Climate. Are we scuppered? Part I

I suspect we, i.e. the human race, are scuppered unless we can initiate some drastic changes in our life style and chances are not looking good. If we look at possible changes in motorised traffic, i.e. the motor car that we will have to make to reduce carbon dioxide production seriously it is going to be the equivalent of pushing a pea up Mount Everest with one's nose while blindfolded.

Can we give up the car or at least cut down on its use? I have my doubts. We live in a small German town that is flat. There are two or three hills in the town: bridges over the autobahn. You'd think an ideal spot to cycle or even walk. There are adequate pavements/footpaths as long there is room to get past, but it is a local habit to park with two wheels on the pavement/sidewalk to keep the road clear, but of course blocking the walker or the pram pusher. A goodly proportion of our neighbours drive round to the supermarket and bakers around the corner which is less than five minutes walk away. When we walk across town I count the number of pedestrians and cyclists and the number of cars, most of which have one person riding in them. I deliberately do not count the cars on the road connecting the two sections of bypass which we cross. In spite of this I normally see 50% more cars than walkers or cyclists. It is going to be difficult weaning people off the car.

Fashion and the cost of bikes and trikes

For a number of health related reasons, I am thinking of acquiring a recumbent e-trike. If you look at the catalogues of the four major recumbent trike European manufacturers (AZUB (CZ), Hase (D), HPVelotechnik (D), ICE (GB)) you quickly realise that these vehicles are not cheap. It is not surprising since the trikes are hand built and in very small numbers. If you are looking for a fully equipped e-trike you can expect to shell out at least 7000 Euros, maybe a thousand or so more. If you take delivery of a trike and then tell the neighbour that you've just coughed up the price of a newish secondhand car for a funny little vehicle, he will think you are off your trolley. We have a car we bought secondhand when it was 4 years old. It cost us 8000 Euros some years ago.
However if you look at the prices of high end bicycles, that are built in similar numbers their prices are similar to trikes. The TITICI Gravel bike frameset, i.e. just a frame, no wheels, no cranks, no gears, no brakes, etc costs about 4000 Euros in the UK and I suspect even without buying diamond studded cranks converting the frameset into a bicycle will cost at least 1000 Euros if not more. However if you buy this Italian handbuilt frameset your neighbours will think not that you have more money than sense, but that you are a man who knows his own mind, a man of distinction, who is prepared to spend money to get what he wants. It's a funny old world. (BTW the way I have used the male form, because I think men are much likely to spend this kind money on this kind of bike.)

It's almost 200 years since the first bike ride

A von Drais hobby horse

On 12 June 1817 Karl von Drais left Mannheim to travel down to "Schwetzinger Relaishaus" (a coaching inn in Rheinau, a suburb of Mannheim) for a quick refreshment. He cycled, he scooted or he pushed his hobby horse or draisine on Baden's best road which is why he went to Rheinau. It was less than 5 miles. The round trip took him little more than an hour, but it was the "small step for a man and a big step for mankind". It was the start of individual horseless transport. It was the first bicycle.
Although Mannheim is better known as the birthplace of the motor car due to Karl Benz, the city is going to celebrate the 200th anniversary of this ride in a big way.

• There will be a major exhibition on the bicycle in the provincial museum of science and industry: Technoseum from 11 November 2016 until 25 June 2017 - Zwei Räder 200 Jahre Two wheels 200 years. The exhibition will show original hobby horses, historic bicycles and special developments along with social aspects of the bicycle's development and its changing image over the centuries.
• From May to September 2017 films are going to be shown in unusual spots all over Mannheim. The audience will supply the power via bike dynamos.
• Tour de Karl On 2 June 2017 children from classes 4 to 6 will follow the route taken by Karl Drais from Mannheim city centre to Rheinau.

Tour de Karl 2015 Waiting around for the start

• Monnem Bike - das Festival Three days of bicycle events from 10 - 12 June 2017 including hobby horse racing, the recumbent bicycle world championships and a World Klapp event - racing on modified or original Klapprads.
• Monnem Bike - die Show The Finale is an event with theatre and music in the courtyard of the Mannheim Schloß on 16 September 2017.

