Torino-Nice Rally 2017 See You There

Lets just get one thing clear…winter riding here in the UK sucks! You end up riding in the cold, wet and dark most of the time and even if you stick to the boring main roads you still end up cleaning your bike as much as you ride the thing. I find a good way to motivate myself to still get the miles in is to plan a summer trip to train towards and this year we’re going big, well more accurately high!

We will be taking a few guys over to the Torino-Nice Rally in September and you are more than welcome to come join us.

The Torino–Nice Rally is a 700km journey of discovery over the Alps often at an altitude of 2000m or more along old military strada, over towering cols and historical trade routes. This is only its second year, but it’s already its building up something of a cult status. It’s a good mix of paved and gravel roads, lots of climbing (around 20,000m!) and some frankly mind-blowing scenery and wild camping spots!

The interesting thing with this ride is that it is not a race. It is an event build on the tradition of long distance Audax, Brevet and Randonneur rides. There is no organised timings, no medals for taking part, no support crew, no entry fee. There is dinner and drinks with the other rides the night before, a GPX file with the route, but apart from that your on your own.

That said another unique aspect to this ride is that the route has a number of short cuts build in. This allows you to tailor it a bit, but more interestingly for me it means that in theory you should bump into fellow riders more often then if everyone was just on one set route. I am really interested to see how this plays out.

The ride itself starts on the morning of the 5th Sep and we are aiming to complete it in around 7 days.

It looks properly stunning and one definitely not to be missed!