July + France = epic summer!

What comes to your mind when you think of July and France's Grand Tour? For us it is a special month with an air of adventure, intense moments and excitement and a lot of French cycling tradition. Last year we were in every single stage from Copenhagen to Paris. It was undoubtedly a special edition for us at GTP - a month dedicated to our guests and celebrating cycling.

Last year we were in every single stage from Copenhagen to Paris. It was undoubtedly a special edition for us at GTP - a month dedicated to our guests and celebrating cycling.

Grand Tours Project started with the founder, Keith Tuffley's attitude that anything is possible and flexibility is important. This outlook is an important ingredient of what makes Grand Tours Project unique - we relish customised requests and strive to meet the challenges in order to create unique, meaningful and memorable cycling experiences.

One example is the amazing tour for a family from Taiwan who requested a tour that would follow the Grand Tour de France for 25 days and at the same time experience France, its traditions, and culinary charms and discover the most beautiful castles and villages and enjoy activities along the way.

Twenty-five days, sightseeing, fun activities, riding classic cols, in the middle of the chaos and loving it.

It was the expertise of logistically managing our 'Ride Every Kilometre' and 'Experience groups' and our Taiwanese family through the daily hotel changes, avoiding the road closures and detours, sourcing restaurants and meals, change over of guides and drivers...and together with the Ride Every Kilometre group who successfully rode all 21 stages, we can proudly say they all made it to Paris.

Our Taiwanese Family tour on 'La Grande Boucle' was supported by exceptional GTP team members with endless patience and humour, MacGyver skills, Mandarin language skills (thank you Luka), innovative driving abilities, babysitting tolerance and much more. Luka, Marco and Nicola supported the Taiwanese family to the fullest and each offer a memory of their experience.

What Luka has to say about:

As an avid cyclist, I was under the impression my body needs to allow me to do great things. In many ways, this still rings true. I need to train like a madman for half a year to be able to get to the mountaintops, let alone one after another for a couple of weeks. But mind you, not all see it this way. And I saw it this summer. As a guide, I had ages of my guests written down on a piece of paper, and six out of eleven of my guests had a single digit number next to them. I could not foresee how these kids would change the way I feel about cycling.

You see, I bow to anyone who accepts cycling's call, takes the hard situations in life and turns them around, one pedal stroke at a time. In a sense, we mostly do not know what inner battles people are fighting on the way to the top of the mountain.

Now what I have never seen before this summer is a six, seven and eight year old getting to the top of Col du Galibier, one of the mighty ones in the French Alps. This year, the Tour de France route went first over Col du Telegraphe, so naturally, these kids did this, too. I could not believe my eyes. By the time we reached the summit, the sun was just setting, leaving us some of the most memorable mountain landscape in the perfect moment. Mighty Ecrin range to the south truly gave us its beauty beyond imagination.

That being said, nothing would be done without their families' and especially dad's constant support and positive encouragement. They gave it all.

This instance and the situation altogether has become a moment I return to in winter nights in search of inspiration. It goes without saying I find it everytime.

What Nicola has to say about: "What an incredible experience last year in the Tour de France with the group from Taiwan! The ''tour'' is the biggest stage race in the world, I always saw a race for the crowd as a fan: in fact, there are a lot of people from many countries, but personally working 10 days with the Taiwan family, I understood how big the passion and knowledge is out there about Le Tour, not only for adults but also for children. Every day they had cycled up the entire historic passes, the people on the road applauding them like professional cyclists. The passion for the cycling united us, although we lived in a different and distant place. These have been beautiful days for me, I like to think that in the not too distant future there will be a new stars with love for cycling!"

What Marco has to say about: