Tuscany Trail: The Full Adventure
Breaking down the entire process of completing an epic adventure
Introduction
So, what is the Tuscany Trail?
Tuscany Trail is the world’s largest bikepacking event with approximately 6000 riders coming from all over the globe to take part in one epic adventure. It’s not a race. It’s an event focused on finding joy, embracing the spirit of riding and chasing adventure. This year it was roughly 450km with about 6,000 meters of climbing. It’s up to you how long you want to take to complete it, the goal isn’t to compete but to complete. The route takes you across the beautiful region of Tuscany, passing through historic cities, riding along strade bianche, cutting through vineyards, rolling hills, and everything else… It’s predominantly a gravel event but there are some short road sections to break it up.
In July of 2024, I watched this video on GCN and almost instantly, I was completely captivated and just like that, I said to myself: I have to do this. I’ve never been so pulled in and excited by the prospect of such a cool adventure on the bike.
By this point, I hadn’t been riding gravel that long, maybe about half a year so I knew I was going to have to put a lot of training in, not just to feel fit enough to make it round the route but to build confidence riding the off-road terrain. Luckily, a few months prior to this, I had bought the perfect bike (which is actually the same as Connor rides in the GCN video), a Canyon Grizl 8.
Training
Registration for the event didn’t open until December but that didn’t bother me, I felt confident I was going to get a spot so I devoted as much free time as I could to training.
Training was a new concept for me and I will start by saying I had no real plan and had zero knowledge how to build a training plan, I was going to wing it all.
Luckily, I had arranged with work to have every other Friday off, working a nine day fortnight meant that I could dedicate this day to training. My week mostly consisted of:
riding 2-3 times after work covering 30-40km with about 300-500m of climbing, depending on the route
Using my Fridays off as a chance to do long rides, somewhere in the region of 70km and about 1000m of climbing. This was a perfect opportunity to throw the bike into the van, drive to other places and ride unknown terrain (Which I now realise is very important!)
Weekends usually consisted of riding one day of anywhere between 50-80km, probably somewhere more local
This didn’t directly contribute to the cycling but I was surfing every Wednesday and sometimes on the weekend which is a great sport to keep the cardio going
On reflection, there is one really important factor that helped me with my riding in preparation for this adventure. I started riding with a local cycling group called Newtown Park which run a ride on Mondays called “Trails And Ales”. At first, my intention was to go along to meet epic humans (which I did) but riding lots of different trails every week of varying difficulty and getting used to riding in a group really helped build the confidence for riding harder terrain so big thanks to those folks.
Planning:
Just in life, I love to plan, for me this is just as fun as doing the adventure so for this, I used my favourite app - Notion.
First of all, I had to figure out how the hell do I get there!
After doing some research on the cost (and faff) of flying, it turns out it wasn’t cheap, especially with the added cost of taking a bike and all the gear necessary. Then I remembered my greatest ally: my van! I’ve previously done a road trip from Cornwall to North Spain, through France and back home. I did this for one month and loved living in the van so this was the perfect chance to do something like again
I was going to make this more than just a bikepacking trip, I was going to make it a Euro road trip!
To prepare for such a big trip, a large to-do list slowly amounted. I spent all of last summer riding and when the Winter of 2024 arrived, this felt like the natural time to start doing all the planning stuff. The process started in December and slowly trickled all the way through to the beginning of the ride. One thing I learnt quickly is a to-do list is never finished, you just don’t know what else you need to do in that moment in time.
Here is a small snipper of that list, things like:
Van stuff:
Install blackout curtains
Install a mount for the bike
Clean it and remove anything unnecessary things that shouldn’t be coming to Italy (Looking at you, surfboards)
Buy spare coolant, engine oil and other necessary spares
Get the van MOT’d
Make sure I had euro breakdown cover
Bike Stuff:
Buy more gear (always, right!?)
This consisted of bags, jerseys, tools, ear plugs, camping chairs, head torch and other small accessories
Convert the bike to tubeless
Get the bike serviced
Buy spare mech hanger
Buy a hydration vest
General stuff:
Get a Drs medical signed off (£90 :(( )
Research! Research everything
The cycling route
The route to drive to Tuscany
Things I’d need to drive in foreign countries
Learn a bit of the language
Buy all necessary nutrition stuff (I bought chews and bars from Veloforte and carb mix and gels from STYRKR)
I’ve always taken a James Clear-ish approach (thank you Atomic Habits for changing my life) to this kind of thing: break it down until it feels laughably doable. Making the list full of micro-tasks such as “Google bikepacking stove”, “book Drs appointment”, “buy chain lube” made the planning process easy because otherwise I’d sit staring at a screen, paralysed. This approach allowed me to do things in 20 minute blocks of time rather having to dedicate an entire day to getting things done.
