Cycling tips

It’s that time of year when Bostonians might see Chef Jody Adams riding her collapsible red Brompton bicycle around town to check in with her empire of seven —soon to be eight—area restaurants. The two-time James Beard Award winner says it’s a great way to zip around Boston’s notorious traffic, and even make new friends.

The Eternal City is well known for its historic sites as well as its eternal traffic jams, as many of Rome’s citizens and tourists get around by individual motorized vehicles. But a new initiative to boost cycling, walking, and public transport and how they all interconnect, hopes to change that.

Scandinavians don’t always need to board charter flights to enjoy a summer beach vacation. In fact, they don’t even need a car. Known as the sunshine island, Bornholm invites visitors to experience its beautiful beaches and rustic villages for an authentic Scandinavian summer vacation.

In Japan, it’s not hard to find locals bathing in a public onsen and immersing themselves in the forest—wellness is woven into the fabric of everyday life. With nature considered divine in the Japanese indigenous religions of Buddhism and Shintoism, wellness in Japan is built around the prevalence of volcanoes, forests and hot spring pools. While you might see ‘forest bathing’ offered in the West, in Japan, it is more than a new-age wellness treatment, and considered a form of preventative healthcare. Likewise, ‘sand bathing’ is not a light-hearted children’s beach activity, but instead a therapeutic treatment whose benefits have been espoused for over 300 years.

With over 200km of cycle paths and 300 days of balmy sunshine, Valencia is an ideal biking city that’s entirely flat, spanning a grid system with access to coastal boardwalks, expansive boulevards and cinematic nature parks. 

It’s so dark, it makes no difference whether my eyes are closed or open. The only sound is breathing and a faint ripple when I weightlessly shift position in the salt-laden, skin-warm fluid. Inside an egg-shaped pod at Float in the Forest, one of my personal nightmares (being left alone for an hour with my own thoughts and no distractions) turns out to be a strange, peaceful experience, where time is condensed and space expands. Initially sceptical, my husband, Luke, also emerges from his pod and declares the experience “profoundly relaxing as few things are” (£60, book ahead).

A lifetime of living in Ireland has given me some insight into the vagaries of my home country, beginning with the number one rule: never assume anything. This is a country that delights in confounding even your most comfortable expectations about pretty much everything, from the weather to the quality of the wifi.

Climbing towards the basilica from the river, we explored a zigzag of secret staircases and hidden courtyards in Lyon. These traboules are hard to follow, and so we had to look out for the metal plates that mark some of the entrances. There’s almost no direct way up from the river, but these routes, originally for the city’s silk workers, reveal charming back streets and private courtyards, into which visitors can stare. At the top, breathless, we loved the Basilique Nôtre-Dame de Fourvière. In the crypt we made another exciting discovery: a huge mosaic of the sea battle of Lepanto, a site we’d recently visited in Greece. David Innes-Wilkin

When you can gaze on the salt pans of Guérande, near Nantes, cycle through lavender fields in Drôme, in the south-east, and bask in the splendour of the Cirque de Gavarnie in the Pyrénees, you have to wonder how France got so lucky with its diverse landscapes. Most recently, the volcanic landscape of the Massif Central captured my heart. The chain of extinct volcanoes runs south from the highest, Le Puy de Dôme (there’s a rack railway to the top) near Clermont-Ferrand.

It was an inauspicious start. Having cycled no more than a few metres, from the steps of the Angel hotel into the grounds of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, I fell off my bike.

Brian Healy on the best way to see the splendor of Holland’s tulips: on two wheels.

