The trips

Twenty-six weekends, one format, sorted by country. Riding is measured off the routed lines behind each destination’s ride maps, both days added together.

When to go

Daily highs, month by month. March to October are fitted to the spring, summer and autumn temperatures each destination page gives; November to February come from published climate normals for the six destinations far enough south to be worth checking, and everywhere else on this list is northern, continental or upland and simply too cold. Blue is cold, green is right, red will cook you.

Two of these do work in winter. Roussillon is the pick: Perpignan sits at 12–13°C in January and February with five hours of sun a day and one to three wet days a month — the driest winter here — and its Sunday ride is the flattest thing on the site, 113m over 73km. Penedès is the other: 14°C, dry, and the calçotades run from January. Alentejo is warm enough at 14–15°C but January is its wettest month, so make it February or March. The rest of the south is marginal rather than good: the Valle d’Itria gets ten wet days in January on an exposed plateau, Carcassonne drops to 9.7°C, and the Southern Rhône adds a mistral that touches 100km/h.

Each cell gives the modelled daily high. A ring round a month means the destination page itself names it as the time to come, and a symbol means something is on — click it for the festival. The key is under the table.

too cold cold cool good ideal hot too hot

🚴 closed-road cycling day   🌸 blossom   🎶 music   🎨 art, books or light   🎭 pageant or procession   🍴 food   🌿 harvest and new wine   🍷 wine festival

Which one to pick

• Best all-rounder: Saumur. A purpose-built flat traffic-free cycle path, cathedral-sized cellars open daily, a château on the hill, and the cheapest good eating in France.
• Best cycling for scenery: the Wachau. Flat car-free Danube path, river ferries, terraced Grüner Veltliner, abbeys and a ransom castle.
• Flattest of them all: Burgenland. A signed ring round a shallow steppe lake with no climbing whatsoever, a ferry across the middle, and Blaufränkisch that deserves to be better known here.
• Strangest wine: the Jura. Vin jaune spends six years and three months in barrel under a veil of yeast and comes out tasting like nothing else made anywhere. Château-Chalon, where it is the only wine permitted, is fifty hectares — the smallest appellation in France. Be warned that the Saturday is the hardest day here: 890m over 62km, and 212m of it straight off the train.
• Best descent to the sea: the Valle d’Itria. The base sits at 390m and the Sunday drops every metre of it to the Adriatic, runs twenty flat kilometres of shore past a Roman city standing on the beach, and climbs it all back. The wine on the plateau is white, which is not what anyone expects from Puglia.
• Easiest travel: Champagne. No airport. Eurostar and a TGV, four and a half hours, door to door. Chablis can also be done without flying, about six hours via Paris and Auxerre. Saumur can too, via Lille and Angers without touching Paris — but only on one of the two direct trains a day.
• Best for the wine itself: Haro. Seven great bodegas within a few hundred metres — unmatched anywhere.
• Most famous vineyard road: Beaune. Pommard, Meursault, Montrachet — and it turns out to be a signposted cycle route.
• Best in spring: the Pfalz or the Wachau. Almond blossom on the Weinstraße in March, apricot blossom along the Danube a fortnight later — two regions that look completely different from their autumn selves.
• Best in high summer: Saumur or Burgenland. Ten thousand people at long tables in the Loire in early August; a shallow lake at 25°C and operetta on the water in Austria.
• Best in autumn: Chablis or the Mosel. A real festival on the fourth weekend of October with post-harvest calm around it, or the gentlest riding in Europe with the valley turning gold.
• Warmest: Alentejo — flat empty roads and among the cheapest of the lot, though genuinely too hot to ride in July and August.
• Most dramatic vineyards: Roussillon — schist crags, Cathar castles, and Mas Amiel’s field of glass demijohns oxidising in the open air.
• Best landscape: Chianti — on e-bikes, in May or at the end of October when the new olive oil is pressed.
• Cheapest of all, and the least discovered: South Moravia. Around £520 all in, 1,250km of signed wine trails, a UNESCO parkland of follies and avenues, and wine almost nobody in Britain has tasted. The catch is a zero-tolerance drink-cycling law that means riding and tasting must happen at different ends of the day.
• Cheapest in western Europe: the Canal du Midi. A UNESCO towpath with no hills at all, bike hire at €15 a day, cassoulet, and Carcassonne on the skyline. The Carcassonne flights are seasonal — Toulouse is the year-round way in.
• Easiest to book at short notice: Penedès. Barcelona has more London flights than anywhere in Europe, the train does the rest, and there is a festival at either end of the year — calçotades in spring, Escumostra in early October.
• Best for a sparkling obsessive: the Prosecco hills. UNESCO ridges, the Cartizze cru and an unstaffed osteria in the vines — on the condition that everyone rides an e-bike.

