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Imagine the sight: four gay men on bicycles, fortified by wine and a big lunch, trying to balance their purchases from a lovely little antique bazaar as they pedal across the hills of France and back through the gates of walled Avignon.
Since the rider who had contemplated plunking down a few thousand francs on a beautiful Louis XIV (or was it Louis XVI?) armoire had thankfully given up the idea, we finished the ride intact.
Just like the previous week, it was fabulous.
It turns out that gays and lesbians who want to travel together don't have to be confined to big cruise boats. There are plenty of other options, and bicycling through Provence for a week with 11 other gay men turned out to be a pretty good choice.
Sure, the scenery's nice — both the countryside and the other riders — but the company of like-minded folks is even better.
Two summers ago, I decided to combine my love of bicycling with a strong desire to see some of the French countryside. The final ingredient, and the one that made the trip truly memorable, was a New England company that specializes in adventure travel for gays and lesbians.
As I was putting down the money and packing my bags for Europe, I wondered whether traveling with a gay group would make the trip more worthwhile than other organized bicycling trips had been. A previous ride through Alaska was breathtaking, but the tour leader was not exactly open-minded.
Once in France, though, I discovered this was going to be a much different kind of trip.
The opening wine-tasting on a terrace in a centuries-old Avignon hotel told me I'd made a good choice. What absolutely confirmed it a few days later was a roadside lunch under shady trees next to a small abandoned church. After all, if you're on a mixed ride, you're much less likely to end the lunch singing show tunes with the other riders as you climb back on the bikes and head down the road. Talk about a gay sensibility.
To fully enjoy and appreciate a bicycle tour, you've got to be on a trip with other people that you like and with whom you share interests. The best way to guarantee that, I suppose, is to organize your own ride. But if you're willing to spend a bit more and you want to go someplace a bit more exotic than the backroads of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, it's easiest to sign on with a tour operator.
Alyson Adventures out of Boston offers a number of bicycling tours in France. And there are other companies that offer fully supported bicycling tours elsewhere around the world exclusively for gay and lesbian travelers.
I highly recommend it.
You know, there's not a much better way to see the countryside than from the back of a bike. If you decide, as you pass through town, that you want to stop in the local boulangerie for fresh bread, you can. If you really want to stop alongside the road, walk through the field of poppies, and imagine you're in a Van Gogh painting, you can. And there's not a much better group to do it with than a dozen gay men.
From that first night on the terrace, it was obvious that this trip would be more relaxing than the previous bike tour I'd taken. If you're in a gay group, there's no worry about whether you'll have a homophobe along for the week-long ride.
Perhaps I was just lucky, but the group I rode with in France was delightful. We ranged in age from 21 to 69. We hailed from New England and California, the Midwest, and the South. Every one of us was from a different background. Still, there was an instant bond because we were all gay, we loved being outdoors, and we enjoyed bicycling.
I can't imagine riding with a mixed group where four of us would get up early on the next-to-last day of the trip so we could go antiquing in Isle Sur La Sorgue before hopping on the bikes. It just seemed to be perfectly natural — maybe even expected — with a group of gay men. Who among us can really resist the urge to shop, after all?
This was not a surprise to any of us. Shared interests lead to shared experiences.
And they also lead to great little finds on the antique store shelves of rural Europe. So we didn't end up with that amazing armoire for the guy from Philadelphia. But I did end up with a fabulous little enameled coffee pot and a couple of silver French teacups.
And after that wine with lunch at a cozy little cafe along the way, I didn't even notice that it was difficult to keep the haul of antiques balanced on the handlebars. Then again, I wasn't trying to get a delicate birdcage home, either, like the guy from New York was.
