To Find Europe’s Best Bike Routes, a Cycling Writer Asked the Crowd

When it came time to put together “Cycling Atlas Europe,” a new guidebook detailing 350 single-day rides across the continent, the sportswriter and cycling expert Claude Droussent, 65, knew where to turn: Strava, a fitness app that lets cyclists (and runners and hikers) record their routes with GPS and then share them with each other, and that calls itself “the largest sports community in the world.”

Having Strava users validate the routes and vouch for their safety and appeal was key to the book, whose subtitle is “The 350 Most Beautiful Cycling Trips in Europe,” Mr. Droussent said: “The Strava community was important because I didn’t know all 350 routes by myself.”

The ambitious aim of the “Atlas,” published by Rizzoli this spring: to sate both serious cyclists searching for epic conquests and the multitudes looking for saddle-top journeys of discovery in this soaring adventure travel segment.

According to a European Parliament study, 2.3 billion cycle tourism trips are taken in Europe each year. A common theme among the typically affluent travelers looking to cycle: the need for resources and information.

Mr. Droussent’s own cycling journey began in the 1960s, when as a child growing up north of Paris, he watched in awe as the titans of the day — riders like Belgium’s five-time Tour de France champion Eddy Merckx — competed in the famously cobblestone-riddled Paris-Roubaix race that passed his home. During his journalism career he covered more than 30 Tours de France. In 1981, Mr. Droussent, then a cub reporter for Le Parisien, was the first journalist to interview an American named Greg LeMond after his first professional victory in Europe (Mr. LeMond went on to win the Tour de France three times).

In 2022, the two men co-wrote the guide “Cycling Atlas North America,” which also utilizes Strava routes.