Touring Lake Constance

Somewhere in the last few months we were at a tourism or cycling exhibition and I stuffed a postcard from the Vier Länder Region Bodensee (Four nation region Lake Constance) into a one of those useful free cloth shopping bags you find at continental trade fairs. I am just in progress of emptying the bag out and filing a lot of the information material in the round file. The postcard has a link to www.touren.bodensee.eu where you can find tours, a route planner with GPS download and accommodation suggestions for cycling, walking and canoeing trips in the Austrian, German, Liechtenstein and Swiss parts of the region. The website is an excellent place to start planning a trip to this cyclist-friendly scenic region. It has the great advantage that the tours are international and do not end at the border which is a typical snag for information issued by national tourist offices.

Cycling in the Autumn along the Carp Route

There is much to recommend waiting until the shorter days before setting off along the Carp Cycleway: Fewer people, hotels still open and welcoming, autumn colours to see, carp harvesting and the opportunity to eat them.
We first came across the Karpfen Radweg (Carp Cycle Trail) as we were late cycling out of Feuchtwangen to our hotel in the nearby village of Thürnhofen. "It is easy, not steep, avoids the main road and takes you right past your hotel", advised the guy in the tourist office.
Since then we’ve returned many times, to walk or cycle past the many carp lakes dotted around Feuchtwangen and Dinkelsbühl. Carp ponds were a feature of local life as monasteries flourished here some 800 years ago. The monks were required to eat fish on Fridays or during fasting and as the monasteries began so towns and traders followed. It seems carp prefer to live in sluggish or dammed streams, feeding on plants, worms or crustaceans close to the mud floors. After about three years in the ponds they were big enough to harvest, by netting or draining the ponds. In early days, before refrigeration they were only eaten in certain months, after capture and being stored alive in clear running water to cleanse them. Now you can eat them at almost any season, since they can be frozen, though they still taste a bit muddy in our opinion. After the monasteries were secularised by Napoleon, many of the carp ponds probably began to silt up and disappear. However business in carp, a Christmas delicacy in many parts of Europe, now seems to be booming and the Karpfen Radweg extends from Dinkelsbühl to Erlangen some 210 km distant along river valleys and through picturesque villages and towns. En route you will find hotels and guest houses, restaurants and hundreds of carp ponds in the folds of the landscape. The route lies mostly on quiet roads, well signposted and past other cultural landscapes like the Obstwiesen, often ancient apple, pear and plum orchards. Go at the right time and you can gather walnuts too.
This is secret, leisurely Franken, away from the madding hordes in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, across old river bridges over the Altmühl, a Danube tributary and bypassing the towers of Nürnberg. The route could be pleasantly completed in a week, and there are others following on from Nürnberg if you wish. More information is available on the Romantic Franken website: http://www.romantisches-franken.de/. Some of the pages are in German so use a translator app.

Excellent signposting

A mediaeval protein factory

The trees are old and the apples often too sour to eat…

Wörnitz Cycleway

We spend some time in winter visiting travel fairs ranging from the giant CMT event in Stuttgart in early January to minor, very minor events in shopping centres. We pick up brochures, too many brochures and sometime later when we start spring cleaning we look at what we've got and maybe find a topic for a blog or it's the bin.
Recently we found a map published by Ferienland Donau Ries, the regional tourist office for the Wörnitz Valley in western Bavaria, between Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Donauwörth across the ancient meteor crater. This shows a new route following a similar route to the Romantic Road Cycle Route. Much of the line of Romantic Road is shown on the printed map and on the website: http://www.ferienland-donau-ries.com/wege/romantische_strasse-931/ but for some reason unknown the printed map does not show the stretch of the Romantic Road which runs through Feuchtwangen. We assume it is a mistake. This is a pity because Feuchtwangen itself is a little jewel and near by  is one of our favourite pubs/hotels: Gaststätte-Pension "Zum Grünen Wald" in Thürnhofen. The Wörnitz Valley would be a good area to have two or three nights and explore this new route in addition to the Romantic Road.

