PREPARING FOR YOUR ADVENTURE

Appalachians – Maine to North Carolina

GENERAL TOUR INFORMATION

CLICK HERE FOR GENERAL DETAILS OF HOW TO PREPARE FOR YOUR UPCOMING CYCLING ADVENTURE

MEETING POINTS & TOUR SPECIFICS

STAGE 1 | BETHEL, ME to GETTYSBURG, PA

(Sunday 30th May – Saturday 12th June) 

For Stage 1 the official start point is at the Bethel Inn in Bethel, ME at 1400 on Sunday, May 30th.

From the airport, we can also pick you up from downtown Portland on the way to Bethel if you arrive earlier. Our recommended hotel in Portland is the Hampton Inn Portland Downtown – Waterfront . The travel time to Bethel is 90 minutes.

The nearest airport for the tour is in Portland, ME, and we have a pick up from there at 1200 on May 30th. We’ll meet you in the baggage claim area.

The stage end is in Gettysburg after breakfast on Saturday, June 12th. Our final hotel is the centrally located Inn at Cemetery Hill. We have a shuttle to the Dulles International Airport on the morning of the 12th. The journey time is around 90 minutes.

STAGE 2 | GETTYSBURG, PA to ASHEVILLE, NC

(Saturday 12th – Saturday 26th June) 

The meeting point for stage 2 is at the Inn at Cemetery Hill at 1500 on Saturday 12th June. We have a pickup from the Dulles International Airport at 1200 for those that fly in on the day. The journey time is around 90 minutes.

Please note that whilst we suggest bringing lights for the entire tour they are imperative on the Blue Ridge Parkway which has a series of tunnels that we need to pass through.

TOUR CONCLUSION | ASHVILLE, NC

(Saturday 26th June) 

The riding part of the tour ends in Cherokee, NC around lunchtime. From here we shuttle you back to the vibrant town of Asheville for our final night. The last hotel is Four Points by Sheraton in downtown Asheville. After breakfast on Saturday, June 26th we will have a shuttle to Asheville Airport which is around 30 minutes drive away.

Setting up our Epic Adventures is very much a process that evolves over the course of time. Generally, it starts with a conversation about how cool it would be to follow in the footsteps of a particular historical figure to then poring over maps as to the feasibility of doing it on a bike! If the idea strikes a chord we then find ourselves conceptualizing a route and then trying to join the dots between places of interest along the way. Before we know it the trip specialists are searching out the road less travelled, visiting possible lodging options and searching out eateries that give a sense of the place we are visiting.

With our Marco Polo Cycling Tour the process was very much assisted by the fact our trip specialist Marcello had been running tours down the Dalmatian coast for many years and had studied in Venice over 2o years ago. The tour was very much a realisation of a personal dream to create a tour with Marco Polo at its core and we were more than happy to make it happen. However, there was still a need to test some of his recommendations before we added them to the roster. This was the case with a family-run restaurant in an abandoned village on the island of Hvar that Marcello thought would work well on the tour. It is fair to say Dylan didn’t object too strongly when asked to try it out when on a family holiday in Hvar!

The test run was a resounding success and everything about the experience fitted with our desire to sample local fare and get a sense of place through doing so. Our host and chef Berti took the time to introduce us to his family and explained how he ended up running a biodynamic restaurant specialising in ‘peka’ in an abandoned village on the island of Hvar. It was clear that this dining experience had all the ‘ingredients’ to be added to the list of culinary highlights across the tours we run and our visit there in September proved that to be the case. The meat and seafood peka dishes served up were sublime and so we thought we thought we’d give you more of an insight into what ‘peka’ actually was.

The peka is a traditional dish from the Dalmatian region of Croatia. It’s a relatively simple dish of meat and vegetables, placed in a large pot or pan with a metal lid called a cripnja, and cooked for several hours in the embers of a fire. Much of Croatian cuisine celebrates cooking over the fire, with its grills and skewers, and the peka is part of this great tradition. What appears a fairly rudimentary cooking method produces the most succulent results, and over the generations, the process has taken on its own ritual, with many older homes having a specific place where the peka is prepared. It is often served when there are guests in the house, and restaurants in the area will typically have several versions on the menu, with different choices of meat and fish.

