Purple Velo
Travel Blog
Real rides, real roads, real people — stories from Europe's greatest cycling destinations written by our riders, guests, and team.
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Conquering the Stelvio: 48 Hairpins to Heaven
There are climbs, and then there is the Stelvio. At 2,758 metres — the highest paved pass in the Eastern Alps — it is the kind of mountain that reorders your relationship with cycling entirely. I have ridden a lot of cols in my time, but nothing quite prepares you for what waits on that narrow ribbon of tarmac.
Norway by Bike: Fjords, Midnight Sun and Silence
I did not expect Norway to break me. Not emotionally, at least. I had packed for cold and hills, for unpredictable weather and long days. What I had not packed for was the silence — the profound, absolute silence of cycling through a fjord landscape at midnight, in full daylight, with no sound but my own breathing.
La Marmotte 2024: The Most Brutal Beautiful Day on a Bike
La Marmotte is 174 kilometres, 5,000 metres of climbing, and four of the most iconic cols in the French Alps — the Croix de Fer, Télégraphe, Galibier, and Alpe d'Huez. It is also the hardest day I have ever voluntarily spent on a bicycle. And the best.
The Dolomites by Bike: Where Every Turn Is a Postcard
I grew up in Vicenza, ninety minutes south of the Dolomites, and I spent years taking them for granted. They were always there, pale and vertical on the northern horizon. It took a cycling holiday to make me truly see them for the first time — from the saddle, at altitude, where the scale of the rock towers finally makes sense.
Two Weeks in Girona: Training Like a Pro
There is a reason that more professional cycling teams base themselves in Girona than anywhere else in Europe. The roads are extraordinary, the coffee is good, and the city — medieval, walled, draped over the Onyar river — is the kind of place that makes you want to stay indefinitely. I went for two weeks. I should have stayed longer.
The Pyrenees Pass by Pass: A Five-Day Traverse
The Pyrenees are different from the Alps. Wilder, less groomed, with a particular quality of emptiness on the high passes that the more touristic Alpine cols rarely achieve. Our five-day traverse from Hendaye on the Atlantic coast to Banyuls-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean was the most complete cycling journey I have ever undertaken.
Mont Ventoux: The Lonely Mountain That Haunts Every Cyclist
Mont Ventoux does not look like a mountain that can hurt you. From the plains of the Luberon, it rises as a white dome above the olive groves — almost gentle-looking, almost approachable. This is a lie. Ventoux is, by reputation and by reality, the cruellest mountain in European cycling, and I say that as someone who rode it three times in a single day.
Swiss Alpine Roads: Immaculate Surfaces Through the Roof of Europe
Switzerland charges you for everything — the food, the hotels, the cable cars — and delivers corresponding value in return. The roads in particular are extraordinary: swept, smooth, edged with precision, maintained to a standard that makes British tarmac feel like a theoretical concept. For a cyclist, this is paradise measured in francs.
From Couch to Alps: My Honest First Cycling Holiday Diary
Twelve months ago I owned a bike I had not ridden in three years. It hung from hooks in my garage, covered in a thin layer of optimism and a thicker one of dust. Then I booked a cycling holiday in the Alps and gave myself six months to become someone who could survive it. This is what actually happened.
Tuscany by Two Wheels: Chianti, Olive Groves and Impossible Beauty
Tuscany is where cycling becomes art. The roads — the famous white gravel strade bianche, the cypress-lined lanes, the hilltop towns connected by vertiginous descents — were not built for bikes, but they seem, in retrospect, to have been designed for them. I rode here for a week in April and have spent the months since working out how to go back.