Climbs of 2025: My year in cycling up mountains in Europe
The Strange Thing About Selling Cycling Holidays
As the first full calendar year of running my own travel business draws to a close, I’ve been reflecting on the highlights and what I’ve learned over the last 12 months.
Travel is a strange thing to sell. If I’m selling a bike, or a car, or some staples or most other things, you can take a look at it and decide whether to buy it or not.
I can give you product information, tell you how it’ll make your life better (a good stapler will save you hours of frustration Janet, I promise) and you can purchase and own it.
Travel is not like that. I sell an idea, a feeling, a moment and I have to help you picture it before you go, plan it so it’s perfect and then while you’re there hope to god it doesn’t rain.
In order to be able to do that, it really helps if I’ve been there and done it. It’s so, so much easier to help plan a holiday for someone if I’ve also had a holiday or an educational trip there.
I accept, begrudgingly, that I can’t go everywhere and there will be places I arrange trips to that I’ve not visited. But I can try.
The things that stick with me the most from my travels are the climbs I rode up. The effort of doing it and the payoff of the views and sense of achievement mean they stick in my memory.
Food, weather, hotels are all good but it’s landscapes and particularly climbs that I remember best.
So here they are, my favourite climbs that I rode so you don’t have to very much can also ride.
Col du Tourmalet
Read the Big Day Out here
The Col du Tourmalet is pure road-cycling theatre. History and spectacle follow you all the way up the most used climb in Grand Tour history.
Show restraint though, you’ll pay for any early excitement as the air gets thinner in the last few kilometres. Climbing begins through open pastures, winding out of the treeline before the air thins out as you tip over 2000m and reach the top.
Spectacular views await on both sides of one of the highest passes in the Pyrenees, and a mega descent back down.
Mount Vesuvius
Mount Vesuvius is not the longest climb on this by any means, half the height of some of the others. But it is perhaps the one that most captures the imagination and is shrouded in myth and history.
A short ride from Naples, you’re quickly breathing a sigh of relief after escaping the busy city, and you’ll be able to see the flat topped peak of the volcano above you as you climb.
The climb is punchy, and you don’t get the unbroken views at the top like some other climbs, but you can buy a knock off Maradona shirt from the market stall there…
Mount Etna
Mount Etna is climbing on a different scale. Long ascents from sea level, multiple ways up the climb and a real chance of an eruption to keep you on your toes. It’s a proper climb.
The moon-scape lava fields, ash-covered slopes, and winding roads make it spectacular. The climbs themselves make it a true challenge.
Etna has to be added to the list for any checklist-climbing cyclist.
Pico de Las Nieves
Read the Big Day Out here
My last big climb for 2025 and probably my favourite. Pico de Las Nieves is a textbook big day out.
Starting at sea level as a lot of good climbs do, you reach the highest point on the island in one continuous, uphill challenge. And some of the sections on the way up are pretty spicy as well.
Winding through villages and pine forests to a panoramic summit, it ticks nearly all the boxes. Just a shame it’s not a singular climb like Teide or others.
Mount Olympus
Similar to Pico de Las Nieves, Mt Olympus in Cyprus isn’t just one climb but a series of them ridden one after another from Paphos, Limassol or somewhere on the coast between (particular shout out to Pissouri Bay).
Kouris Dam is beautiful and dramatic, Troodos Forest is alpine and lovely. The summit is cool in so much as there’s nothing but the gates to a military base and an armed guard up there.
Still, it’s by far the coolest named of the mountains (although the real Olympus is on the main land about 400km north of Athens).
Col d’Aspin
Maybe, just maybe, my favourite climb in this list.
That’s a bold claim, but it’s super fun to give it a bash from the Arreau side and you’re rewarded with amazing views the whole way up.
It’s far more than a climb you ride on the way to the Tourmalet, and in any other region would stand head and shoulders above the rest but in the shadow of it’s bigger, more frightening brother it maybe doesn’t get as much of a look in as it should.
Still, a fantastic climb and one I’m already looking forward to riding again.
Your Next Cycling Holiday
And that concludes 2025, a year of successfully ticking off some pretty amazing bucket-list climbs. Onto 2026, and there’s already a few on the to-do list as well as some top level races and other cool things on the agenda.
If you’re planning a cycling holiday in 2026, get in touch below.
