Welcome Back for Season 5! Paris to Porto!
Welcome Back for Season 5! Paris to Porto! August 11, 2025 Checking in at JFK. Bikes boxed and both weighing under the 50-pound limit. Welcome to new readers and welcome back to loyal readers of the Shifting Gears blog! On August 13, Heather & I start cycling by ourselves from Paris, France to Porto, Portugal. Our route through France, Spain and Portugal will take us about 1,800 miles and over 80,000’ of cumulative elevation gain! (that’s 2.8 Mount Everests of climbing.) We plan to finish September 15th in Porto! To Porto, the most direct route would be just head southwest from Paris. So of course, that is not what we are doing as that would be shorter by about 350 miles and we somehow don’t do easy. It would also miss out on some destinations in France that are bucket list places I have wanted to see but yet to visit despite several trips to the country. So, to begin we will actually ride north first so we can visit WW II sites in Normandy, Mont Saint Michel and Saint Malo. T...