The Drive To Italy
TL;DR - Get to France → Drive through the alps → Make my way down to Tuscany
I had 5 days from leaving to the start of the ride so I knew I could be somewhat leisurely in my approach here which meant time for lots of side quests.
I packed up the van the night before I was leaving because for once, I was going to be an adult about this rather than stressing out the door forgetting things. I left for Folkestone from Bristol about midday, making sure to get coffee and snacks for the 3.5 hour drive. I arrived safely in Calais and went to sleep on a lovely campsite 30 mins from the coast.
As I’m getting the van ready in the morning, I’m checking my IG stories and notice two of my friends are in Annecy so I quickly send her a message and we agree to link up - I say see you in 8 hours, scrapped my original plan and absolutely hooned it down to Annecy.
The drive across France isn’t the most interesting one along the highway and get ready to spend some serious dosh on toll roads but there is a magical point on the drive where you come out of a tunnel and suddenly, you’re in the mountains with a blue sky back drop and all of a sudden, life feels pretty epic.
They arranged a spot in the campsite they were staying at for me, I picked up some supplies along the way and made it to them for about 7pm. This was completely unplanned but an amazing decision, I absolutely loved my time in Annecy so I decided to stay for two nights and hang out with my pals. I didn’t feel like I needed to rush into Italy because I left so much time to get there, it’s not very often you’re in such an amazing place so it would be rude to pass it by.
In this time, I completed Tour Du Lac (Simply riding around the lake, which is incredibly beautiful) we swam in the lake, we had a BBQ, we ate pizza and I watched them jump off the mountains (paragliding).
I’m very grateful to be part of such an adventurous friendship group and being able to find your chosen family away from home so easily makes the world seem like a smaller and a friendly place.
We parted ways on the Monday morning, I knew I had to be in Tuscany for Wednesday morning so I still had two days to get there. As they drove back to England, I made my way through the alps and into Italy where I stopped on a small, remote olive farm in the north somewhere.
There really wasn’t much going on there so I spent the evening doing a 40km gravel loop I found on Komoot and more importantly, I sat down with my thoughts and really filled up my journal with some deep reflections from this year. This was a tough but necessary process, I’ve had somewhat of a rocky year and sitting with those feelings was important so I could take a clear mind into the event.
I woke up and made the final 3 hour drive to Tuscany where I made it to my campsite in Campiglia Marittima where I was suddenly surrounded by about 1000 VW Transporters, some of the best gravel bikes I’ve seen and lots of riders eager to get stuck in the ride and obviously, lots of chatter about the event.
That night, we experienced heavy rain, thunder and lightning which was slightly worrying as I was about to spend 4 days sleeping in a tent. All of the riders crammed into the tiny campsite restaurant stuffing our faces with pizza and pasta and praying for the rain to stop. Thankfully, by morning blue skies arrived.
The Event
Day 1:
Registration didn’t open til 1pm which wasn’t ideal as I wanted to stay at the first basecamp they provided (which was literally a field in the middle of a tiny town) but this was 140km away.
I spent the morning stuffing my face and preparing the bike and packing all my gear, hanging out and chatting with the other riders. The start of the ride was about a 5 minute descent into Venturina. I arrived at the arena for about 11:30 and decided to hang out there, after some coffee and pastries and chats with some of the other riders taking part (it didn’t take more than 5 minutes to meet someone else from Bristol!), they opened the desks early and by 1pm, I already had my registration pack and I was ready to depart.
I was absolutely convinced I could make it to the basecamp 140km away, this section of the route wasn’t too intimidating for the first day with only 1,300m of climbing.
We set off and immediately went straight into a 300m climb back into Campiglia Marittima and through the back with no time being wasted to get us on the gravel, from here it was rocky, muddy gravel descents with lots of people getting off to walk but I had my eyes set on the basecamp so I pushed past a lot of people and which then opened up a bigger gap between riders and I can tell you, on narrow gravel roads, this was a blessing.
I was trying to find the balance of preserving my energy but also making sure I get the kms done that I wanted to do, on the flats, I was averaging about 30/35 kmh whilst having a strict routine of eating and drinking every 30 minutes without fail. About 40km into the ride, I grab my first pizza to keep that energy up. As I pressed on, the vibe was incredible, lots of locals cheering us on, asking to us to stop for free wine and beer. It was completely electric and everything just felt perfect and exciting!
At kilometer 75, after all the beach sections, filled with lots of climbing and descending in the hot 28-30 degree heat, I had pizza number two. This was kind of the last major place to stop before we head in land so I knew this was the last spot to fuel properly. At this point, I put some tunes on and whilst being powered by some of the best Italian pizza, I felt a new burst of energy and I was ready to press on.
