Publisher's Synopsis
Climbing, coasting or gentle pedaling, cyclists want routes with hills, or they crave level routes, or perhaps both. Some that I have had conversations with need to know about the history of places along the route. All of these tourists/explorers have an opportunity to satisfy these requirements with this guidebook. The sixteen routes mapped and described here travel through many flat areas along Mediterranean beaches. Other routes are over bluffs near the Pyrénées. The route locations stretch from the Spanish border with France, to 30 kilometers northeast of Béziers. Politically, this is the Languedoc-Roussillon Region. These routes cover and cross much of the known history of Europe. Neanderthal Man emerged after the most recent ice age somewhat north of these routes. Then came Crô-Magnon. Much later the Celts were here, who were then subjugated for more than four hundred years by the Romans. Some of the people who changed and shaped this part of France include the Carthaginian Hannibal Barca, Roman proconsul Domitius Ahenobarbus (he of the Via Domitia - Roman Road - built in 118 Before the Common Era), Visigoth leader Alaric, Charlemagne and his grandfather Charles Martel, Louis the German through Louis XIV, Cardinal Richelieu, along with Napoleon Bonaparte and Napoleon III. Pierre-Paul Riquet's great seventeenth century achievement, the Canal du Midi, relied on the ingenuity and guts of the Region's people. No, I did not overlook restaurants. The route maps have a symbol near where I spotted one or two that seemed decent, although this guide doesn't attempt a review - tastes and preferences are personal. Typically the chef owns his or her own restaurant in France. Given the many choices, the local population goes to the better ones.