The Peka recipe

– Light the fire at least an hour before starting to cook, and place the cooking pot near the fire to warm.
– Cut the meat or fish into large pieces and place in the pot. Lamb and veal are often used, as is fish and octopus.
– Cut the potatoes and any vegetables you wish to use into large pieces and nestle them in the pot along with the meat.
– Season with olive oil, salt, pepper and a little paprika.
– When you have plenty of embers in the fireplace move them to one side using your fireside shovel, and place the peka pan directly onto the hot stone, making sure the lid is securely fitted.
– Then shovel the embers over the top of the pot and cook until the potatoes are golden and the meat tender and juicy, which will take an hour for fish dishes, and longer for tougher cuts of meat.

The right amount of seasoning and perfect cooking time comes with experience, like so many things in life!

As is often the case the best accompaniment to a dish that is very much a part of its local culture, is a local wine. Here are a few of Croatia’s most fabulous reds and whites. We were very lucky to have our newly qualified sommelier Marcello on the tour to manage the wine kitty 🙂

Dingač is known as the ‘King of Croatian wines’. The Dingač region is on the Pelješac Peninsula in the Dalmatian region and was the first wine-producing area in Croatia to become a protected zone in 1965. The Plavac mali grape, that grows on its steep southern slopes, creates a wine that is dark red, full-bodied and generally strong, typically with an alcohol content of 15%.

Pošip is a robust white wine, golden in colour, and a great accompaniment to fish Peka, including the fabulous octopus peka. The grape is grown mostly on the island of Korčula, and also goes well with the light cheeses produced in the area.

Plavac mali is a ruby red, rich and velvety wine. Its excellent quality has made it one of Croatia’s most exported wines, and a popular choice to pair with game and meat dishes.

Faros is another a top-quality wine produced from the Plavac mali grape. The grapes used to create this dry red are grown on the island of Hvar, the variety having been originally cultivated in the area by the ancient Greeks.

Bogdanuša is a variety also grown almost exclusively on the island of Hvar, producing a dry greenish-yellow white wine. It has a fresh taste, with fans detecting the presence of the lavender that grows alongside it on the Stari Grad Plain.

Prošek is a sweet dessert wine produced in the south of Croatia, predominantly Dalmatia. Because of its production method that requires seven times more grapes than other wines, only a few hundred litres are made each year, making good quality versions more expensive. In Croatia it often makes an appearance on special occasions such as weddings and christenings, but don’t fall into the trap of confusing it with Italian Prosecco!

Our Strzelecki Tour takes us across the Great Dividing Range from the Pacific to the Southern Ocean and takes in Australia’s most iconic climbs. But who exactly was Strzelecki?

Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki, to give him his full title, was a Polish-born explorer, scientist and nobleman. Prior to landing in Australia in 1839, he’d briefly served in the Prussian Army, and was an experienced explorer with several expeditions under his belt. He initially set sail from Liverpool, England to New York in 1834, where he began an epic geological trip in the Americas, which included discovering copper in Canada, and travelling the west coast from Chile to California. He visited Cuba, Tahiti and the South Sea Islands before eventually arriving in Sydney.

With an ambitious dream of conducting a geological survey of Australia, Strzelecki’s expeditions would see him cover over 7,000 miles in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. While studying the mineralogy of the country he was the first person to discover gold and silver near Hartley and Wellington, but Governor Gipps, in office at the time, asked him to keep his discovery a secret, to avoid a gold rush and to maintain discipline among the convict population. Strzelecki agreed, and in doing so apparently forfeited his own claim to a fortune.

His expedition led him through the Snowy Mountains, where he climbed the highest peak in Australia, naming it Mount Kosciuszko, after Polish leader Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Kosciuszko was a worthy namesake, considered a national hero not just in his native Poland, but also in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and the USA. He fought on the US side in the American Revolutionary War, and is honoured with statues in several US cities – to fight against the British and then have a mountain named after him in a British Colony is pretty impressive! If Strzelecki had marked his map with the local indigenous name of ‘Targangal’ however, Australians would have had a far easier time of spelling out their highest mountain for the last 160 years.