The route on day 1 was largely off road compromising of gravel, rocks, sand and mud. There was one final off road section before making the base camp which is through the woods, around 7:30, the sun is hanging low and the light is disappearing. These woods were NOT fun, we are talking clumpy, sticky mud with lots of going up and back down. I was aware I was close to end of my ride so wanted to play it safe, especially with a fully loaded bike so took the descents gently to avoid slipping out. We made it through and one gentle road section to Paganico.
There we had it, I set off at 1pm and by 8pm I had covered 138km and 1,324m of climbing which coincidentally was my longest ride.
My evening then consisted of a naked outdoor shower which was quite possibly the best shower of my life, a third pizza with some guys I rode with and an extremely good sleep, eager to start day 2.
Day 2:
The best thing about doing a long ride for me? I sleep like a baby - After getting into my sleeping bag and putting my head on the pillow, I was knocked out. Naturally, I woke up feeling pretty refreshed and ready to go.
A quick pack down of the tent and with a face wash, I was ready to go by about 7am. Bob and I grabbed coffee and pastries (I had 3 croissants and cake) in the lovely town square and then we set off for the day.
Little did I know, while enjoying that peaceful coffee, that I was about to hit some of the gnarliest climbs I’ve ever done. I quickly learnt that you better enjoy the descents because you’re only going to be climbing back up very shortly. Some of the ascents stretched to 9 km with steep gradients. Throw in a fully loaded bike, loose gravel, and temperatures in the high 20s, and it made for a seriously tough combination. I was committed to make it up every single one so I would fall into a gentle rhythm of just spinning my pedals slowly but surely and keeping a consistent speed. After one of the bigger climbs, Bob pulled a hero move and grabbed us a couple of ice-cold Cokes as a reward.
Bob wanted to press on and I was going to chill for a minute so we went separate ways at this point. We were never too far from each other as we crossed paths in the next town for lunch.
The highlight of this day was rolling down the strade bianche with Pienza in the distance. I had the tunes playing, I had been fuelling right throughout the day so the energy levels were feeling good so I sat in the saddle for the climb into Pienza where I rewarded myself with some incredible gelato as I rolled through the city gates. Pienza and the surrounding area is stunning, I felt truly grateful that I was here in Italy, riding my bike, in my happy place getting to witness all this beauty around me. This for me is the benefit of riding a bike, covering lots of ground and passing through the beauty of the world.
As the second day came to a close, I added another 97.7km and 1,774m of climbing to the total.
Day 3:
Another excellent night of sleep, probably more hours than the previous night. At home, one of my morning rituals is a cup of English Breakfast tea. That’s not always possible when you’re roaming around, but this morning, the café next to me had one lone teabag left, clearly destined for me. Breakfast was more croissants (of course) and a quick stop at the supermarket to make sure I had enough to keep me going for the day.
Today was going to be an exciting day, I was going to be passing through Siena. When I originally found out about this ride, I remember watching Connor get a Panini in Siena piazza and as I watched it, I said to myself that I would be doing this exact thing one day.
As we rolled across the white gravel paths, Siena appeared on the horizon, a tiny dot that grew with each pedal stroke. This filled me with so much excitement so I pushed on with all my energy and before I knew it, I am sat in Siena Piaza with a panini in my hand and with a moment of reflection, I realise I completed the vision. I was physically here and all the training, planning and riding had led me to exactly the spot I was supposed to be in.
One of the best things about doing a ride like this is that you are encouraged to eat a lot to keep the carbs in and avoid the potential bonk. After pressing on from Siena for another 20-25km, I’m sat in the only restaurant in a tiny Italian village eating pastries, spaghetti and having my second coffee for the day.
If passing through one beautiful city like Siena wasn’t enough, the route also took us through Colle di Val d'Elsa, Monteriggioni and San Gimignano. The Tuscan cities you imagine on postcards with terracotta roof tiles as far as the eye can see, beautiful architecture and a real sense of life happening before you. As much as I loved the quiet gravel paths of this route, you will never beat roaming through a city thats almost a 1000 years old.
I roll into the basecamp for the night, immediately grab an ice cream, set my tent up and who do I see again? Bob! We simply can’t be separated on this ride. The third day closes with another 109.3km and 1,844m of climbing.
Day 4:
The last day! It’s a bittersweet feeling for the ride to becoming to an end. On one hand, my ass & legs hurt so I’m definitely ready for some time off the bike but on the other, I’m having the time of my life and what happens after this? I just go back to normal life. I want to soak up every single second of this adventure and experience the final moments in all its glory.
Bob and I start the day with coffee and my usual three pastries. We roll out onto the longest and smoothest road of the trip, a welcome break for our tired legs. We cover about 15km before even touching gravel.