Mannheim is lies in the middle of good cycling country and is not far from Germersheim, home of the SPEZI Special Bicycle Show, so next year would be a good year to visit SPEZI and get new design ideas by reviewing the history of the bicycle.

Commuter Bikes

There was an article in the "Guardian" on Saturday on the Money pages about saving money by buying a bike to commute to work. We both found this an interesting article because we've been to Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where a third or so of inner city journeys are made by bike. One sees all sorts of bikes underway there. The article was intended for London readers. Even the "Guardian" now seems to believe that life in the rest of the UK is not possible. The Guardian's approach seemed to be buy a sporty road bike, perhaps even with dropped handlebars. You get there quicker. Your bike is cooler than anybody else's. Fortunately before I crumpled the paper in a ball and flung it in the waste paper bin*, the author did recount that most of the bikes did come without mudguards/fenders and that these were very important.

We both feel quite strongly that for inner city cycling a sit up and beg bike with mudguards/fenders and a luggage rack and/or a basket at the front is a lot more use. The majority of the bikes in Amsterdam and Copenhagen are of this type. They may not be "sexy", but they are comfortable to ride, you can carry stuff without wearing a rucksack and you see what's going on round about you. Defensive cycling, looking out for danger strikes us as sensible, especially in cities. When your nose is almost touching the front wheel, this is difficult.

There is another aspect to the buying of sexy bikes. Some years ago, a friend of ours in her 40's had a road bike built by the best local frame builder. She picked it up and decided to cycle round the block. As she passed the high school next door, she heard one boy say to another, "Check out the old bat on the cool bike!"

 *This would have been difficult as we read the Kindle edition.

Winterize your bike

Seen in Heppenheim last weekend but one. Thanks to musician friend Reinhard for taking the photos. Check out his website on http://www.maibauer-gleisner.de/reinhard/

If we buy two new bikes then at least two old ones have to go.

As ever there is an additional problem. We have nine bicycles sitting in our cellar and in the cupboard in the hall: 

• Three "Bahnhof's bicycles" we can leave at the tram station in the town and be sure that there are more attractive bikes about in the bike parking area at the tram station. 
• Two Dahon tourers.
• Two mountain bikes.
• Two Bromptons.

The first five would be favourites to pass on, but of the two Bahnhof's bikes one is a historic Peugeot Cologne tourer and the other is the first bike that Judith ever bought new. In both cases it would be like putting down a family pet.
The Bromptons are in use most days of the week. 
It looks like the Dahons would be favourites. One of the Bahnhof bikes can be donated or flogged off for €20.
I suspect we will leave things as they are for while and not buy new bikes.

Buying a new bike

One of the advantages of an old-fashioned bike shop over the big shed variety of bike supermarket that are springing up in Germany is that if you visit the shop at the right time the owner has time to talk to you and gives advice to help you rather than just improve his sales figures at any cost. I was very impressed last week when we wandered in to our local bike shop to say hello to the owner. I have been thinking about buying two new touring bikes, because I would like slightly faster bikes than the 20" wheel Dahon TRs we use at present.  I had already noticed that the ancient diamond framed Peugeot tourer I have used in the past seems to have grown and swinging my leg over the saddle, especially when the bike is carrying two panniers, is getting more difficult with the passing years. I think it is time I bought a step through unisex or ladies' bike, rather like our beloved Bromptons.

We checked out the bike brands on offer at our local bike shop on the internet and defined a number of parameters. We often follow sandy, unsealed tracks and we are not big on cleaning the bikes, so a hub gear is better idea than a derailleur. I have used a Mountain Drive on my Brompton for some years to extend the range on offer, but it does suffer from the disadvantage that changing gear from the lowest gear in the top range into the bottom means rapidly changing both gears. This can be difficult. Unfortunately we also need to climb hills, so the wider the range of gears the better. This points at a Rolhoff or an Alfine 11 hubgear. That seemed to be the problem solved: We needed two unisex/ladies' tourers with hubgears.

