a week of cycling in Greece | coastal roads, iced coffee & a crash

Follow my journey as I take on a week of road cycling in Greece’s spectacular Attiki region. In this cycling vlog, I ride some beautiful coastal routes, take on climbs like Mount Dionysos, as well as iced coffee stops to beat the heat… oh, and a dramatic crash on a descent. We explore the roads around Marathon village, the birthplace of the marathon run, take in the aftermath of the Greek wildfires, and soak up the heat of summer.

My current gear:
Bike – Van Rysel RCR (Canyon Endurace AL7 in this video)
Bike computer – Wahoo Element Bolt V2
Camera – Insta360 X4
Shoes – Van Rysel RCR carbon road shoes
Helmet – Van Rysel RCR MIPS
Nutrition – Mnstry bars & gels – 25% off tasting box link: https://tinyurl.com/bdekpbjv

Follow me:
instagram.com/theexpatroadie

Welcome to another video. This time we’re out in Greece. I’m staying at my parents’ place for about a week and a half. Just here on a little family holiday. It’s really hot, really sunny, but we’re here by the beach, so we do a little bit of swimming in the sea, which will be nice. Um, and yeah, I brought the bike with me. I’ve got the Laapurito Andor Sportif coming up at the beginning of August, which is in about 4 weeks time. I’m in the middle of quite a stringent training program to get myself in the best shape possible for that race, which is going to be a really, really hard challenge. over 5,000 meters of climbing squeezed into about 115 kilometers. So, yeah, I need to be in as good nick as I possibly can be. Um, which is why I’ve brought the bike out here. I can’t afford to go a week and a half without doing any training. So, yeah. So, had to bring the bike with me. Going to do a little bit of some easy rides. Um, it’s not going to be a tough week in terms of the riding. It’s going to be a few easy rides just to keep things ticking over. And then when I get back home to Spain, we’re going to ramp up for the remaining few weeks. The bike is still in the travel case. We literally just arrived this morning. So, I’m going to whip it open and check that everything’s okay. So, I’ve left the van risle at home and I’ve decided to bring my old Canyon uh Endurance with me. Um, it’s an aluminium frame, rim brakes. Uh, it’s only got shallow depth wheels. Um, but it does the job. It’s a decent bike still. Um, I’m a big fan of it. I spent many a kilometer on this thing. Um, reason why I brought this one instead of bringing the carbon van rifle, mainly because I’ve got the big event coming up soon and I didn’t want to get it damaged at all. But yeah, I thought I’d bring this one just to have peace of mind. I don’t mind, you know, if this thing gets scratched or nicked or whatever. And uh, with us being so close to the beach here, I’m thinking I might end some of my rides down at the beach and just go straight in the sea. So, I don’t mind leaving this thing, you know, on the sand and getting it a little bit mucky and all that. So that’s why I brought this one instead of the van risle. So good news is that the bike is pretty much all okay. But just something to be aware of if you’re using a soft travel case like I did, which is I’m using these uh Cyclon Aero Comfort. Um if you’re using this type of thing, it does protect it really well, but it’s definitely worth knowing that you need to uh loosen the shifters. So, I don’t know if you can see that, but this shifter here, I’ve loosened it before I put it in the bag. Um, and obviously it’s been knocked. Um, but I only loosened it a little bit, and you can see how much it’s been knocked to the side there. So, it’s no damage cuz I can just loosen it and line it back up again. Um, but yeah, it’s just something to be aware of. If you’re using a soft case, make sure you loosen your shifters because they may get impacted from the side and if they’re clamping on tight, especially if you’ve got carbon bars, you don’t want that to damage the bars and then, you know, then you’ve got some irreparable damage there. But yeah, bike loot’s all okay. Should be good to go for the first ride. