SUDDENLY, CYCLING THE VIA FRANCIGENA is a thing. Five years ago, I hadn't even heard of this Canterbury-to-Rome epic. Now it seems half the people I know have done it. And the other half are planning to. It's more than a grand-scale bike route. It's a pilgrimage, walked or horsed for centuries, for reasons transcending tourism. For the faithful, the journey is logged in some celestial ledger rather than Strava. And the payback is the writing off of all sins, not just a few kudoses.
The most famous bike pilgrimage is the Camino de Santiago, the network of ancient pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela in western Spain. As big for medieval Christians as the hajj still is for Muslims, it dwindled in popularity until the 1990s, when only a few hundred a year did it. But the millennial focus on self-discovery saw it boom again, and now 300,000 do it annually - 25,000 of them on two wheels.
New routes are appearing too: the 2021 Cathedrals Route visits 42 of them over 1,850 miles around England.
Why are biking pilgrimages so popular? Not often religion, but rather, wider motivations: meditative slow-travel, vague 'spirituality', maybe 'finding yourself. Whatever, they're much more practicable than walking for those of us with limited time, and cyclists are welcome in the network of super-cheap hostels and eateries in historic towns and villages along the way.
We have 10 very varied bike pilgrimages to inspire you to go on a journey of discovery, whatever your beliefs or non-beliefs.
The Epic
Via Francigena: Canterbury to Rome 1,300 miles
This story is from the March 2024 edition of Cycling Plus UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the March 2024 edition of Cycling Plus UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Objectives of desire
Ned ponders his affection for cycling on a ride from London to Minehead
ONE OF A KIND
Project One combines premium-quality customised bikes with an endless palette of colours and designs from the creative experts at Trek. It's a winning formula. Here's why...
Trek Checkpoint ALR 5 Driftless
£2,700 Aluminium bike-packing-friendly gravel bike
Gower Peninsula, Wales
A rider powers up the Cefn Bryn ridge on south Wales' Gower Peninsula.
Slow commotion
Downing Street targeting 20mph zones is attacking popular policy
Black Series Multistrada
£5,629 British designed, all-road speedster
Helmetcam militia
Hey, bad drivers! Want to be in the movies? Then smile as you close-pass us while on the phone
Rolling horizons
2018 Tour de France champion Geraint Thomas tells us about the joy of discovering new routes
ENTER THE DRAGON
It's one of the toughest sportives in the UK, but did climb-loving cycling author Simon Warren have the legs to slay the beast of a sportive route in 2023?
LOFTY GOALS
Higher, harder, longer... the road-sportive calendar gets ever more extreme. Here are 10 of the toughest single day rides to enter for 2024