We arrived at the bike shop. It was a quiet afternoon. We looked around and discovered another problem: Aesthetics. I could quite fancy a bike from the Riese and Müller Avenue/Culture/Hommage range. Judith was not impressed. She does not like the design. We prefer to tour with both of us riding the same model. It makes for easier maintenance. So that was that. We will not buy those. Andreas, the shop owner, appeared and I explained the problem to him. He defined our choices: a mixte frame, a swan neck ladies' model (the bike not the lady) and a 'Y' frame.

• Mixte frames, he suggested were almost tall enough so that it is easier to swing the leg over the saddle. In which case we could buy a diamond frame.
• Swan neck ladies' models are a bit too much wicker basket and to quote George Orwell, 'Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist'. They were out.
• We ended up agreeing the Y frame Campus Bike would be the one. (www.campus-bike.de)

Another problem then arose, weight. Not so much the weight of the bike when we are trying to pedal them, what about getting them on trains? Fortunately the Alfine 11 hub gear is not the heaviest hub gear made by Shimano, but as Andreas said we will need to make sure the other components are as light as possible. We are researching the weight at present.

Police on Bicycles in Zurich

We went to Zurich for a few days last week. By chance we went to the Züspa - an ideal home exhibition. The Zurich Police were represented and we enquired about bicycle police. "Oh yes", said the young policeman we asked, "we have seventy two policemen and -women on bicycles, obviously not all the time. I, myself, would normally be out there, but I am here today." He said that the bicycle police were faster across the city with its pedestrian zones and tram tracks as well as being quieter than the vehicles the other police use. These factors lead to high arrest rates for the bicycling bobbies. We were also able to get a copy of the Zurich Police list of on-the-spot fines for cycling transgressions, but that's tomorrow's blog.

A memorable meal

Judith writes: Now we are back from our cycle trip across France we’ve had time to savour not only the ride but also the meals we had en route. This reminded me of a meal I enjoyed in India way back in 1984, linked by both bicycle riding and France. I had been fortunate enough to spend a sabbatical away from my normal secondary school job teaching geography. It enabled me to find out about agricultural and health programmes in parts of rural India that few teachers ever see as well as to take a real interest in the lives and aspirations of a wide range of people. I hope I was able to pass some of these experiences to my classes later.

I stayed mostly with Indian families and tried to eat the same fairly simple diets that they did but like many people away from their home comforts I sometimes found myself dreaming of European style food. One trip south of my main base in Madras took me to Pondicherry, formerly a French colony, where many of the older buildings still looked as if they were part of a film set, amid palm trees and paddy fields. I stayed a guest room of an ashram here and found food hard to find, according to my diary my staples were bread, bananas and peanut brittle, all available at streetside tea stands. The following day I hired a bike from the ashram and was able to widen my explorations. At that time Pondicherry was a very quiet place with few vehicles apart from other bikes, rickshaws or animal driven carts so I felt relatively secure although the bike seemed unwilling to turn right. After a somewhat expensive trip by taxi out to Auroville (founded in 1968) where the Matrimandir was then just a stark mass of spherical concrete girders, surrounded by scrub land and under darkening skies, I returned to the ashram a bit dejected and hungry. 

But I had a bike! So I rode into the town again and located the Grand Hotel d’Europe with its French restaurant, talked to the manager and booked myself a meal that evening at 7.45 pm.’’ Don’t be late’’ he warned ‘’I don’t want to give your meal to anyone else.’’

I remember I rode there as fast as that boneshaker would allow, really to escape any police since it was dark and I had no lights, of course. Air conditioned with potted palms, a large table set for one, it really was a film set. In former French Pondicherry, then at least, there were few restrictions about alcohol, grapes were grown here, wine and even brandy produced. However the manager advised me to have a beer, since the litre bottles of wine would be too much for one. 

The food came, a garlicky fish soup with large chunks of fish and tomatoes, together with garlic toast; a main course of a tender fillet steak and buttered rice; eggs mimosa with shrimps and mustard flavoured sauce, garnished with lettuce. I note in my diary that I could barely manage to eat a delicious almond egg pudding, though I found the coffee useful. It was a fantastic meal and gave me enough courage to cycle back to the ashram through the dark. There was little danger of being caught by the police, though running into  some cow lying in the road was real enough. 

