I had an excellent email recently from a Cycling Through France Guide purchaser (from someone I’ll call Paul), who had some excellent ideas on how to improve the Cycling Through France Guide.
Making it more general is a great idea (technically, broadening your market) – the moment you see a picture of a smart looking guy on a great road bike, the rest of us cappuccino lot switch off as it looks as if we are the wrong segment!
…I think that there is a market for the likes of our age group, the Gray Ghosts, or, OMIL (’Old men in lycra”).
We all seem to be interested in France, many of us already cycle for enjoyment (read going places and seeing things) and health, the French love us (??), they play excellent rugby and use a lot of the Wallabies, we have both the time AND we have the money (60% of the country’s wealth…)…
And, cycling in France is a whole lot safer than here. Cycling slowly through the tiny villages where two cars can’t pass at the same time, you can turn round to see a crocodile of cars politely following you, not bothering to rush past. But you already know this!
Hope this is of interest.
Now, that is what I call excellent feedback. Paul also mentioned that a lot of the information sites out there are (strangely) in French. Good for French visitors visiting their own country, not so good for the rest of us.
It got me thinking, the Cycling Through France Guide could probably have the Tour de France and L’Etape du Tour information stripped from it, giving a true Cycling In France Planning Guide.
I could also create a L’Etape-only and Le Tour-only guide.
The current guide, covering all aspects of planning a trip to Le Tour, L’Etape or for leisure, can stay as is.
I’m interested to know people’s thoughts on this. Good idea? Overkill?
I’m also toying with the idea of user-submitted content (places to stay etc) – users can submit their favourites rides, cafes, restaurants, places to see, things to see, etc, from around France. What do you think?
I’ve created a short survey for this, that shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes of your time, so I’d love if you gave me some feed back using the survey.
And finally, we’re heading back over to Le Tour and L’Etape 1 year older and a lot wiser in 2 months. This time I’ll spending time doing a Pyrenees Guide for Cycling Pau. If any of our riders have any suggestions for places to see, Cols to ride and places to eat, please drop them in the comments below.
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