This is where the first issue of the day happens, we turn off the main road and approach a 300m climb, on the gravel. My left knee starts screaming at me which is odd because I haven’t felt this before, I pull over and massage it as much as I can and it’s feeling internally swollen but some pressure seems to alleviate the pain so I try to climb but with every pedal stroke I’m in a lot of pain and I’m thinking shit - is my ride over? I do what I’ve been training to do on these rides, ignore and push through the pain and at the top of the climb (with some seriously epic views) I dig deep in the bags for ibuprofen and continue to massage it. Miraculously, it calms down enough that I can continue the ride.
In spirit of the ride so far, when one climb is finished, another begins and I slowly make my way into Montecatini Val di Cecina. At the top, I reward myself with more pastries and a cup of tea. The temperature is heating up but I can’t tell if it’s the air thats hot or my own body temperature after the mega long climb with the sun beating down on me.
I want to thank whoever designed the route because the last 40km of it was pure dowhill through exciting winding roads and FOR ONCE I HAD A TAILWIND ON THE FLAT and I was so excited to get to the end of the ride, I was absolutely giving it my all, averaging 35km on the final leg, I had the end in sight and I was going to give every ounce of energy I had left. I roll back into arena where I started the ride and that was it, I had completed what I set out to do!
Final thoughts on the ride:
I struggle to put into words how amazing it feels to create a vision, do the work, and just do the thing. I’m so grateful to be in a place in life where I can chase these fun adventures. The connection between health, movement, adventure and wellbeing is something I’ll never take for granted.
Would I recommend this ride? ABSOLUTELY. You’ll see some of the most epic landscapes your eyeballs will ever witness, you’ll eat unreal Italian food, meet incredible people who share a passion for adventure and most importantly, you’ll challenge yourself and you will get through it. And pushing our comfort zones is something I think we should be doing daily, in all areas of life.
The Drive Home
Whilst I was on the ride, my close friend Hannah flew out to Tuscany and was staying in my van, enjoying some down time on the coast whilst I frantically ride my bike. The plan was always to meet up and do the drive home together.
Hannah was incredibly sweet and met me at the finish line with all the excitement in the world which was the perfect end to the ride. We have a quick drink and she rushes me off to the beach, to a spot she found the day before where I lay in the sun and bask in the high high that I was feeling whilst she went for a swim in the sea. Followed by a beautiful dinner at a restaurant with a sunset view and we close our first day together feeling happy and content.
Over the new few days we would very slowly make our way home via an intended much longer route than the one I took to get to Italy. We would pass through a natural thermal spa, breathtaking Tuscan landscapes, Pizza in Pienza, Florence, The Italian lakes, Switzerland and France before parting ways just outside London.
One of Hannah’s amazing skills is her ability to find niche, beautiful and interesting things to do. The highlight of our slow return journey home was visiting an olive farm just outside of Tuscany in a place Fiesole. We arrived around midday after navigating some tricky and thin Italian city roads which meant we were late for our tour of the olive farm. Upon arriving, we met with the owners of the farm and about 4 others who were there to peek inside the inner workings of a tuscan olive farm.
We spent the afternoon talking about the different species of olive tree (there was 4 in that area), the trees, the farming process and the pressing process. It was truly fascinating which only made me want to be there in October to see the real hustle of the harvest as he pulls in volunteers from all over to help and could be up til 3am at the local press.
This afternoon concluded with those most incredible lunch prepared for us on the terrace of the house overlooking Florence and Fiesole. They made us all kinds of local Tuscan dishes and of course, we sampled their olive oil.
They kindly agreed to let us stay on the farm for the night and about 7pm, Hannah and I reunited with Aroonji for a yoga class on the terrace against with 3 others. The backdrop to our class was filled with the soft song of the birds resting for their evening sleep and a pure golden sunset.
Yoga creates the stillness in me that I struggle to find in other ways and with this setting and processing the past few days, I felt very emotional and couldn’t think of a better place that I should have been in that moment. The class concluded with a 30 minute meditation which put me into a state of peace and calm which is all that I can ask for.
We parted ways with the family that hosted us the following morning and I felt sad to be leaving, in the 24 hours we spent on the land, I felt a strong connection that I wanted to hold onto a bit longer. Maybe my body was relaxed being high up surrounded by green space but maybe I just had been the company of incredible people which created a necessary emotional pause in me.
Ending such an incredible trip like this can only be met with a heavy mix of emotions - pure joy and gratitude whilst also experiencing a sadness for it being over. I love whatever part of my exists that get me out of the house with an extreme sense of curiosity which leads me to different corners of the world.
Being a witness to beautiful landscapes, magical nature, and crossing paths with some of the most wonderful humans is what I want to live for...
