This page was last updated Di 04 April 2023.

Contents: Tours (2)   

Reports by David Welch

All descriptions are in English, unless otherwise noted.

Tours

Return to Provence - Our second tandem trip in Provence
by David Welch, tour started May 2003

We encountered not one hint of anti-American feeling or negativity. Just as last year, the French people were wonderful. People repeatedly went out of their way to help us. One small example: Early in the trip, we were passing through a very small town with almost no signposting on the various intersections. On our third pass through the downtown trying to find the right road, we stopped to ask directions of two ladies talking in to main square. After some discussion, one of them went and got her car and drove to the edge of town just to show us the right way.

Summing up the trip, we had a wonderful time, ate lots of really great food and rode enogh miles not to gain weight in the process. What more can one ask from a vacation?

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A Tandem in Provence 2002 - Meandering through French countryside by tandem
by David Welch, tour started May 2002

We are David and Suzette Welch, a nurse and librarian living in Chico California. Even though we are longtime cyclists and tandemists, and took a two week tour for our honeymoon thirty years ago, neither of us had been to Europe before and our total touring experience over the years has been pretty modest. But with age advancing upon us (total team age at the time of this trip was 111 years) we decided it was time to start doing some of those trips we had dreamed of for years.

With an eye to this trip, we had acquired a coupled tandem, which makes the non-cycling parts of the travel ever so much easier. Determined not to be more gauche than necessary, we put a certain amount of time into the study of French. Suzette, with more background and more free time did rather better at that than David. We did lots of pre-trip research online. Particularly helpful were the trip reports posted on the Trento Bike Pages and the generous and expert advice of many of the folks on the Tandem@Hobbes listserve. We dedicate this journal to all those people whose advice helped us, in the hope that this information may help someone else and encourage others to make similar trips.

See all 2 reports by David Welch