Next day I cracked the secret of food in the ashram, there was a simple restaurant on the floor about my room, so I did not starve but was glad I hadn’t found it too early in my Pondicherry sojourn.

And what of Auroville? It has continued to develop and has achieved some of the goals of its founders, the Matrimandir is now a golden dome as you can discover from Wikipedia.

Putting your bike on a long distance bus in Spain

It came to pass that we needed to travel to Oviedo from Irun and the quickest and cheapest way is to take the ALSA bus. ALSA are the biggest bus company in Spain and offer a good network of services all over the country. If you read the ALSA website you will see that you can reserve storage for up to four bikes, golf bags or surf boards per bus in advance and the bus driver must take them, unlike in the old days where the bus driver would accept the bike if he liked the cut of your jib and if not you were doomed to sitting by the side of the road until the next bus came along, which can be twelve hours. We had reserved room for our two Bromptons for ten Euro per bike at the same time as we booked our own tickets. I printed the tickets out at home. We arrived in good time at the bus station in Irun, a bus stop in front of the railway station and showed the driver our Bromptons expecting to load them directly into a padded luxurious pair of compartments. No, we had to put them in a cover, which meant folding them and then he insisted that we hadn’t paid for the bikes, so I had to return to the booking office for this to be validated. We had problems because the bus driver spoke no English and my Spanish is limited to buying a cheese sandwich and a draught beer. I went to the ticket office and the appropriate section of the ticket was ringed by an angry employee who was not happy having her time wasted. I returned to the bus, waved this under the driver’s nose and he grudgingly agreed to let us and the bikes on the bus, though we had to help him stack the bikes with our luggage in the space beneath the bus to protect the other baggage against our bikes. There was no talk of protecting our two thousand Euro or so worth of bikes. In contrast, the journey afterwards was superb in comfortable leather seats with coffee and snacks and a good in-bus entertainment system.
I am quite pleased that we had booked the Bromptons as bikes, although normally I am ready to fight for the principle that a folded covered folding bike is baggage and should not be charged as a bike, but if you don’t speak the language… One plan we had originally considered was to pack the bikes folded in their covers and in a blue IKEA shopping bag. I suspect this would have been a no no in this case.
When we got to Oveido I checked the ALSA website and found a sentence I had overlooked earlier:
“Because of the limited space, we admit 4 objects (bicycles and surfboards) total in each coach, one per ticket. They have to be good conditions to travel without causing any damage to other baggage, so it is obligatory for them to be well packaged in boxes or bags suitable for transportation.”, i.e. if you are going to travel with bike on a Spanish long distance bus then you will need to find a friendly bike shop beforehand for a cardboard box or take a bike bag with you. It is probably not a bad idea either, if you print out your ticket yourself at home, to highlight the bicycle booking.

What a difference 5 km can make.

We are planning to cycle to Basel (Basle, Bâle) as soon as it stops raining. Once we are there we will need return by rail to Viernheim. Basel has three railway stations, belonging to three different organisations: Basel SBB, the Swiss station, Basel Badischer Bahnhof, the German station and Bâle SNCF, the French station. The platforms of the latter two are legally German or French, but the buildings themselves including ticket offices etc. are on Swiss soil. This means if you pay by credit or debit card that the tickets will be slightly more expensive.
However what amazed me was the price difference between travelling from Basel SBB and Basel Bad to Mannheim. As long as you are prepared to travel on regional trains fairly slowly the trip between Basel Bad and Mannheim costs 29 Euro for up to five people plus 4.50 Euro per bike for the bicycles, i.e. 38 Euro in our case. Travelling between Basel SBB and Mannheim via Basel Bad will cost you 63.30 Euro plus ten Euros/bike for an International bicycle ticket, i.e. well over twice as much. The five minute ride from Basel SBB to Basel Bad will cost over 40 Euro.

