The Climb Collectors: Why Cyclists Travel the World for Famous Climbs
Dreaming of switchbacks
Cyclists don't spend the winter on Zwift dreaming about a cocktail by the pool or a hotel room. They spend it training for, watching videos of and dreaming about riding the switchbacks of Sa Calobra when spring arrives.
Each year millions of people around the world hop on a plane, bike in tow and head to the world’s best cycling destinations.
And these destinations all have one thing in common. The climbs.
It’s why we travel
No offence to the Hook of Holland, to the salt flats of Murcia or the rolling green roads of Brittany, but cyclists aren’t dreaming of you when they’re planning their next trip.
Mont Ventoux is on the bucket list.
We’re riding the Maratona dles Dolomites this year.
Have you ridden Teide?
Snippets of conversation you’re bound to overhear at coffee stops and on group rides throughout the land.
Like collecting passport stamps
The UK travel market is now all too familiar with the re-introduction of passport stamps for their holidays after the last few years.
Cyclists collect climbs like stamps in a passport.
From Strava segment leaderboards to entire websites like Climbfinder, we go on cycling holidays with a purpose, to ride up famous cycling climbs.
“Crossed Tourmalet stop. Very good road stop. Perfectly feasible”
The climbs get broadcast every year to millions, with the very best in the world racing up and down them.
France, Italy, Spain - just the three week grand tours alone are enough material to leave any keen cycling climb collector with a list as long as their arm of climbs to tackle.
Blockhaus, Angliru, Izoard - words that to a small subsect of the population instantly create mystique and fascination.
On a trip to the Pyrenees last year, whilst sat at the airport I decided to read up on the Col du Tourmalet in order to get prepared, excited and to connect with the history and story of a climb I would be riding in a few days time.
More than a century ago, in the 1910 Tour de France, Octave Lapize became the first rider to cross the Col du Tourmalet. Back then there was no smooth tarmac winding through the mountains.
Much of the climb was little more than a rough dirt road, forcing riders to walk sections of the ascent. Exhausted and furious at what had been asked of them, Lapize reportedly shouted "You are assassins!" at the race organisers as he passed.
He would go on to win both the stage and the overall Tour de France, but it's that moment on the Tourmalet that endures.
They don’t all have to be mountains
Some of the most feared climbs in the world are actually really rather short in comparison to the sea to summit all day adventures of Mt Teide or Mt Olympus.
Mention the word Koppenberg to anyone that’s dared have a go at the legendary cobbled race-ender and they’ll most likely shudder.
It is barley 600 metres long. Riders don't travel to Flanders for altitude or alpine scenery. They travel for a farm track that kicks up to 20%, becomes unrideable in even the slightest amount of rain, and has humbled the professional peloton on countless occasions.
They also don’t have to be that famous
At Altus Collective we are always seeking out destinations that we can honestly recommend to our customers as being worthy of a plane ticket to visit.
Cyprus has a bounty of beautiful climbs, including the afformentioned Mt Olympus. But you compare it side by side with it’s bolder, more mouthy island brother Mallorca and Sa Calobra wins every time in a popularity contest.
The Costa Daurada has switchbacks to make any cycling climb connoisseur start frantically checking their calendar to see when they can next squeeze in a trip to Spain.
But cyclists are often creatures of habit. Our Sunday club runs take us to the same cafes week in, week out.
And for a lot of us, the cycling holiday brings us back to the same places becase they’re familiar.
But for those seeking to fill up that cycling climb passport of theirs, destinations like Cyprus and the Costa Daurada are a must.
The collectors
Collecting is not a new hobby.
Stamps, memorabilia, classic cars. Humans have always collected things as a passtime.
Cyclists just happen to collect climbs.
A switchback in Mallorca. A summit in Tenerife. A mountain pass in the Dolomites.
And once you've ridden one, the question is almost always the same:
