June's tour, I had 2 customers in rapid succession ask for bags for the Great Divide. That triggered major "one day I'll do big tours like that" fantasising and shortly after I realised I'm self employed and I shouldn't stick to fantasising. However, Great Divide seems a fairly serious undertaking, and I haven't even seen that much of Europe, so I'll save that for my 40s.
Instead, I'm now pretty set on riding from Porto to Geneva from ±15.05 till 15.06 next year. Still a decent distance, covering lots of amazing biotopes (vague plan is Picos de Europa, cross the Pyrenees via Andorra, make it up through France via the Massif Central), and not quite as far away (read: expensive).
When winter comes around there will be plenty of rambling here about camping gear, clothing and most importantly the route (and mostest importantliest the bags). However, the main question for the feasibility is what I can cover per day, I'm currently counting on 100k and 2000m of climbing per day. That's a bit less than what I did on the last two days on my own in France (115km), and even less than what we did last weekend (125km). These last two days left me feeling pretty knackered, but all the riding happened between 10 and 18. On a long tour the riding window is closer to 8-20 with some packing discipline in the morning, which means lower average speed and longer breaks throughout the day.
I'm fairly optimistic, and worst comes to worst I can just do the last bit by train.
The route as it stands, although I'd probably want to see the coast near Biarritz or Bilbao: