Adopt a Signpost!

We were cycling back from Ladenburg yesterday when I noticed that a signpost south of Heddesheim directing cyclists left towards Viernheim had disappeared. This is a problem because strangers to the area would cycle straight on into Heddesheim. There it is necessary to talk to the locals to find the way out of the town. Cycling left brings one on to a well signposted trail through the streets of Heddesheim. 

A missing or disfigured signpost can thus make life very difficult for cyclists. Signposts make good souvenirs for the study wall. I was very pleased to read that the Duchy of Lauenburg in Schleswig Holstein has a campaign to check the 850 signpost sites, clean signposts where necessary, repair or replace them. The signposts have been fitted with a serial number so that if a tourist rings up a tourist office staff will know where the questioner is and can give accurate directions. Staff will also know where defective signposts are to be found. Local cyclists and others can adopt a signpost keeping it clean, etc. It strikes us as an excellent idea. It has of course already been done by the Dutch. Local cycle clubs and shops adopt a number of the excellent knooppunt signs and check them a couple of times a year. 

It wouldn't do any harm for many of us to unofficially adopt a signpost or two and keep it clean and make sure it points in the right direction. It'll be more use than moaning anyway.

Baggage Transport in Rhineland Palatinate west of the Rhine along the Weinstraße (Wine Road)

Rhineland Palatinate is making serious efforts in tourism.  Various companies in the south of the province along the 200km or so Weinstraße (Wine Road) from Bockenheim north West of Worms to the French border at Wissembourg (Alsace) are offering services to cyclists and walkers that we feel are worth knowing about.
For example: Gepäckservice Pfalz (Palatinate Luggage Service) based in Deidesheim, offers both walkers and cyclists the chance to have their bags carried. We ourselves are not madly bothered as cyclists about having somebody carry our gear, but as the company states in its advertising:

• You can take more than two panniers of gear. (However on a bike we find we only need one Ortlieb pannier for a week or so, but are quite prepared to wash clothes and wear the same stuff every night when touring.)
• You can lock your bike up to go for a swim or an ice cream without having to lug your bikes with you or worrying that some rustler is going to steal the bags. You also don't have to find someone to look after your gear. 
• You can buy something along the route and have sent with you without having to carry it. Personally I am not too sure if this is a disadvantage, because not being able to carry the stuff means it is possible to avoid buying a case of wine at a vineyard.

It strikes me as well if you are going cycling for a week or so as part of a grand European tour, you may well have more gear. This service could be useful.
Gepäckservice Pfalz, Kirschgartenstraße 49, 67146 Deidesheim, Germany, http://www.gsp1.de/ (In German), info@gepaeckservice-pfalz.de, T: +49 (0) 6326 982284
Baggage Transport:
1-2 people/day  €20
3 people/day €27
4 people/day €36
Each extra person €2.50
The company also rents out touring bikes.

'nuff said! Tourist Offices recognise the importance of cycle touring.

A sentence or two I found in Huffington Post recently:

"Cities and states have long urged their residents to ride bicycles, as a healthy form of recreation and as a green alternative to driving. Now they’re recognizing pedal power’s economic potential.
Tourism officials and cycling advocates sometimes refer to tourists on bicycles as “wallets on wheels.”

"That’s because they stay longer in a state and spend more per day than other tourists."

I hope this is displayed in every tourist authority and planning office in the developed world.

Public holidays and weather in Europe

I have spent many a pleasant hour or so reading "Crazy Guy on a Bike" - a website run as a place where cyclists can recount their adventures and pick up advice where to stop, cycle, eat or find the best beer in town (http://www.crazyguyonabike.com). Recently I was looking for information on cycling in the Netherlands and North Germany. Various of the articles mentioned difficulties with finding accommodation, somewhere to eat, shopping and the weather. I suspect there a few steps to take and a few facts to realise before you swing your leg over your bike and set out for the European Continent.