Bikes and trains in Belgium

Our memories of Belgium, well I suppose, more exactly Flanders, are of a delightful place to cycle with well sign posted cycleways and friendly tourist offices. Obviously the quality of the beer and chocolate are other plus points. Belgian Railways too are bike friendly. You can put your bicycle on most trains and use most stations. The stations where changing with a bicycle is not possible are Brussels Central, Brussels Chapelle and Brussels Congres. Taking your bike with you costs 5 Euro per bicycle and trip and 9 Euro per tandem/bicycle with trailer and trip. There are similar day tickets for 8 and 16 Euro. You can buy a one trip ticket online or pick one up from a ticket office. You need to buy the day tickets from a station. You must load and unload your bicycle under the supervision of the train crew. If you can avoid travelling with a bike at peak times it makes life easier for all.

‘Cycle points’?
Cycle Points are a Belgian speciality and the result of cooperation between Belgian Railways and various social organisations. They are located in or around a railway station and offer a number of services: surveillance and maintenance of bike parks, bicycle rental to train passengers, commuters, students and tourists, corporate bicycle rental and minor repairs.

The first Cycle Points opened in the course of 2007, in the stations in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Courtrai, Bruges, Leuven and Mechelen.
Other stations in Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia are to follow.

Taking your bike on a train in France

French Railway services are divided into two groups: Grandes Lignes (main line) and TER (regional services). The two services work together and in practice there is no difference between the two groups. If you only wish to travel a short distance you can click on a link on the SNCF home page (www.voyages-sncf.com) that leads to a map of France to allow you select your region of interest. Not all but some of the main line services will take bicycles, including some of the high speed TGVs, whereas about 95% of all regional trains do. You can find out which mainline trains take bikes by clicking on conditions of service (in French) or check the SNCF bike site as well (in French). The English language conditions of service do not mention this. Probably no Frenchman expects les Rostbifs to know anything about cycling. If there is room in your train of choice you can pop your bike on the train and away you go. You can also reserve bike places on long distance trains beforehand. The local TER trains do not accept any form of reservation, but bicycle transport is free. One word of warning though, mainline trains do not take tandems. However we would recommend that when travelling on the TGVs that you reserve bike places. Not only are there but few, but also bikes block 4 additional seats that can be used by travellers without reserved tickets, of whom there can be quite a few. They are not likely to give up their seats unless you can wave your reservations under their nose.
It is suggested in various websites and downloads that one should use the German Railway website www.bahn.co.uk to find trains in France that offer places for bikes. The German Railways website offers a button “Transport of bicycle required” so you can filter out all the trains that do not transport bikes beforehand . However any database is only as good as the data put in it. Unfortunately www.bahn.co.uk only recognises that the TGVs running between Paris, Strasbourg and Munich can carry bikes. All the other TGVs are assumed not to carry bikes. In addition there is no mention at the time of writing that at least one extremely useful sleeping car train from Paris to Toulouse takes bicycles. We would suggest you use www.voyages-sncf.com for your preparations. Obviously this situation could change in future.
If these thoughts are not enough click on http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/CyclingInFrance to find Leo Woodland's guide to cycling in France with a good description of the perils and pleasures of taking le train with your velo.

Swiss Public Transport made easy for cyclists

Swiss public transport is the best in the world. It starts with travel information. There is only one website offering travel information for any means of surface transport: www.sbb.ch/en/index.htm. The keyword is integration. The system delivers public transport, but the individual components can be state, privately or regionally owned. It is very bicycle friendly.

By far the majority of trains take bicycles. The cost: a single adult fare up to 10 or 15CHF, above which you can buy a day ticket for the bicycle. Stations have ramps and lifts to help you get your bike up to the platform. Even quite small stations are manned. Ticket machines are multilingual: English, French, German and Italian.
Postbuses take bicycles, either inside, on hooks at the back of the bus or on a trailer. Bicycles cost 6CHF per bus trip in 2006. Theoretically you need to book a bicycle place on a bus the day before. In our experience, outside the high season this is not necessary. The drivers are helpful in securing bikes outside or on trailers. It is bad for their image to spray the countryside with bicycles.

