10 Best Cycling (Costs & Tips, 2026)

Forty-eight numbered hairpins in 21.5km, climbing to 2,758m — the Stelvio is the closest cycling gets to a pilgrimage route, and every switchback has its own painted number and altitude marker to prove how far you've come. The road itself costs nothing to ride; the only real expense is getting yourself and a bike to Bormio. It closes with the first heavy snow most years, so June through September is the actual window, not just the recommended one.

No climb has appeared in the Tour de France route more often than this one — the 19km ascent from Luz-Saint-Sauveur to France's highest paved road pass in the Pyrenees, at an average 7.4% gradient that never really lets up. Free to ride, obviously; a bicycle and roughly two and a half hours of climbing are the only entry requirements. Go in June or September if you'd rather share the road with sheep than with a hundred rental bikes in July.

Time it for the few weeks each spring after the snowplows finish but before the road opens to cars — usually late April through mid-June, though the exact window shifts depending on snowpack, so check the NPS website before you travel — and you get 51km of the most dramatic alpine road in America entirely to cyclists. Miss that window and you're sharing a narrow shoulder with RVs, which is a very different ride. Entry runs $20 for a 7-day pedestrian/cyclist pass, a fraction of the $35 vehicle rate.

This is a road built for cars that cyclists have quietly claimed as their own — the Torquay to Lorne stretch delivers 65km of clifftop views without a toll booth or entry gate anywhere on it. Traffic is the real cost, not money: ride early morning or outside school holidays if you'd rather listen to the surf than tour buses, a very different experience from the summer crush. Spring, September through November, brings the mildest coastal winds of the year.

Yes, the shoulder disappears in places and RVs pass closer than you'd like — this is not a relaxed ride. It's also free and unrestricted, and it gives you the Bixby Creek Bridge photo everyone's seen a thousand times, except you're pedaling across it instead of scrolling past it. April and October dodge both the winter storm closures and the summer traffic crush.

This road earned its nickname honestly — decades of real accidents before a bypass highway pulled most car traffic off it, leaving the old dirt track to cyclists and guided tours. A guided descent runs $75-90 including bike, transport, and a guide who knows exactly which blind corners to call out, and this is not a place to save money by going without one. 3,500m of elevation loss over 64km, from an icy mountain pass to steamy jungle, in a single ride.

Crossing six islands and the Seto Inland Sea by bike sounds like it should come with expensive bridge tolls. It doesn't — cyclists pay a fraction of what cars do, a few hundred yen per bridge, roughly $5 total for the whole 70km route from Onomichi to Imabari. A dedicated blue line painted the entire way means you genuinely cannot get lost, which is rarer than it sounds for a route this scenic.

Skip the full multi-week EuroVelo 6 pilgrimage and just ride the Blois to Amboise stretch instead — flat, well-signed, château-lined, and doable without a day of training beforehand. Rent a bike in either town and ride whichever direction the wind favors; the dedicated path means you're never sharing a lane with traffic. Costs nothing beyond the rental.

Most people picture gorilla trekking when they think of cycling holidays in Rwanda's hills — this is the other side of the country, 227km tracing the shore of Lake Kivu through tea plantations and fishing villages most tourists never reach. Lakeside guesthouses along the route run $10-15 a night, and you don't need a support vehicle or a guide to ride it, just a mountain bike and several days. June through September avoids the rains that turn the red dirt sections into a genuine mess.

Around 1,800 white bicycles sit unlocked at racks throughout this national park, free to grab and drop off wherever you like — no gimmick, no rental desk, just take one. The only cost is the €13 park entry, which you'd pay anyway to see the Kröller-Müller Museum's Van Goghs or the wild Highland cattle roaming the heath. Forty kilometers of paths mean you can ride for twenty minutes or the whole afternoon and never see the same corner twice.