This Site …

… is by no means commercial. Is designed for friends, family & cycling enthusiasts want to follow the adventure of a 3 week tour of France. While riding the tour I can fill the prepared pages with content of the day, taking you along on an extraordinary adventure.

Faxebook and other advertising octopuses have no access and the page is not found via this, it is so to speak private in the public domain. Some of you care about this and not without reason.

When I created this instance, all supporters of the Tour de Force Charity – as a small thank you – should participate in the adventure through a daily tour report; be there virtually. – Addendum in July 2017: the charity raised an incredible 388’000 pounds – With WordPress it was relatively easy, I could prepare the stage reports and in the evening in the hotel I only had to add the photos from the day and a small description of the events and activate the page.

Frankly, I did not think that this will meet with such a great response and that I will receive encouraging and cheering SMS, WhatsApp, e-mails when I read that the day was a bit exhausting or the weather was demotivating.

Some then later reported that they thought it was a shame when it was over, they participated daily and couldn’t wait until the next report came.

Well, the instance and the procedure is established and I am happy to do it again for the next tours. To do this, I have rearranged the instance a bit and made it ready for new adventures.

Pictures and Videos

There are pictures or videos shown on the site, I asked everyone for permission to personal content on my site. If I did not ask and not got this permission explicitly, I refused to use it.

Comments and Notes

The site has a comment function, here you can leave questions, suggestions, criticism, etc., which can then all see and read along. This works like a WhatsApp group. Whether I can answer that but immediately depends on my evening condition.

Up-to-dateness of the site

The site does not run a WebMaster or editor, please do not expect immediate response. I will also have technical difficulties, because in France it is often

hotels that have wifi, but then it doesn’t work. But I will try in the evening to switch my impressions with photos from the route to the respective prepared stage page live. If that doesn’t work, I’ll make up for it at the next location.

Since I can of course after 200km and 3 mountains certainly no longer have the necessary concentration for error-free work, the content will be the next morning by helping spirits – thanks to Natalie – still editorially cross-checked and corrected if necessary.

How it all began

At some point I started to ride tours. Small backpack with the absolute essentials, choose a route, go, stay overnight somewhere and continue the next day. In the process, I discovered how great it is in the summer to ride the alpine passes with the road bike, where we are otherwise on the road for skiing.

So routes led again and again in the nearby Alps to Vorarlberg, Tyrol and later a Dolomite crossing, where I was a week daily from one pass to another on the road.

Then in 2016 it was the Pyrenees that I always wanted to experience. I joined a group that was going from San Sebastian on the Atlantic north of Barcelona to the Mediterranean in 2 weeks. What a terrific experience, some of it difficult, challenging, but the routes through wonderful landscapes; no motorcycles, no traffic. At first I thought to myself, if I have to drive the one or other pass with the car, that’s not so bad. In the end, I rode the whole route without stopping. Here is the altitude profile of the 2014 tour, ours was a little different knitted, but you can already see how much it goes up and down again and again.

The tour was organized by Dirk and his Canigou Cycling Team. Something better could not have happened to me for the first such tour.

With this experience, I was then looking for what I could do in 2017 …