Gravel Health is a ride diary from one rider who keeps going — through a bad knee, a few thousand metres of Alpine climbing and a lot of coffee stops. Every page is a place I've actually ridden, in Scotland, Switzerland, Italy and France, with the real route, the real climbs and what it asked of my legs.
Four hubs, each pulling together every ride written up for that part of the map.
Home turf near Alloa, the Argyll coast, Lancashire's canals.
4 areasBern's lakes, the Jura, Ticino and the Stelvio day.
5 areasLake Maggiore climbs and the Riviera dei Fiori coast.
5 areasThe Alps, the Var coast, and the border at Goumois.
3 areasEvery page comes from my own ride records — real distances, real elevation, real photos. No stock imagery, no invented routes.
A climbing base right on the Swiss border — three brutal valley climbs, up to 50% ramps.
27 rides · 2018–2026Up from Tenero to Sonogno, past the GoldenEye dam and an emerald-green river.
2 rides · 2015 & 2019Home base — Lake Biel, Lake Murten, the Chasseral ridge. The biggest archive of all.
~560 rides · hub pageA village split by the Doubs and the border itself — plateau climbs on both sides.
14 rides · 2012–2025One of the two climbs that decide Milan–San Remo, ridden across three separate trips.
2018 & 2022A family week on Lake Lugano, with a proper 1,305m climb squeezed in between ice creams.
2013 · 3 ridesUp from the coast through centuries-old olive terraces to a village that's pressed oil since the Middle Ages.
849m climbing28km, sea-level, car-free — an old railway line ranked among Europe's most beautiful cycle paths.
Under 250m climbingLe Bourg-d'Oisans and the Cormet de Roseland — proper Tour de France territory.
2012 · 2,436m climbingFive rides across eight days in the hills behind St Tropez — the oldest French rides in the archive.
2011 · 5 rides48 hairpins, 2,760m — one of the most famous roads in cycling, part of a 109km day out.
3,027m climbingAn Alpine pass used since Roman times, plus a second climb to a reservoir few tourists see.
2 climbs, back to backAlloa, the Ochils, and the training loop a knee injury runs straight through.
50+ rides · hub pageA camper trip west — Loch Riddon gravel and the Crinan Canal towpath.
2 rides · June 2024Wigan, Rivington and the Leeds–Liverpool towpath — the oldest riding on the site.
16 rides · 2012–2020Built from the GPS data in my ride records — real OpenStreetMap tiles, drawn once, so it always loads. Use the lists to jump to a page.
Race calendars and route databases already exist. This is the opposite: every page comes from a ride that actually happened, logged since 2011. The name is the point — riding is how I stay well. There's a knee that needed the best part of two years to sort out, a first ride back after months off with “no knee pain”, and a long list of climbs since.
I'm a rider, not a doctor or a coach. Nothing here is medical or training advice — just what the rides were really like.
When gear recommendations arrive it will be one real, owned product per page, never more than two. Nothing gets promoted that I don't use.
⚠ Pending: Gravel Health needs its own Amazon Associates tag before any product card goes live