The cycling

Every weekend plotted: total distance over the two days up the side, total climbing along the bottom. Bottom left is easy, top right is a lot of both. Figures are measured off the routed lines, ferry and train legs removed.

Ordered by total climbing across the weekend, gentlest first. Every figure here is measured — ridden distance and ascent taken from the routed GPX behind each destination's ride maps, with any ferry or boat leg removed. All fifty-two days, all twenty-six destinations. Where a day includes a crossing, the distance afloat is noted separately and is not counted as riding.

The Wachau and Bardolino are the gentlest, both under 450m across two days on car-free paths. At the other end Penedès clears 1,400m and Chianti 1,260m — but Penedès needs 117km to do it and Chianti only 69km, which makes Chianti the steepest riding here, at eighteen metres of climbing for every kilometre ridden, with Alba just behind it. Ascent matters more than distance on all of these: a flat 70km day is easier than a hilly 30km one, and the wine is at the top of the hill more often than not.

The wines

What each region actually grows, in its own words.

Getting there

The journeys below start in London, because that is where these were worked out from and a single starting point makes the comparison mean something. Nothing else on the site depends on it: the riding, the wineries, the food, the festivals and the month-by-month weather are the same wherever you set off from, and most of these destinations are easier to reach from the near continent than from England.

Routes and fares below assume a London departure; most of these regions are reachable from other UK and Irish airports with one change.

Four of the twenty-six can be reached without a flight. Champagne is Eurostar to Paris and a TGV on to Reims — about four and a half hours from St Pancras to Épernay, and comfortably the easiest travel day on the list. Chablis is Eurostar and a TER from Paris-Bercy to Auxerre, about six hours door to door, which is no slower than flying to Paris and taking the same onward train. Saumur can be done without a flight too, but with a caveat worth reading twice: Eurostar to Lille-Europe, then a TGV to Angers-Saint-Laud, which lands you where the Saturday ride begins without ever crossing Paris. There are only two direct trains a day, and while the fastest does it in 3h22, the average Lille–Angers journey is nearer five hours because most routings are not the direct one. Get the direct train and you are there in about six hours door to door; miss it and the day gets long. There is also a Paris route, Montparnasse to Saumur direct in 1h40, but it means getting yourself and your luggage between Gare du Nord and Montparnasse.

The Jura is the newest of the four and the simplest of them after Champagne: Eurostar to the Gare du Nord, one hop across to the Gare de Lyon, and a TGV to Mouchard, which is the junction for the whole wine region and ten kilometres from Arbois. About six and a half hours door to door, and the last ten kilometres can be ridden rather than transferred — the bike hire is in the station building.

Be straight about the trade: for Saumur the rail option costs more than the Nantes flight and takes an hour or two longer. What you buy is no airport, no baggage drop, no 5am alarm, and arrival in a city centre. Champagne and Chablis are near enough cost-neutral once airport transfers are counted.

Bikes on trains are the thing most likely to catch you out. Several of these weekends put the bikes on a train at some point, and the rules vary by region and by season rather than by country. Switzerland requires a compulsory reservation on the InterCity services through Neuchâtel from late March to the end of October. France now does the same on every TER line in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes — €1 a bike, at weekends and through the summer, booked on a separate site from the ticket. Elsewhere bikes usually travel free and unbooked. Check the destination page, and book the bike space at the same time as the seat.

Champagne is the outlier and the easiest — no flight at all. Bordeaux and Frankfurt have the most forgiving schedules (many flights a day, so a missed one is not a disaster), and Frankfurt Airport has a railway station under the terminal. Chablis has the fiddliest journey; Alentejo and Rioja the longest.

Cost

Travel and transfers, three hotel nights (own room, mid-range), bike hire, food, wine and spending money, costed from a London departure. Treat as ±20%, and as a ranking rather than a quote.

Figures are per person, and they barely move with the size of the party. Three things do: airport taxis and minibus transfers get cheaper each as the group grows; bike hire is worth booking as one batch, since the smaller shops hold only a handful of e-bikes; and a few of the best winery tastings cap at six people, so five is comfortably inside but worth naming when you book.

