We arrived in Lucca to live in the summer of 2017, having visited the city a number of times over the previous years, before deciding to make this town home to our Italian adventure.

My posts will focus on cycle rides in the areas outside of the city walls. Cycling in the beautiful hills & countryside around the Lucca area in the Northern Tuscan region. I hope you find this as much of a source of inspiration and pleasure as I do. This is a place to enjoy and hopefully encourage you to visit some of these amazing spots for yourself.

When I go out for a ride I often have that quandary, ‘do I stop here and take a photo of the view or wait till I climb higher’?

Often when you start to get off the beaten track outside of the hilltop towns, the tree cover can be so dense that getting that perfect shot is just impossible.

The Lucca area has the distinction of being the ‘training home’ of several professional teams that you can see racing on the world tour races. It has a large community of serious amateur cyclist who compete at a very high level. This makes for tricky Sunday runs as you encounter 20-30 guys coming past like a train.

The Italian cycling culture is like no other, with every discipline and niche being filled with enthusiastic people. You want a day ride on vintage bikes around the local wineries, that’ll be a L’Eroica event then, road racing, of course, mountain bike marathon, cross country and downhill of course, all have their clubs and regular events with large numbers of riders.

Over the coming months, come on a virtual trip with me as I aim to capture the bike rides I take both on and off road, up steep climbs, down fast swooping descents, through mountain villages, steep ravines and lush trails, all in the pursuit of happiness on two wheels!