Solo by bike over the Swiss col Grand-Saint-Bernard towards Italy. (S3 P2:E2)

I write this story during the rest day on Saturday July 8, 2023 in a small apartment in picturesque Firenze within walking distance of the Ponte Vecchio while thinking back to the five fantastic solo cycling days I experienced. I always regret that time passes so quickly and I am still looking for a miracle cure to slow down time. All tips are welcome…

Cycling Adventure 15 (CA15) is my path of personal growth with which I want to inspire people to develop their own path of personal growth in this rapidly changing world.

The enchanting Lake Geneva brings you to the foot of the col du Grand-Saint-Bernard

Due to circumstances I took the late flight from Brussels to Geneva on Sunday evening July 2, 2023. The stress eased when I saw my bike box pass by on the conveyor belt and I was able to start assembling my bike. With a peace of mind I crawled into bed around midnight, but the peace was short-lived because I suddenly wondered where I had left the key of the bicycle lock with which I had secured my bicycle in the storage room. The key was nowhere to be found in the room and after some research I luckily found it on the floor in the nearby restaurant where I had a bite to eat. After a hearty breakfast, the second part of my third cycling season (S3P2) finally started. Six months after my cycling adventure in Southeast Asia is not that long, but still I was super excited to start.

There was surprisingly little traffic in the center of Geneva on a Monday morning. From the center you are directly on Lake Geneva where I cycled via the east side towards the col du Grand Saint-Bernard. As a pilot I often flew over the beautiful Lake Geneva, but until now I have never seen it up close. It exudes the tranquility I was looking for after an intensive period of work.

Once past the lake you enter the valley where nature and the mountains radiate towards you. From Geneva to the foot of the Col du Grand Saint-Bernard is about 120 km with 500 meters of altitude before starting the first part of the 30 km climb to peaceful Bourg-Saint-Pierre. Even as a trained cyclist and with 18 kg of bicycle luggage, this requires some perseverance. During the climb I wondered at a certain point at what age a man is actually the strongest. I stopped to look up the answer. It turned out that this is approximately around your 25th birthday and not on your 50th. At the same time, a smile appeared on my face when I read in the same article that you are most attractive at 50. Now I understand why my wife Eva looks at me in love even more than before.

In the residence Bourg-Saint-Pierre I met Roland Suter (alias roly suter), town clerk in a small village between Bern and Zurich. Roland was on his 7-day cycling tour 'Tour du Mont-Blanc'. I noticed that he only had two small bags on his bike. It turned out that he only had some spare inner tubes with him. He counted on some luck. Should I perhaps do the same in the future and not foresee everything, because my mountain of spare bicycle gear weighs more than 5 kg. And when I told Roli that I wash my cycling clothes every day, he started laughing out loud. If you have cycled for 1 hour in the warm temperatures you will not notice the difference, he said.

The next day I started the second part of the climb to the top of the Col du Grand Saint-Bernard at 2500 meters with this time some tougher parts above 11%. The beautiful view on the top, also the border with Italy, eased the pain in the legs. What a wonderful feeling!

Cycling along the Italian cliffs with the village of Manarola as icing on the cake .

My coach Thiago repeatedly urged me to eat a lot. “Eat as much as you can and load up on carbs for the next cycling days and try to eat dry fruit along the way,” he said. And if Thiago gives you advice, you better follow it, because as a scientist he knows very well what he is saying and why he is saying it. And so it happened that every evening I ordered a starter, main course and a nice dessert. But what you shouldn't tell him is that I didn't eat any dry fruit during the day, but I did eat pistolets with a good bar of milk chocolate.

Via the col du Grand-Saint-Bernard I cycled to my next place to sleep in the tourist village of Viverone. There I was hospitably received by Dunja who, together with her husband, had lived in Leuven, Belgium, for five years. The hungry mosquitoes also welcomed me with juicy bites through the bib shorts. From Viverone it went to my next place of residence, the historic city of Genoa.

From Genoa I experienced one of the most beautiful cycling routes along the cliffs. It goes up and down with heights of up to 600 meters and phenomenal views. It made me feel good and made me realize how lucky I am to experience this. The tough ride with a total of more than 2000 vertical meters ended in Manarola, a traffic-free village built at the bottom of the edge of one of the breathtaking cliffs. Highly recommended for those who haven't been there yet.

The next day I set out for the famous Florence. From the start of the ride there was a climb on the menu that my leg muscles struggled a bit. It was the first ride where I experienced the same temperatures above 40 degrees as during my first season in central Spain.

Some would call me crazy for having two training sessions of about two hours in between to increase my form level for the upcoming amateur cycling races. It is not obvious, but it gives me satisfaction to combine the cycling adventure with this.

A new 5-day cycling adventure to the east coast of Italy awaits me on Sunday, July 9, 2023.

Some numbers of my rides: