If there’s one thing road cyclists love almost as much as the ride itself, it’s the planning that goes into their physical conditioning and training before the big rides. And when you’ve been eyeing up a cycling adventure across multiple days, daily distance and elevation gain are among the first things we look at. But ask anyone who’s fought their way up countless mountain passes and they’ll say that elevation charts only tell you just half of the story.
Yes, a traditional chart might show you the shape of a day, but fundamentally it doesn’t really describe how that day will feel once in the saddle – where the efforts are, how steep it gets, or where the hard and easy sections begin and end. And it’s exactly here, from this pain point, where our team got the idea for “Climbing Notes” which have incorporated the invaluable feedback we’ve gotten from our most seasoned road riders.
Riders want a clearer picture of what the day ahead holds, especially on our road cycling adventures. And we understand this completely – because beyond the time and cost of taking this trip, we know that committing to a challenging road tour is a big decision. Our hope is that “Climbing Notes” will help you in deciding if a tour is right for you, or provide a clearer picture on how to best train and prepare yourself.
After all, cyclists always love raising the bar, right?
BEYOND THE CHARTS
It was back in May 2026, that we began working on building short, plain-language summaries of what each day's climbing is actually like. The goal was simple: integrate these new insights alongside our existing elevation charts and written ride descriptions to provide our riders with a more complete overview of each day’s ride.
ADDING GENERATIVE AI INTO THE MIX
One highlight to mention! We knew right from the start that we wanted to build this feature with the help of generative AI. We had our doubts at first though, as many on the team felt like reading a route and then describing felt like a distinctly human job – and we did not want to lose that authentic touch.
But as the project progressed, we found incorporating AI was actually essential to making our Climbing Notes feature work best. Rather than manually downloading each route one at a time—which was a slow, repetitive process—an AI assistant was configured, with lots of iterations, to read our route files, pull numbers straight from the route data, measure distances and gradients, and determine the start and end points for each climb starts and ends.
However, humans are still in charge of the final notes that we upload to our site. The AI does the measuring, but our Product Managers, the people who design our trips, still compare them to our actual survey reports and trip notes. We want to carefully ensure that you get an accurate depiction of each day on the bike. And the end results are glanceable but detailed climbing notes that actually tell you if a climb is four kilometres at 6% with a steep ramp near the top and not just jagged lines on a chart.
WHAT THE NOTES LOOK LIKE
Once the notes are in good shape, our Web Dev team integrated them neatly into the itinerary tabs of our road cycling tours. Located just below each day’s elevation chart is a prompt to open up the detailed climbing notes for that day highlighted in red text. Now instead of just seeing the total daily ascent, you can access a breakdown that helps you mentally prepare for the day or train more effectively a few weeks prior.
Each climb is categorised by its starting and ending kilometre markers, total length, average gradient, and the steepest kilometres on it. We also assign a difficulty rating—such as "Easy-mod", "Moderate", or "Hard" to each one.
Above the data, you’ll find a plain-language summary written by our Product Managers. For example, on a day that features a demanding early ascent, the notes might prepare you for a "Punchy opening climb," noting that "The hard part comes right at the start, a punchy climb out of Borovë with a ramp touching 11%". It will also offer insights like "A good day to find your legs before the bigger challenges ahead".
These notes are incredibly valuable for showing what a chart alone cannot. For instance, on our Transylvanian Alps tour, the Climbing Notes flag is a day that looks like a rest day on the profile but still has a real climb in it before the hardest stage. That is the sort of thing you would want to know before you set off, and it is what the notes are built to catch.
THE ROAD AHEAD
Bringing these notes to life has been a massive collaborative effort across our entire team, and we’re working on bringing these notes to more of our tours. As any experienced rider knows, a climb at 2,600 metres in the Andes feels entirely different from tackling that same gradient at sea level, and our route details should reflect that context. For now, our new climbing notes are available to view on these tours as of today:
• Road Cycling The Peloponnese and Saronic Islands
• Road Biking the Transylvanian Alps
• Ionian Ascents: Albania, Macedonia, and Greece by Road Bike
Keen to learn more about how to use our new climbing notes? Send an email to europe@spiceroads.com and Mihai, our Europe Product Manager, will happily provide more information.
