No detailed plans.
Just a rough stroke.

My anchor for the whole trip is the EuroVelo Network. Their website is not really great and it is most of the time quite opaque what the status of the different routes is. But it is a start. To plan everything in advance I find too daunting and there might be surprises along the way anyhow.

On a side note, I want to use this website to document a bit of the status of the different routes and provide a resource for people considering bike touring. This will develop over time. I will publish the gpx files for every single day, but only some days after, to not be too traceable.

Italy

I'll be starting in Italy, in Puglia. The original plan was to start in Sicily. But I found very little information on the bike paths there, plus: Sicily has a lot of mountains. I plan to make my start not too hard and basically very enjoyable. There's no use in exhausting myself so early in the trip and hating it. It's a marathon, not a sprint. I picked Southern Italy as a start mainly for the weather. I'll be starting end of February and the weather will be quite bad still in most of Europe, in Puglia it should be quite good for biking. Plus, it's not overly complicated to get there by train.

The starting point is Brindisi, marking the beginning of the EuroVelo 5 (which goes from Southern Italy all the way up to Canterbury and is as well called Via Romea Francigena). I will orientate myself on the EV5 to just South of Milan, where I'm going to switch to the EuroVelo 8 (the Mediterranean Route) all the way to Monaco.

I roughly plan a month for this first phase. I'll be starting slow and short, again not a sprint.

France and Belgium

France being France, Monaco first! I doubt that I'll be sleeping in Monaco, Nice or Cannes. But if you have any recommendations, let me know!

While my plan is to arrive eventually in Calais, I decided to meander a bit through the south of France and not take the EV5 straight to England. Reason is simple, weather. I'm going to follow the EV8 up to roughly Montpellier and will use then some french routes (I heard they're excellent!) direction Bordeaux where I hopefully cross EuroVelo 3 (the Pilgrims Route) which I'm going to follow until Belgium. From there I'll muddle my way towards Calais.

I'll be not rushing through. Again. Planned for a good month.

England and Scotland

Obviously, the ferry to Dover. And then along the North Sea Coast all the way up to the north of Scotland. That seems to be a fairly easy ride, the EuroVelo 12 (the North Sea Cycle Route) appears to be pretty well developed. While it might be an easy ride, I do expect beauty and fun. It will be the first time that I can communicate almost normal (my French and Dutch is quite rusty, but hopefully I can improve it during the trip. My Italian is basically non existent).

Planned time, a month. Writing this down, I feel I can go more ambitious.

Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Wales and England again

I'm very excited about this one! I've never been to Ireland and I heard it's a beauty. And it's the Atlantic, at last a proper ocean again. The route again, pretty straightforward: EuroVelo 1 (the Atlantic Coast Route) all the way. Time planned: one and a half month. June and a bit of July!

To be continued...