Category: Bike Touring

ColTraversette-bike-tour-hannibal

Bicycle touring without panniers, why it is better.

Sam Wood, founder of Bike Odyssey’s incredible Bicycle Tours and Roman Archaeologist, always wanted to ride the route of his all-time favourite historic commander – Hannibal Barca. So, with his brothers, he proposed to the BBC to make this journey on bikes and film it as a documentary. The Beeb loved the idea and sent a film crew along making a six-part documentary with the trio riding from Barcelona to Rome. There is one major major difference about the trip he did though and the Hannibal bicycle tour he runs for others – comfort.

Hannibal Bike Tour History – Crusades and riding through Cathar Country in France

When you think of the Crusades you most often think of fanatical Catholic knights charging off to kill non-believers. However, the truth is, they sometimes didn’t go far to begin their killing! Carcassonne was the target of an internal Crusade in the early 13th century to eliminate Catharism, an offshoot of the Catholic religion. Catharism, as they go, had some positive outlooks and was fairly harmless – woman were seen as equals, they believed in reincarnation and somewhat surprisingly they were pescatarian or vegetarians!