• Accommodation: Check out accommodation before you go. Either use a search engine to find tourist office websites along your route, try to go to a tourism fair, check out our "Cycling in Europe entry" entitled "Cyclist- and bicyclist-friendly accommodation in Europe" or drop a line to the national tourist office of the country of interest. 
• On the web you may well need to wade through a number of hotel booking websites to find an official tourist office website, where you can also find B&Bs and or holiday flats. You can also try using Name of City.de or .dk or .fr,  etc. which will lead to the official sites. There are also regional tourist offices. Checking these sites will give you a feel for the average price of accommodation in the towns and villages on route. 
• If you are writing to the national tourist offices, once you get the addresses of the regional or city offices write to them. Normally you will be showered with information. Read it all. As an example, we found some years ago that the average price of hotels in a string of French towns could vary by up to 50%. This will also give you a feel for how much accommodation is available. This will help you save time when looking.
• Once you are underway, if you are not booking ahead, try to start looking for somewhere to stop at 16:00 (4 o'clock). You will rarely find anything at a reasonable price much later.

• Eating: If you find a place way out in the country that is super remember you might want to eat in the evening and if the house concerned is 5 or 10km from the near restaurant or inn, that's what you will need to cycle to get some food. It might be worth enquiring whether your landlady can prepare you an evening meal.

• Public Holidays: These are taken more seriously than in the UK. Shops and tourist offices will be closed on these days. Public transport will still run, but may be with a restricted service.  It is definitely not like the UK where shops are open on public holidays, so make sure you have enough supplies. Public holidays do not match those of your country.

• The weather: It can be as cold and wet in the Netherlands as it is in East Anglia, so take appropriate gear.  The wind is your constant companion in the Netherlands, Denmark and much of Northern Germany. If you are cycling in hilly country you are unlikely to climb more than a few thousand metres per day, i.e. hills come to an end sometime, however a continental head wind can last several days and can easily reduce your normal speed by 20 or 30%. The prevailing winds come from the west. Bear this in mind when you are route planning. Just as an example if you want to cycle along the Elbe then cycle upstream with the prevailing wind behind you, rather than cycling downstream. The major continental rivers have few gradients along much of their routes. 

Biking/Bicycling/Cycling in Berlin

We went to the CMT (Caravans, Motor, Tourism) Exhibition in Stuttgart last weekend. This is a major exhibition and runs for 9 days starting on a Saturday. Over the first weekend, one of the eight halls is reserved for outdoor holidays: Hill walking, mountaineering and all aspects of cycling. There are three halls packed full with stands offering information on more general tourism.  The other halls feature caravans, motor homes and tents. From what we could see the motor homes seem to be featuring more and more comforts of home such as lifts and underfloor heating (a slight exaggeration, but not much) with lorry sized extra springing and shock absorbers. We spent most of our time in the cyclist and walkers' hall, but did a have quick peer in one or two of the more general halls. Cycling is now a major selling point for holidays in Germany and by Germans. As an example, Thomas Cook AG, a very important player in the German travel industry is offering worldwide cycling holidays on the German market, but not for the British market. Just about all of the tourist regions in Germany and many western European tourist regions were represented. Up to a third of the information available was about cycling. More and more Austrian, German and Swiss holiday regions are offering tailor made cycle touring holidays with  hotel booking, luggage transfer and optional bicycle/e-bike hire which is ideal if holiday makers don't speak German and do not wish to fuss booking a number of hotels.

The Berlin tourism website has a section about cycle  touring in Berlin: fahrrad.visitberlin.de. It comes up in German, but click on the language list on the top right hand corner to find the English version. The website offers route information and information on thirty cyclist-friendly hotels and hostels which are tailored to meet cyclists' needs:

• Cyclists needing just one night's stay are welcome
• Secure overnight bike storage free of charge, but please check with the hotel for details!
• Room to dry out clothes and gear
• Breakfasts rich in vitamins and carbohydrates or the option for cooking facilities
• Regional cycling maps provided
• Information about guided city tours
• Bike repair kits for minor repairs & maintenance
• Directions to the nearest bike shop for major repairs
• Advice on booking environmentally-friendly return journeys by public transport

These resemble the ideas behind the ADFC Bett und Bike website and service, which has 46 places to lay your weary head from holiday flats, campsites, hostels to hotels throughout greater Berlin. There may be some overlap between the two lists.
All of the hotels and hostels on the Visit Berlin list have bikes for hire.
Cyclists can download suggestions for tours in Berlin from komoot.de and use an app available from Google Play Store or iPhone App Store on their smart phones to navigate.