Food & drink

Festivals by month

Every festival named on a destination page, sorted by the month it falls in. A festival spanning several months appears in each of them. None of these weekends assumes you are there for one — and the trade is real: growers pour in the square rather than show visitors round a cellar, and beds go early and go up. Where the site has the festival’s own page, the name links to it.

Jan

• 🍷 Beaune — Saint-Vincent Tournante — a winter weekend
• 🎭 Canal du Midi — Carnaval de Limoux — January to March
• 🍷 Chablis — Saint-Vincent Tournante — a winter weekend, elsewhere for now
• 🍷 Champagne — Saint-Vincent — late January
• 🍷 Northern Rhône — Marché aux Vins d'Ampuis — late January
• 🍴 Penedès — Calçotada season — January to April
• 🎶 Valle d’Itria — Locus Winter — Christmas

Feb

• 🌿 Jura — Percée du Vin Jaune — first weekend of February

Mar

• 🍷 Beaune — Grands Jours de Bourgogne — March, every other year
• 🎭 Canal du Midi — Carnaval de Limoux — January to March
• 🍷 Northern Rhône — Marché aux Vins d'Ampuis — late January
• 🌸 Pfalz — Mandelblütenfest, Gimmeldingen — March
• 🌸 Wachau — Marillenblüte — late March into April

Apr

• 🍷 Alba & the Langhe — Vinum, Alba — late April and May
• 🎶 Alentejo — Festival Terras sem Sombra — spring
• 🎭 Alentejo — Semana Santa, Évora — Easter
• 🍷 Bardolino — Chiaretto Revolution
• 🎭 Bardolino — Palio del Chiaretto, Bardolino — late spring or early summer
• 🍷 Bardolino — Vinitaly, Verona — April
• 🌿 Burgenland — Golser Weinfrühling — April
• 🍷 Canal du Midi — Toques et Clochers, Limoux — Palm Sunday weekend
• 🚴 Jura — Festival de la Randonnée — spring
• 🍷 Moravia — Open cellar days — spring weekends
• 🍴 Penedès — Calçotada season — January to April
• 🎨 Penedès — Sant Jordi — 23 April
• 🍷 Prosecco Hills — Mostra dello Spumante, Valdobbiadene — spring
• 🍷 Rheingau — Tage der offenen Weinkeller — spring weekends
• 🎭 Roussillon — Procession de la Sanch, Perpignan — Good Friday
• 🎭 Saumur — Cadre Noir gala performances — spring
• 🍷 Southern Rhône — Printemps de Châteauneuf — spring
• 🎭 Valle d’Itria — Festa di San Giorgio, Locorotondo — 22 and 23 April
• 🎶 Wachau — Donaufestival, Krems — spring and summer
• 🌸 Wachau — Marillenblüte — late March into April

May

• 🍷 Alba & the Langhe — Vinum, Alba — late April and May
• 🍷 Burgenland — WeinWandern Gols and Wein mit Weitblick — May and June
• 🍷 Chianti — Radda nel Bicchiere — late May or early June
• 🍷 Mosel — Saar-Pedal — a Sunday in May
• 🍷 Prosecco Hills — Vino in Villa — May

Jun

• 🍴 Alentejo — Feira de São João, Évora — late June
• 🚴 Alsace — Slow Up Alsace — early June
• 🍷 Burgenland — WeinWandern Gols and Wein mit Weitblick — May and June
• 🍷 Chianti — Radda nel Bicchiere — late May or early June
• 🎶 Moravia — Summer in the Lednice–Valtice park — June to August
• 🍷 Mosel — Weinfeste in every village — June to September
• 🍷 Neuchâtel — Absinthe en Fête — a Saturday in June
• 🎶 Rheingau — Rheingau Musik Festival — late June to early September
• 🍷 Rioja — Batalla del Vino, Haro — 29 June
• 🍷 Rioja — Cata del Barrio de la Estación — June
• 🎭 Saint-Émilion — Jurade de printemps — June

