You can’t buy happiness is an old trope, but it’s probably true. However, if you are fortunate enough to find a pot of gold at the end of the gravelly rainbow, you can try out the life of a professional gravel cyclist for a few days at the end of July. That’s essentially the offer that Hotchillee made to their audience earlier this year. They have put together a three-day gravel trip which heads off-road from south London, down to the south coast of England, crosses into France and takes the group into Paris in time to cheer on the arrival of the women’s and men’s pro riders finishing their respective Tour de France events.
Gravel Union have been lucky enough to have been offered a press place on the inaugural running of the Hotchillee gravel trip, but before we head out to France, we wanted to go behind the scenes. We chatted with David Kirkby, who was one of the Hotchillee team instrumental in setting up the trip, to get some insight into how and why they created their London To Paris Gravel trip.
“I’ve worked on fifteen Hotchillee London to Paris rides” said David, “but they’ve all been on the road. When Sven [Thiele – Hotchillee’s founder] first talked about running a gravel version of the London to Paris, I jumped at the chance of being involved. We’ve run gravel trips since 2019 when we set up the multi-day Rainmaker Rollercoaster event in South Africa [Sven’s homeland], so we had a really good idea of what gravel riders wanted and how to make it work properly. We’ve run London to Paris rides since 2004, so we combined our amazing depth of experience with our passion for gravel riding, to create the gravel version of this iconic itinerary.”
“We had the London to Paris gravel trip all set up for 2020, but then Covid put a spanner in the works” he continued. “The good thing though is that we’ve now had time to really finesse the route and we’re confident we’ve found the best possible gravel route to get to Paris” Hotchillee wanted to avoid using the ‘standard’ Avenue Verte (which is aimed at leisure cyclists and isn’t super challenging). “We’ve done a lot of research and reccie trips, including one back in the Spring where we rode in snow/sleet/hail on the second day” David told us.
“Some of the route is a bit more technically challenging. Day 1 is a great warm-up – it’s basically flat and not too demanding, so will be perfect for getting everyone used to what to expect. Day 2 is the longest at 140kms and there’s 1350m of climbing, with a few short, sharp climbs and some technical bits. Then the first 50kms of Day 3 is on gravel and there are some good challenges in there. At just over half way through the day, we’ll meet up with the road version of the London to Paris trip and ride the last 45kms into Paris as one big peloton. We’ll have rolling road closures and motorbike outriders, so this is as close to the ‘pro’ experience as you can get.”
We asked David what participants on the trip should expect “All they need to do is ride their bikes – we will take care of everything else” was his reply. Just over forty people have booked onto the gravel trip and will be looked after by four Hotchillee ride captains and a support vehicle containing a mechanic. “We have a behind-the-scenes team who manage everything with military-level preparation. Everything will be super-efficient to make the riding days as smooth and as fun as possible”.
David gave us some more detail about the role of the ride captains “They are there to shepherd the group. They lead the route, but also will encourage and teach anyone who needs any help. They’ll deal with any problems and most importantly make sure that no-one is left behind”
It’s not a race, but some of the days, particularly Day 2, will be quite a challenge, so we’ve got a great team to look after the riders. We’ll most likely split into smaller groups, and my experience of previous Hotchillee rides is that the groups bond really well and help each other out. We’ll have regular regrouping points and lots of places where we’ll meet the support vehicle so that riders can keep topped up with food and drink” David told us.
We asked David how Hotchillee deal with the challenge of managing a big mixed ability group in an off-road environment. “We know quite a few of the participants on the trip, as they’ve been previous customers of ours on the road” he told us “So that helps us to figure out who might need extra help and encouragement. Part of the role of the Hotchillee ride captains is to offer tips and advice to participants and it’s amazing how this helps with growing the confidence of riders who might not have done so much gravel riding in the past. We’ve also been running regular evening and weekend gravel rides for anyone who lives close to our UK HQ which have worked really well – they’ve given us the chance to get to know any of the new participants for this trip and to help grow the skills of existing road-based riders.”
You may well have noticed that the Hotchillee trip is not cheap. We put this to Charlotte Montague, who is Hotchillee’s sponsorship, marketing and media manager “What makes our trip so special is the closed road aspect as we enter Paris. Hotchillee is one the official tour operators of the Tour de France and we get special dispensation to have rolling closed roads and have a motorbike escort right to the foot of the Eiffel Tower. This comes with a price tag , but for anyone who hasn’t experienced this before, it will give you goosebumps as the traffic comes to a halt and lets our peloton travel smoothly through Paris. Everyone who books on the trip will also be staying in a hotel in Paris used by one of the pro-tour teams, so early Sunday Monday morning will become a game of ‘eye-spy’ trying to spot the pros having their breakfast after the last stage is finished!”
We asked Sven Thiele, Hotchillee’s founder, for a bit of insight into what inspired him to create a gravel version of the Hotchillee London to Paris trip "Back in 2015 we put on an event called Off-Riding with Gerard Vroomen to launch his Open bike. Previously I'd only ridden MTB or Road, but this was something in-between and way before the term "gravel riding" was coined. We rode from the centre of Amsterdam and spent 3 days exploring without going on any roads, it was awesome and I was hooked."
Next we asked about the future and where Sven saw Hotchillee’s range of trips heading "Already 50% of our trips are gravel. We've explored the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, put on a 7-day gravel adventure in South Africa (sleeping under the stars and riding through game parks), later this year we're in the Swiss Alps and then Girona where we stay in a 17th century villa. There's so much more to explore I can't wait to see where to team will be taking us next! "
Finally, we asked whether he had any top tips for participants who will be taking on the London to Paris gravel trip? "These early editions are always my favourites. Because it's the first year, we've kept numbers small so everyone will know each other well by the time we roll into Paris. They're great fun - so come with a spirit of adventure and enjoy being a pioneer".
If you’d like to find out more about Hotchillee’s range of gravel trips, you can check them out here. We’ll be reporting back from inside the gravelly peloton on route to Paris at the end of the month.