There are various travel passes available: Swiss Pass, Swiss Card and regional tickets that offer you free or reduced price travel. However the only ticket that could be of interest to the cyclist is the Swiss Card that offers you free transport to your destination from the border crossing point and half price travel after that. If you intend to spend most of your time in the saddle then paying the full price is probably the best option. The Swiss Tourist Office has more information.

Minor idiosyncrasies and things we have learned, the hard way:

Because the easiest way to buy a ticket is to use a machine, make sure that you have enough small notes or coins. Although these machines also take Euro notes they only give change up to 20 CHF.
Out in the boondocks buses replace branch line trains often after 20:00. For some reason known only to the Fat Controller, these buses do not take bikes and do not always stop directly at the stations.

At some small stations, trains will not stop unless someone wants to get off or you push a button next to the ticket machine. Once on the train check whether you should push one of these buttons to tell the driver that you wish to alight. Be ready to dismount, standing by the door, once the train stops.

If disaster strikes and you need to make a complicated journey then check where you need to change trains before making the journey, otherwise you may end up wasting 55 minutes on a Swiss Bogsworthy Junction.

Getting on and off trains

You may well only have two minutes to get your party and the bikes on the train. Be prepared. There are marked areas on trains reserved for bicycles. The stations often have blue posters showing where to put your bikes on the train. These special compartments on the train are indicated by a bicycle logo on the window. On the double decker IR trains these are at one end only. Check the blue posters or ask station staff to find out where they are likely to be. Staff normally speak some English. Walking through the double decker trains clutching a bike is difficult especially up and down narrow stairs. There is no access on one level from carriage to carriage along the train. If you find you are in the wrong place it is quicker to run with your bike along the platform, rather than stuffing it anywhere and attempting to move once the train is in motion. It is likely you will need to hang your bikes from a hook.
Take luggage off the bicycles. Check you’ve got it all before the train leaves. Leaving the bar bag behind with your camera, and passport can quite spoil your day. If you have problems get one member of the party to lean on the open door button. The train cannot leave with a open door. There is often a button on automatic doors for disabled passengers which means the door stays open longer, use it!
If you travel on a train with a baggage car, the staff expect you to hang your bikes up yourself, though they will help you get them on the train.

Ships

Lake ships take bicycles. A crew member will show where to put your bike. It is a good idea to have a bungee with you to fasten the bicycle to the mainbrace or similar.

PS There is a lot more information about Swiss cycling in our new book:"Cycle Touring in Switzerland" ISBN: 9781852845261 from the Cicerone Press, Milnthorpe UK.

Bike, long distance touring for the use of

We get asked from time to time what the best bike is to cycle on long distance European trails like the Rhine or the Danube. "Shall I bring my road bike or my mountain bike?" We are of the opinion that a touring bike is better than either a road bike or a mountain bike, since it is easier to carry luggage and can cope with occasional gravel trails. Otherwise really which you choose depends on the kind of route you want to take. We're currently in the process of completing a book about cycling in Switzerland so we've seen a lot of Swiss cycle trails in the last 12 months and are currently at home in Germany having been defeated by 9 inches of late snow in the mountains above Lucerne! We have several meisterwerks in print in English, including one about the Rhine from Basel to Rotterdam, and there are plenty of cycle routes in the Netherlands between Nijmegen and Amsterdam. From Zürich Swiss national route 5 can be accessed just north of the city and links with Route 8 along the R. Aare to its confluence with the Rhine upstream of Basel. A more sporting route would be to swing west from Neuchatel onto Route 7 through the Jura to Basel. These routes link minor roads and are superbly well signposted, plus there are plenty of places to stay. They do use forest and farm trails where necessary, hence the point about touring bikes. If you decide to bring either of the other two then one point to bear in mind is that it is better to carry your gear on the bike rather than on your back and that it can rain in Europe in summer. We met two Canadians recently on road bikes who had had to hike along a rough trail plus puddles happen after rain so mudguards come in handy. People do cycle on major roads, apart from autobahns, we just don't care for the noise and the fumes. We've done our research on Dahon Speed TR folding bikes which coped with everything so far apart from the 9 inches of snow.