Strzelecki then travelled south through the area he named Gippsland, after the Governor. After passing the la Trobe River things took a turn for the worse and the party were forced to abandon the horses and minerals and make a dash for Melbourne. They reached it on the edge of starvation and exhaustion, but thankfully alive, in May 1840.

He was accompanied on his trip by James Macarthur and James Riley, and it was mainly thanks to their Aboriginal guides Charlie Tarra and Jackey that the group survived. Cycling trivia fans might be interested to note that James Riley was the great-grandfather of one of Australia’s greatest cyclists, Russell Mockridge. Mockridge won cycling medals around the world, and even beat the pros in Paris in 1952 – a ‘humiliation’ which caused organisers to ban amateurs for years. He competed in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, turned pro the following year, and was one of only 60 riders to finish the 1955 Tour de France, out of a starting line of 150.

Strzelecki then travelled Tasmania (or Van Diemen’s Land as it was then known) for two years, discovering coal while he was there, before returning to Australia. He eventually set sail back to England in 1843, managing to squeeze in further expeditions in China, the East Indies and Egypt on his way back. On his return he published his findings to great acclaim from the scientific community. His snappily-titled Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land won him praise from Charles Darwin himself, and was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.

He produced the first large geological map of New South Wales and Tasmania, which is still on public display at the Royal Geographical Society in London. He later became a British Citizen, and in 1869 was knighted, receiving the title of Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG), an honour specifically for services to the British Commonwealth, most notably his work done as a famine relief agent, which he refused to accept payment for and it has been estimated that the various works in which he was involved in during those horrible famine years saved 200,000 lives.

If you have found your way to this page you have made a vital step in joining us for some rides on Zwift. Chris Small is leading the way on this and after 4 weeks in isolation at home in Florence is well versed in how it all works. So much so he’s been top of our Strava Club classification for the last four weeks and he’s not allowed to ride outside! The rest of our Zwift team pictured – Megan, Richie, and Dylan – are new to the platform and have spent the last couple of weeks getting familiarised so they can also lead the rides. The ride times will be posted via our Ride & Seek Strava Club and Epicurean newsletter so we invite you to sign up to both if you haven’t already. Most importantly though you’ll need to follow us – Rideandseekers Ride&Seek – on the Zwift companion app so we can invite you to our Meetups. In times like these, there is no better remedy to our problems than a nice pedal and a chat with some social distancing thrown into the mix! We look forward to riding with you in the virtual world!

What do I need to join the rides?

Essentials

• A Bike!
• Zwift account – free 7-day trial for new users and then a monthly subscription.
• Zwift companion app – use this to follow Rideandseekers Ride&Seek so we can invite you to the rides.
• A smart trainer, direct drive or wheel-on trainer.
• Computer, Apple tv, iPad or smartphone to enter the Zwift virtual world – position that in front of the bike.

Optional

• Discord app – download this and we can invite you to chat with the group during the rides.
• Smartphone to send messages to the group via Zwift companion.
• Heart rate monitor.
• Cadence monitor.
• A fan to keep you cool.
• ANT connectivity – considered more stable than Bluetooth.

General advice

• Once you have received your invite to ride with us (best to check for this on the Zwift companion app) accept the invite and sign in to Zwift 20 minutes before the ride time.
• When you sign in and set up your sensors you will have a choice of worlds to enter. They can be found at the top of the Zwift page. Click on the one we are using for our ride and start to warm up. 3 minutes before the start time you will get prompted on the screen to go to the start of the ride. Click yes and join the fun.
• Our friends at GCN have also put together their usual concise overview of how it all works that is GCN Zwift rides.

Ride options – we will have two options each week

• The options will link to our espresso grading system with Option 1 aimed at all 2-4 espresso cup riders. Option 2, on the other hand, is better suited to 3 & 4 espresso cup riders.
• Option 1: A  no-drop group ride which will keep us all together regardless of the speed you pedal at. If someone rides at 400 watts and the slowest rider is at 100 watts you simply stay together until someone stops peddling and the elastic band effect snaps.
• Option 2: A normal group ride where we encourage people to ride together whilst lifting the pace around halfway and doing a mini race for the last 4/5 km (2.5/3 miles).

These 13 tips for beginner zwifters are worth a read as well. see you all on the virtual road soon!