Bicycle Hire and E-Bike Hire in Oberstdorf, Allgäu, Bavaria, Germany

Skiers know Oberstdorf and the nearby Austrian Klein Walser Valley as major winter sports centres, the site of a ski jump arena and a number of cable cars and chairlifts.

In summer it is a good area for mountain biking, cycle touring with or without E-bikes. The glaciated landscape with hanging valleys and moraines means that there are many short steep climbs interspersed with longer more gentle ones. Judicious use of the power control on a pedelec could make cycling a lot more pleasant. Local pubs and cafes offer free charging while you enjoy lunch or snack. We are here enjoying a few days walking in between the rain and snow storms, but took the chance to check out the town's bike hire facilities.

Zweirad Center Hasselberger, Hauptstraße 7, 87561Oberstdorf, T: +49(0)8322 4467, F: +49(0)8322 8932 has touring bikes (9€/day), mountain bikes (12€/day) and E-bikes (20€/day) for hire.

There is a Movelo hire point offering Swiss Flyer bikes. These have the advantage that 26 hotels, cafes, campsites and bike parks in the region will exchange your exhausted Movelo battery for a freshly charged one free of charge, which means you can spend more time touring and less time sitting on a terrace in the sun looking at the mountains. The company also offers E-bikes from other manufacturers: Focus and Kalkhoff and a large range of special vehicles: E-mountain bikes, trikes, tandems, tandem trikes, electro wheel chairs, sociables, bike wheelchair combinations, children's trailers, children's seats and dog trailers.

E-Bike Verleihcenter Oberstdorf, Bahnhofsplatz 1 a, 87561 Oberstdorf, T:  +49(0)8322 95290, F: +49(0)8322 95290, info@e-bike-allgaeu.de, www.e-bike-allgaeu.de (only in German), Open daily including on public holidays from 9am to 1pm and 2pm to 6pm. Opposite the railway station.

Cinema for the ears on Bavarian cycle routes

We came across an excellent idea at the tourist exhibition in Stuttgart. A regional tourist organisation in Bavaria has set up a series of points on some cycle routes where visitors can tune into an iPod type broadcast on local features (www.bayerisch-schwaben.de/lauschtour). Visitors use an app on their own mobile/cell phone or on a hired iPod to listen to a short documentary on, e.g. the meteor collision that formed the giant crater around Nördlingen, N of Augsburg. Unfortunately these broadcasts are only in German and in dialect at that. They are not much use to non German speakers. This idea could however be adopted in the UK in the Lake District, for example, with talks on Beatrix Potter, Wordsworth, Thirlmere and Arthur Ransome.

Romantic Road

There is a short two minute film on YouTube which gives a good idea of what to expect in the villages, towns and cities along the Romantic Road in Bavaria (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNA9hD-joEg&feature=youtube_gdata). Our eBook from Amazon or Smashwords.com will also help with the roads and cycle tracks in between the settlements if you decide to explore this historic patch of countryside.

Radrunde Allgäu (Around Allgäu)

A high percentage of Germans like to cycle on holiday. Many Germans like to go on holiday in their own country. This is good news for the rest of us as it means tourist authorities all over Germany are hard at work laying out new cycle routes and improving those they have already.  The Allgäu is a area between Baden Wuerttemberg, Bavaria and Tyrol, which is much visited by people who want quiet rural holidays. In order to cater for normal cyclists six counties, three provinces: Baden Wuerttemberg, Bavaria and Tyrol, and two countries Austria and Germany have developed an amoeba-like circular route around the Allgäu and incorporated two earlier routes across the middle. The Allgäu is the cheese producing region of Germany, home to thousands of light brown cows with soulful eyes, green meadows, high roofed farmhouses and forests with the Alps in the background. We have cycled along the eastern edge to Füssen on the Romantic Road and written two guide books about the route: "Cycling the Romantic Road from Würzburg to Füssen" (eBook) available from Smashwords and Amazon.
“The Romantic Road from Würzburg to Füssen Culture-nature-romance A Cycle Guide from North to South and South to North” available from Bergstrasse Bike Books (http://www.bicycletouringeurope.eu/)

The route is 450km long, mainly tarmac with some hills. The Iller and Allgäu routes cross in Kempten and link the parts of the Allgäu route together. It is due to open on 2 June 2013. Our summer activities are already planned unfortunately, but given the chance I suspect we will go.