Jul

• 🎶 Alba & the Langhe — Collisioni, Barolo — July
• 🎭 Bardolino — Palio del Chiaretto, Bardolino — late spring or early summer
• 🎶 Beaune — Festival International d'Opéra Baroque — July
• 🎶 Burgenland — Seefestspiele Mörbisch — July and August
• 🎶 Canal du Midi — Festival de Carcassonne — July
• 🍷 Chablis — Chablis en Fête and village events — summer weekends
• 🎨 Champagne — Rêve de Reims and cathedral light shows — summer evenings
• 🍷 Jura — Village fêtes and open cellars — summer weekends
• 🎶 Moravia — Summer in the Lednice–Valtice park — June to August
• 🎶 Neuchâtel — Festivals on the quays
• 🍷 Northern Rhône — Summer evenings in Tain and Tournon — July and August
• 🚴 Prosecco Hills — Prosecco Cycling — July
• 🍷 Rheingau — Rüdesheim and Eltville wine festivals — July and August
• 🎶 Roussillon — Les Guitares au Palais and summer festivals — August
• 🎶 Saint-Émilion — Saint-Émilion Jazz Festival — July
• 🎶 Southern Rhône — Festival d'Avignon — July
• 🎶 Valle d’Itria — Festival della Valle d'Itria, Martina Franca — mid-July to early August
• 🎶 Valle d’Itria — Locus Festival — late July into August
• 🎶 Valle d’Itria — Locus Winter — Christmas
• 🍴 Wachau — Apricot harvest — July
• 🎶 Wachau — Donaufestival, Krems — spring and summer

Aug

• 🍷 Alsace — Foire aux Vins de Colmar — early August
• 🎶 Burgenland — Seefestspiele Mörbisch — July and August
• 🎶 Moravia — Summer in the Lednice–Valtice park — June to August
• 🎶 Neuchâtel — Festivals on the quays
• 🍷 Northern Rhône — Summer evenings in Tain and Tournon — July and August
• 🎭 Penedès — Festa Major de Vilafranca — late August into September
• 🚴 Pfalz — Erlebnistag Deutsche Weinstraße — late August
• 🍷 Rheingau — Rüdesheim and Eltville wine festivals — July and August
• 🎶 Roussillon — Les Guitares au Palais and summer festivals — August
• 🍴 Saumur — Les Grandes Tablées du Saumur-Champigny — first week of August
• 🎭 Southern Rhône — Fête de la Véraison, Châteauneuf-du-Pape — first weekend of August
• 🍷 Southern Rhône — Printemps de Châteauneuf — spring
• 🎭 Valle d’Itria — Festa di San Rocco, Locorotondo — 15 to 17 August
• 🎶 Valle d’Itria — Festival della Valle d'Itria, Martina Franca — mid-July to early August
• 🎶 Valle d’Itria — Locus Festival — late July into August

Sep

• 🎭 Alsace — Fête des Ménétriers, Ribeauvillé — early September
• 🌿 Canal du Midi — Village harvest festivals — September
• 🌿 Champagne — Harvest — September
• 🍷 Chianti — Expo del Chianti Classico, Greve — second weekend of September
• 🍷 Chianti — Vino al Vino, Panzano — September
• 🍷 Jura — Fête du Biou, Arbois — first Sunday of September
• 🌿 Moravia — Pálavské vinobraní, Mikulov — second weekend of September
• 🍷 Mosel — Bernkastel Weinfest der Mittelmosel — early September
• 🍷 Mosel — Weinfeste in every village — June to September
• 🌿 Neuchâtel — Fête des Vendanges, Neuchâtel — late September
• 🌿 Northern Rhône — Harvest on the terraces — September
• 🎭 Penedès — Festa Major de Vilafranca — late August into September
• 🌿 Pfalz — Deutsches Weinlesefest, Neustadt — late September into October
• 🍴 Pfalz — Wurstmarkt, Bad Dürkheim — September
• 🍷 Prosecco Hills — Village wine shows and the 100 Miglia — September and October
• 🎶 Rheingau — Rheingau Musik Festival — late June to early September
• 🌿 Rioja — Fiesta de la Vendimia Riojana, Logroño — 21 September
• 🌿 Rioja — Harvest at the bodegas — late September into October
• 🎨 Roussillon — Visa pour l'Image, Perpignan — September
• 🌿 Saint-Émilion — Ban des Vendanges — third Sunday of September
• 🌿 Saint-Émilion — Harvest at the châteaux — late September
• 🌿 Saumur — Ban des Vendanges — September
• 🍷 Saumur — Festivini — September
• 🌿 Southern Rhône — Ban des Vendanges and harvest — September
• 🍴 Valle d’Itria — Harvest and new oil — September to November
• 🌿 Wachau — Wachauer Weinherbst — September and October

