The Family Bike Touring Guide

Today has been a good day. We’ve rested, laughed, wandered, chatted. All the things that you’d wish for in a family vacation. And yet weirdly I’ve very much missed my bike.

As a keen cyclist, I initially threw out the idea of a family ride this year thinking that the idea would be instantly quashed. Lara has always seen her bike primarily as a cost saving device, and the kids, despite having decent bikes, have never really even considered using them unless we’ve decided to (very occasionally) ride somewhere as a family. So the fact that this tour has even happened is still somewhat bewildering to me, yet I’m so glad that it did. We’ve worked so well together as a family, and yes there have been tense and frustrating moments, but the ride, as a whole, has been a really positive,uplifting and dare I say uniting experience for all of us.

Today has been a day of often unspoken celebration of our family achievement over the last seven days, where no ice-cream was refused, no frustrating words were spoken and we just did family really well. We even ate salad together with no complaints.

And tomorrow the journey completes as we head back to La Rochelle on the train (assuming that they will allow us to travel with our bikes), and back to our awaiting car.

I’ve also realised this week how funny our kids can be, making up jokes along the route, laughing lots and poking fun at each other and their parents. I literally just had a conversation with Maisey where she tried to convince me that “asleep” is a colour.

I would say that this journey has been significant in a number of ways. Partly as a celebration of the sense of achievement Lara and I feel for raising such great kids. Zak and Maisey are a delight to us both and have knuckled down and done this ride, even when not feeling great, supporting each other and us at every stage. In some ways it’s been a bit of a ‘coming of age’ for them both, as they’ve proved they can tackle what life throws at them and enjoy being in the moment.

And aside from the 200+ miles of cycling, the rain that we came to France to avoid and the various painful incidents along the way, I think I can say that we all had fun every day.

So what else is left to say? Not much, other than I really hope that our next family cycling adventure isn’t too far away. I get to do a fair amount of cycling with other people. I’ve done European tours, several multi day sponsored rides around the UK and I have a Land’s End to John O’Groats ride (in just 64 hours) planned for later this month, but I can honestly say that non of that competes with touring with my family.

I live a very blessed life, and I owe that to a very forgiving Saviour, and an amazingly releasing and loving family.

I can’t wait for our next adventure together.