The sketch map is taken from the website www.radrunde-allgaeu.de (in German) which is published by Allgäu GmbH, Gesellschaft für Standort und Tourismus, Allgäuer Straße1, 87435 Kempten, Germany. 

Lake Constance to Lake Königsee

One of the problems for many Brits and English speakers in general about cycle touring in Germany is the language. For many Brits French was the first foreign language until it was replaced in schools by the concept that if the foreigner does not understand what you say then shout, slowly in English. It's not always that easy to find a German let alone an English speaker in deepest, darkest Bayern (Bavaria).
There is a way round the problem of organising hotels, baggage transfer and bicycle hire and that is to book a self-guided tour. One tour we would be tempted to do is along the Bodensee-Königssee Radweg way down south in Bavaria. This is a mind boggling cycle route from Lindau on Lake Constance, through the foothills of the Alps to Füssen and Schwangau for Ludwig II's fairytale castle, to the Chiemsee where Ludwig spent a few bob building Herrenchiemsee yet another Schloß - chateau and ending at the crystal clear deep green waters of the  Königssee not far from Berchtesgaden. If the vision of climbing 13 000 feet and descending 12 000 feet in 260 miles over seven to eleven days puts you off, you can hire an electrobike. The cost for eight nights bed and breakfast: - a reasonable  €490 in 2 to 3 star hotels. The website is in German, but that is why you have Google Translator on your computer.

More information:

SpOrtive Reisen by Feuer und Eis Touristik GmbH
Tel.: +49 (0)8022 -54 20
www.sportive-reisen.de
Mail: info@sportive-reisen.de

Avoiding a faux pas in a German pub

This definitely applies to Bavaria: When you walk into a country pub/restaurant you will notice that although there are tablecloths/ cutlery on most of the tables, one biggish table will be bare. This is the Stammtisch, where the regulars sit. There is no restriction on sitting there, but we advise you not to sit there, even if the landlord/lady lets you. It is not done. You only sit there if you are invited.

Munich

Not that much to do with cycling but we have just spent 2 days in Munich. We stopped in the A&O Hotel/Hostel Bayerstrasse 75 near the Hauptbahnhof (Central Railway Station) which we can recommend. It was clean, quiet and the breakfast was excellent.
We had lunch in the Augustiner Grossgastaette in Neuhaeuserstrasse which is one of the other Munich beer halls. The food was good, the service quick, the customers local and the beer especially the Dunkel (dark beer) excellent. Personally I much prefer it to the Hofbrauhaus which is full of tourists trying to get smashed and unfortunately in many cases succeeding.
Obviously one can cycle in the city. There are a number of cycle routes which were well used in spite of the near freezing temperatures.

The Pope's Cycle Route

The Germans were over the moon when Cardinal Ratzinger was elected as Pope Benedict. The "Bild Zeitung" the biggest German tabloid had a headline: "Wir sind Papst (We are Pope)". The Pope comes from a small town east of Munich. Of all the German provinces Bavaria is the one that is making the most efforts to increase its already extensive cycleway network, so it is not surprising that a group of local authorities east of Munich have joined together to set up a circular 224 km cycle route connecting the Pope's birthplace with various towns and villages with connections to Pope Benedict and previous Popes. Check out the route and more information than most of us would want on http://www.benediktweg.info/english/einfuehrung.htm. Obviously for devoted Roman Catholics it would be one of the holidays of a lifetime, but even non followers of Pope Benedict can find much of interest: the views into the Alps, Lake Chiemsee.