Back from my hols in Crete
Firstly, thanks for all the advise which was provided. i ended up taking my own mountain bike. our holiday was booked with Thomson and they only charge £30 in total to take the bike (£15 each way) i went for 10 days, to hire a decent bike would have been over e140, so it was a no brainer!!
I fitted some scwhalbe land cruiser tyres for running on and off road. these are great on road for a mountain bike due to their central ridge, nice and fast rolling and good enough off road for use on the forest tracks that i ventured on.
we were based in Stalis, which is just outside Malia!!!!! (on inbetweeners fame). having not been to Crete beofre i was greated with the sight of a coast line surrounded by massive hills. the only way was up. the climb from Stalis up to the village of Mochos was a first thing in the morning climb of about 450m in height. the fastest i did this was 47 minutes for about 6 miles. it was hard work!!
there were furtrher hills (upto about 960m in height) to get to the platuea in the middle of Crete, which required lots of holiday effort and many calories were drunk the night before to assist with this!! i spotted on the map a track through Rozas Gorge. This looked great fun, with a switchback track , but first attempt was not fun as i ended up climbing rather than coming down. I then found the way to do this downhill, which was good, but not quite single track. the track from the back of Mochas to Potamines was good, through the olive trees!!
My routes ranged from 20 to 48 miles. all good fun and better than nlying on a sunbed all day. if anyone wants any routes or advise in Malia area riding, then let me know.
Bill