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. All right. So, first ride out here in Greece. I’m just doing a bit of a 50k uh sort of zone 2 endurance ride for a couple of hours. Just getting the legs going again. Pretty warm out here. Not sure what the temperature is, but it’s quite a nice dry heat. Not like the humidity that I’m used to back in Catalunia and Spain. So, yeah, not sweating as much as I normally would be, but yeah, it’s warm. We started down by the coast and now heading um a little bit inland. I think we’ve got a climb coming up. Pretty decent climb. Then after that, we loop on back round to home. Yeah, one or two cyclists about which is unexpected. There’s someone in front of me. And yeah, the road service is actually quite nice. Better than I thought it would be. So, where are we? We are on mainland Greece um just north of Athens up the coast uh in the Atiki area. And actually this area is quite important in the world of endurance sports because very close to here is a town called Marathon. Um which is where the original story of the marathon runner originated from. Um so the Greek soldier that ran from here to Athens to proclaim that they won the uh the war at the time. And yeah, the distance from Marathon to the center of Athens is exactly 42 km and it’s where the Athens Classic Marathon uh runs from every year. So yeah, really important in the world of endurance sports. Getting near the top of this climb now. It’s a pretty sizable one actually. 10k. Probably not the highest average gradient, but it’s really up and down climb. Some little downhill sections, some steeper sections. Really varied terrain. But yeah, have a look at this view. Try to show you from here as well. Check that out. Right, that’s it for my first ride here in Greece. Really, really enjoyed that. Managed about 2 hours, uh, just under 50k, I think. So, that’s what I wanted to achieve with this first ride. Got a bit of climbing done as well. Beautiful views. And yeah, starting to get really hot. So, going to head inside, grab an iced coffee, and probably go for a swim somewhere to cool off. Good morning. So, starting the second ride out here in Greece. Uh, today planning on doing about 75kish, so a little bit longer. Um, and then we’ve got a pretty decent climb happening uh towards the beginning of the ride. So, we’re going to go be going up Mount Dionos uh which is just off the back of the town here. Um, should be a pretty decent climb. It’s about 8 kilometers at 6% gradient. Um, pretty steady incline more or less the whole way up from what I’ve seen. So, yeah, nice little climb to put some put some work into the legs. But first, we’re riding a little bit down the coast here. It’s a beautiful morning. The sun is out. The air is feeling nice and fresh at this time in the morning. Trying to get out as early as I can to uh avoid some of the traffic on the roads. Um and yeah, feeling pretty good. About to start the climb now. We’ve done about done 10 and 1/2 km already. So, decent warm up. Take a look at this climb profile on the Wahoo. See that? Literally just the same gradient the whole way up. It’s what we like to see. Yeah. Heading up into the mountains there. Amazing view. It’s so surreal. It’s like all the wildfires have ripped through here in the past. I remember this mountain side being so lush, full of green trees. Over the last few years, fires have just ravaged through this area. You can still smell the burn the burnt trees. Such a shame. That’s such a weird feeling as well. It’s like cycling through some kind of otherworldly landscape with all these burnt trees everywhere. About 2k to go to the top now. Feeling okay, but it’s flipping hot. and absolutely cooking on the side of this mountain. Yeah, sweating quite a lot, dripping into my eyes, which is nice. They got the hydration tablets in the bottle, so hopefully I’m replenishing a lot of that lost electrolytes and minerals and whatnot. But yeah, beautiful view up here. Hell of a climb. And yeah, almost there. All right, that is the top of the climb. Woo, that was a tough one. Yeah, made it to the top here. I remember this used to be a really nice cafe with a beautiful view off the top of the mountain. Um, but it’s closed down now since all the fires have been through here. I don’t think it got affected by the fires, but the whole area was was burnt. So, I think the owner stopped running the cafe, which is such a shame. But this is the view. Heat. Heat. Pick up a beautiful ice coffee and a nice little pink donut to match the jersey. Heat. Heat. Heat. All right. Oh man, I can’t bloody believe it. Freaking crash again. Jesus. I don’t don’t even know what happened there. I was just going around the corner. That was quite It was quite a tight corner, but didn’t think