Cyclist friendly accommodation in the Netherlands

We are beavering away trying to get our updated, revamped Rhine 2 Cyclists' guide from Basel to Hook of Holland finished. For various reasons it is unlikely that we will be able to cycle from the German-Dutch border by Emmerich to Hook of Holland to check the route this year, unless global warming means that November is very warm and lack of global warming means the month is gale free. What we have decided to do is to prepare the book by working out a route using the knooppunt system. Dutch cycling facilities are so good that we don't need to go there to check the route.
We still need accommodation lists and were pleased to find the Fietsers Welkom! website published by Fietsplatform (Dutch cycling platform). This is an  “umbrella-organisation” (public-private partnership, foundation)bringing together the Dutch tourist’ union ‘ANWB’, the Dutch cyclist’ union ‘Fietsersbond’, the Union for cycle-touring clubs ‘NTFU’ and the national organisation for the cycling industry in the Netherlands ‘RAI’. With the support of the national and regional authorities Fietsplatform tries to improve the facilities for recreational cycling/ cycle tourism in the Netherlands.
The Fietsers Welkom! website is very similar to the German Bett und Bike website published by the ADFC and the Luxembourg bed + bike website published by the LVI. Landlords agree to the following conditions:

• Open from May / September, at least five days a week from 11:00.
• Campsites set aside an area for cycle tourists.
• Hotels, B&Bs and campsites accept guests for one night.
• The hotels, B&Bs offer a locked bicycle garage.
• Simple tools and puncture repair outfits are available, as is obviously, a first aid kit.
• Cyclists can refill their water bottle for free.
• Bike maps are available for inspection and/or on sale.
• Batteries of electric bikes can be recharged for free.
• Wet clothing is no problem. The hotels,  etc. offer a dryer or drying rack.

On first inspection the Fietsers Welkom! website is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It offers a searchable map of the Netherlands with accommodation, knooppunt and the Dutch long distance cycle routes. It is in Dutch, but it is obvious how you use it, just go to 'Kaart'.

I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but the search engine could do with tightening up. It is possible to search an area by entering its name, but if the name of the place you are looking for, comes in the title of the accommodation or in the address, one is overwhelmed by a flood of several hundred addresses, most of which are false. Try looking for "Hoek van Holland", for example. One finds 860 addresses. Cut the search item back to "Hoek" and you still find 60 addresses. If I remember rightly "hoek" means "corner" in Dutch. In such cases you will need to look on the map and click on the hotel or campsite symbols. You can zoom in and out of the map. It would be a good if there was a scale on the map to estimate distances.

If you are touring in the Netherlands you can download an App from iTunes for €2.69 both for navigation and finding accommodation. I haven't tested this because we don't have an iPhone. 

Cycling is booming in Germany

We are neither of us keen shoppers. Maybe it's the Northern English folk memories of the Depression in the 1930s - before our time, but we knew plenty of people who had lived through this. It is difficult to say. However we go to our local shopping centre (mall), Rhein-Neckar-Zentrum most weeks to visit Aldi and Bauhaus, a DIY store. The Zentrum does attempt to draw visitors in by having special exhibitions from time to time. Yesterday we visited an exhibition of the tourist attractions of the city of Schwerin, capital of the federal province of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. One of the principle pillars of this campaign is cycling. The tourist information package for the city comes with a cycle touring map giving suggestions for four cycle tours between 30 and 75 kilometre long and details of a bus service that will carry the tourists' bikes when they do not feel like cycling on.
It would appear in the economic crisis more and more Germans are turning to cycling for holiday and leisure activities. The bicycle touring business is booming. In 2009 in Germany alone cycle tourists generated 22 million overnight stays and spent around 3.87 billion (thousand million) Euros (Deutschen Tourismusverband DTV). The ADFC (German Cycling Club) has noticed that cycle tourism is bucking a declining trend for holiday making in the popular cycling regions and on long distance cycle routes. As an example, hotels on the Ruhr Valley Cycle Route showed a growth in bookings of 13% in 2009 whereas hotel bookings declined in the rest of the Ruhr by 2.5% in the same period. Biking is popular for group, bus, and club excursions, as well as for business and club events. This interest is being matched by the willingness of the local authorities to invest in cycle ways and information. (The top photograph shows a group of tourists relaxing in the town square of Feuchtwangen during on of the celebrations to mark 60 years of the Romantic Road. The lower photograph shows a new information table on the Danube Valley Cycle Way. )
This trend has not gone unnoticed by the organisers of the 36th International Coach Tourism Federation Workshop in Cologne from 27th to 29th July 2010. Its major theme is Cycle Touring. Exhibitors include bus operators, regional tourist authorities and the ADFC.