Spring in northern Lake Garda is an adventure paradise. I’ve been several times and enjoyed the via ferratas: iron cables fixed to scrambling routes, which require fitness and sense of adventure but not technical mountaineering skills (safety equipment required). The views are amazing and varied, from gorges and ledges to grassy mountaintop finishes and, for the bold, huge vertical ladders – with castles, bastions and shrines along the route. It’s a great area, too, for hiring a bike or picking one of the many apartments that include them, to explore the paths and see the lakes and mountains by pedal power. Bored with all that? There’s also paddleboarding, windsurfing, swimming and river boat trips. All accompanied by brilliant food and gelato.David Thomas

From cannabis-clouded coffee shops to lovely parks and cycling lanes aplenty, Amsterdam is a European city with a delightful, vibrant vibe that’s entirely its own. While it certainly makes for amazing travel escapades, there are some useful things to understand about this city and the local culture. 

Morag Mottram, 67, and her husband Jim, 69, of Alberta, Canada had no plans to retire in South Florida and fill their days with bridge and pickleball. Nor did they intend to drive off into the sunset in a shiny Airstream trailer when it came time to hang up their work badges. Instead, this graying, convention-flouting couple set off on two wheels. A pedal-powered approach to life based on many days and weekends spent cycling led them to a small group adventure with Wilderness Scotland, riding across the Outer Hebrides, a scenic cluster of islands off the west coast of Scotland known for rugged hills, barren moorlands, and wind-swept beaches. It was just the start of many such trips to come.

There’s a palpable sense of the changing seasons at this time of the year – longer days, warmer weather, and the feeling that people are stirring from winter hibernation. The parks are getting busier, tennis courts are being used and pelotons of cyclists are starting to appear on our roads. There are so many ways of enjoying the great outdoors while keeping yourself fit and healthy. You may have enjoyed a kayaking trip, a hiking break, cycling through beautiful scenery or a wild swimming holiday. Whatever gets you up and out for an adventure, we’d love to hear about it.

Tristan Ridley was days into his first long-distance trip when he met with a life-threatening incident.

A trip to Japan offers travelers a range of unforgettable experiences, from sampling the rich culinary heritage to discovering remnants of the country's samurai past. What you might not know is that Japan is also a prime destination for outdoor adventure sports. If you are into skiing fine powder snow or diving with sea turtles, hiking sacred peaks or heading off on rural bike rides, Japan has all that and more.

Melodic mantras and warm oil repeatedly poured across the lower back are parts of Kati Vasti, an Ayurvedic therapy that Karina Steward, founder and chief wellness officer of Kamalaya Wellness Sanctuary in Koh Samui, Thailand, swears would put anyone in a pleasure coma. “It's like when you rub oil on the back of a baby and they just pass out,” she explains. But for women experiencing menopause, who are subject to nervous system overload, adrenal burnout, and sleeplessness, such treatments can feel especially powerful, Steward notes. It's one of many tools in Kamalaya's new Radiant Bliss program, a combination of Eastern and Western therapies. Stewart designed it to address women's health concerns at all points in the biological cycle, but the program particularly helps those enduring the mood swings, hot flashes, weight gain, and insomnia that are part of what was once referred to as “the change.”

I’ve enjoyed a lovely four- to five-day circular trip using ferries and bikes. We took the Brittany Ferries overnight sailing from Portsmouth-St Malo, then cycled along La Véloscénie [signposted cycle route] passing Mont Saint-Michel. At Domfront we took La Vélo Francette to Ouistreham and then the ferry back to Portsmouth. At least three-quarters of the ride is off road along former railway track cycle paths that are well maintained. Plenty of accommodation is available. With the exception of a hilly few miles around Flers, it’s all very easy and with the prevailing wind. The final 40 miles from the impressive Viaduc de Clécy is all downhill, passing Pegasus Bridge.Keith Perry

Frozen hair is a nuisance in most places, but at the Eclipse Nordic Hot Springs in Whitehorse, Yukon, it’s a higher calling. Every winter, hundreds of people try to freeze their hair into a troll-doll-like coif for a chance to win cash prizes of 2,000 Canadian dollars, or nearly $1,500.

Puglia embodies everything that is seductive about southern Italy: rolling countryside blanketed in almond and olive groves, luridly turquoise beaches, snug whitewashed villages, and long, lazy lunches washed down with prized local vino.