I was going too fast at all. The wheels just completely gave way. Bloody hell. So annoying. But I’m all right, though. Just a few scratches grazed the side of my leg and put a hole in my bib shorts, which is annoying, but it is what it is. was having a really nice ride up to that point. Anyway, we live to tell the tale. We keep going. We get back on the bike and we carry on. Soldier on. Coming up to the end of the ride now. We’ll have done about 75k by the end of it. Uh almost 3 hours. So, super happy with the effort today. Lots of climbing as well packed into the kilometers. So, really enjoyed it. Apart from the crash again. I need to really sort that out cuz seem to seem to keep going down quite a bit at the moment, which is frustrating, but I guess that’s part of the sport. It is what it is. I’m not going to let it put me off or dampen my spirits. going to keep my chin up, get back on the bike, and keep going. But just know that I need to try and be a little bit more cautious. Let’s let’s say anyway, what can we do? Just about to come back out to the sea here, which is beautiful. Take a look. And that in front of us is the mountain that we went up this morning. The Oniss. Made it all the way to the top. Good morning. It’s a beautiful morning once again out here in Greece. Heading out for I think what was going to be my last uh ride. Um just doing a really really chilled one today. Probably just head out for an hour and a half, maybe a couple hours. Um plan to do about 25 30k something like that. Super chilled one. Having a little stretch with the legs and it’s been a good few days of recovery after the little incident that we had on the last ride. Um, legs feel okay. I’ve got a couple of grazers that are healing up quite nicely, which is good. Only one issue is I’ve got a bit of a graze on my hand on my right hand, which I’ve um which is which is heing okay, but it’s a bit sore holding the bars here, especially with all the bumps on the roads that you have out here. But yeah, beautiful morning. going for another little spin. Today we’re just cruising down the coast. So plan is to get to the next town over which is called Rafina. Um so just going up the coast and then probably have a coffee and then turn around and come back. So super chilled, nice and relaxing ride today. Just stretch the legs a little bit. Don’t know if you can see that, but my mom has very kindly patched up my bib shorts. I only brought one pair of shorts with me and obviously got a small hole in them from the uh from the road. Look at this for a spot to stop for a gel. This is the port of Rafina where you can go to some of the nearby islands spot and you’ve got a lovely view of the church. And for riding in the summer, have a little secret weapon. This is an ice gel from Ministry. So, you put this in the freezer and it ices up and then you take it out on the ride and obviously it melts a little bit while you’re riding. But then when you open it, it’s still quite cold. It holds the temperature. So, I’m going to try one of these little cold refreshing gel. Beautiful. This one’s mango flavored and it’s 40 g of carbs as well. So, it’s like a kind of little ice slushie with carbs in there. You made it, man. Huh? I did. And they’re all lost and I don’t know what they did with the road. Good ride. I enjoyed it actually. Cassie spy. My dad’s been following me a little bit on his quad bike. Nice little bit of motor pacing. So, that pretty much brings us towards the end of our time riding out here in Greece. Really enjoyed it. I don’t know if I said, but obviously my parents live here, but this is sort of our family home. We’ve had this house for about 20 odd years or so. So, I grew up here coming here every summer. So, I know this area really well. I know the roads really well. So, it’s been a real privilege and joy to be able to bring the bike here and ride up some of the roads that that I used to roam around on as a kid. So, tomorrow morning we’re heading off to the island of Capalonia. Uh, so we’re gonna spend a few days there with the family, relaxing, chilling out, obviously a few days off the bike, and then we head back to Spain, and the training needs to ramp up again ahead of the ride in Andor in early August. So, yeah, hope you’ve enjoyed the video. Hope you’ve managed to see a little bit about riding out here in Greece and what it’s like. That’s it from me. Stay tuned for the next one. See you soon.