Oct

• 🍴 Alba & the Langhe — Fiera Internazionale del Tartufo Bianco, Alba — October and November
• 🎭 Alba & the Langhe — Palio degli Asini — first Sunday of October
• 🌿 Alsace — Fête des Vendanges, Barr — early October
• 🌿 Bardolino — Festa dell'Uva e del Vino, Bardolino — first week of October
• 🌿 Burgenland — Golser Weinfrühling — April
• 🌿 Burgenland — Rot & Reife and the Adrimarsch Fest, Gols — October
• 🍷 Chablis — Fête des Vins de Chablis — fourth weekend of October
• 🍷 Champagne — Champagne Day and open cellars — October
• 🍴 Chianti — Olive harvest and new oil — late October and November
• 🌿 Mosel — Federweißenfest, Zell — October
• 🌿 Neuchâtel — Fête de la Vendange, Cortaillod — early October
• 🌿 Penedès — Escumostra (long known as Cavatast), Sant Sadurní — early October
• 🌿 Pfalz — Deutsches Weinlesefest, Neustadt — late September into October
• 🍷 Prosecco Hills — Village wine shows and the 100 Miglia — September and October
• 🍴 Rheingau — Rheingauer Schlemmerwochen — autumn
• 🌿 Rioja — Harvest at the bodegas — late September into October
• 🍴 Roussillon — Cargolades and the Saint-Martin new wine — autumn into November
• 🎭 Saumur — Cadre Noir gala performances — spring
• 🍴 Valle d’Itria — Harvest and new oil — September to November
• 🌸 Wachau — Marillenblüte — late March into April
• 🌿 Wachau — Wachauer Weinherbst — September and October

Nov

• 🍴 Alba & the Langhe — Fiera Internazionale del Tartufo Bianco, Alba — October and November
• 🌿 Alentejo — Talha wine broached — 11 November
• 🍷 Beaune — Vente des Vins des Hospices de Beaune — third weekend of November
• 🌿 Burgenland — Martiniloben — around 11 November
• 🍴 Chianti — Olive harvest and new oil — late October and November
• 🌿 Moravia — Svatomartinské víno — 11 November at 11:11am
• 🍴 Roussillon — Cargolades and the Saint-Martin new wine — autumn into November
• 🍴 Valle d’Itria — Harvest and new oil — September to November

Dec

• 🎶 Valle d’Itria — Locus Winter — Christmas

The pick of them, by season

Every destination has something worth timing a trip around, and they are spread right across the calendar. None of these weekends assumes you are there for one. Each itinerary is built to work on an ordinary weekend, and each destination page says how it would bend to fit the festival if your dates happen to land on it.

Be clear about the trade, though. A festival weekend is the best and the worst time to visit a wine region. The village is at its most alive, the growers are pouring, and you will taste things that never leave the parish. But the people you most want to see are working a stand on the square, not showing a couple of visitors round a cellar — book tastings weeks ahead or accept that the good ones will be shut. Beds go early and go up: expect to pay more and to book months rather than weeks in advance, and expect the roads and the paths to be busier than the quiet lanes these routes were chosen for. On a normal weekend you get the cellars to yourself. It is a genuine choice, not an obvious one.

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Drinking & riding

Every destination here puts a bicycle and a cellar door in the same day, and the rules on that vary more across Europe than most people expect — from absolute zero in Czechia and Hungary to 1.6 g/l in Germany. The limits below are for cyclists, which in several countries is not the same number as for drivers.

The unit. These are grams of alcohol per litre of blood, which is how continental law states them; the same numbers are often written with a per-mille sign instead, as 0.5‰. For comparison, England, Wales and Northern Ireland allow 0.8 g/l (80mg per 100ml) and Scotland 0.5 — so most of these countries sit at or below the Scottish limit, and well under the one most British readers have in mind.

The practical answer is the same everywhere: spit at tastings, which is expected and faintly professional rather than rude; drink at lunch only if the afternoon is short; and save the serious drinking for after the bikes are away. Every itinerary here is built so the last tasting comes near the end of the riding rather than the middle of it. These figures are a planning guide and not legal advice — limits and penalties change, so check locally before you travel.

Where

Every base, and the way in from London. Numbered west to east within each country, the same order the trips table uses.