Wake your Karl Drais! How would he crack the problem of motorised traffic clogging city streets?

Karl Drais was the inventor of the the two-wheeled velocipede, also called Draisine or hobby horse. He was a lateral thinker always looking for ways to solve problems rather than just a mechanical tinkerer. In addition to the hobby horse he invented a device to record piano music on paper and a 16 character typewriter for use in court. As we have written before, next June will mark 200 years since he first had a hobby horse built and set off out in to the countryside near Mannheim on the best local road for a quick pint. 

Obviously the Mannheim city fathers have not ignored this anniversary, neither has the Mannheim Technoseum, the Province of Baden Württemberg's technical museum. The former are busy organising bicycle festivals and events. (Check our blog dated 25 March 2016). The latter has a major exhibition on the bike running until June next year. 

The museum has set up a quiz for school children based on the concept that the motor car is leading to collapse of mobility in cities. The question is: "What would Karl Drais invent now to stave off the death of mobility in urban areas." Participants are invited to suggest a traffic concept, an ultramodern, energy efficient vehicle or a plan for an especially cyclist-friendly city. Entries by 2 May 2017. 

I am not sure that this competition is asking the right questions. Any traffic concept would need to cut the number of motor vehicles in Mannheim whether:

• it's banning any vehicle bigger than, say a Smart car,
• a congestion charge system similar to London's, 
• banning all cars from the city centre  
• or building more protected cycleways, squeezing motor cars off the street. 

All of these are politically impossible until we get to the happy state where there are more cyclists than motorists, even then…

However, there is an energy efficient vehicle available right now. 

• It is called a bicycle or a tricycle. 
• It improves public health. 
• It is non polluting unless the engine has been eating garlicky food. 
• Its use leads to a traffic density that is higher than with the motor car. 
• It is safer. 
• Collisions between cyclists lead to fewer deaths. 


• One major disadvantage is that the cyclist is exposed to the weather. Maybe Karl Drais, a lateral thinker would be designing better waterproof but breathable clothing or an improved front fairing for a recumbent trike (See under accessories).

One way to cheaply improve the cyclist's lot in the Rhein-Neckar three province multi city metropolitan area is to link cycleways, such as they are, and quiet roads with a knooppunt or Knotenpunkt system (bicycle nodes). This system, invented by a German mining engineer, is to be found in Belgium in Flanders, the Netherlands and Germany in some areas of North Rhine Westphalia: Aachen, Bonn, Cologne, Düren, Heinsberg, Leverkusen, Mönchengladbach, Neuss and Viersen.

Knooppunt sign combined with traditional signposts in Hook of Holland

A visit to AVD, builder of the Windcheetah recumbent tricycle

As we reported earlier this year we visited SPEZI, the annual special bicycle exhibtion in Germersheim on Rhine - see our blog dated  26 April 2016. We chatted to a number of exhibitors and had a long conversation with Karl Sparenberg who runs Advanced Vehicle Design Ltd. (AVD). Towards the end of our discussion I asked him where he was based. He replied that I would not know the village where his workshop is based. "It's in Abbey Village." We could honestly reply that we had been through the village a number of times on our way north from Bolton, my home town which lies 10 miles away. We said that when we were in Bolton we would try to visit the workshop. In October we rang Karl and made an appointment for us both and two friends to have a look at the production workshop.
The workshop is in a former small cotton mill to the west of the main street of Abbey Village. If you wish to visit the workshop, take a mobile phone with you when you go so you can ring Karl when you arrive. The mill is used by a number of small companies as workshops and storerooms. When we were there, there was no bell and we had some difficulty making ourselves known, because we, of course, didn't have a mobile phone with us. Matters were not helped by an early autumn rain shower,
We then enjoyed a fascinating hour's discussion about castings, carbon fibre tubes, quality control and giving road men and women on on expensive bikes a surprise by passing them on hills and pulling away on a trike. We were impressed by the care the company takes both to ensure that the customer buys the correct trike for their needs and that the trikes are built to high standards. The trike frames are constructed by bonding together cast and turned connection components and tubing, either aluminium and or carbon fibre. If the last connecting piece in spite of quality control checks is shown to be faulty then the frame is junked and a new one built.
The traditional sandcasting method proved difficult to control. This frequently led to manufacturing faults in the castings. AVD moved onto the modern investment cast method with the use of wax formers which means that the frame components can be manufactured from both aluminium or magnesium depending on Windcheetah model. We suspect that three-D printing of components is on the horizon.
We would just like to stress that none of us has a financial interest in AVD nor were we offered payment to write this blog. It is unlikely that we will buy a trike either from AVD or one of the other manufacturers, worldwide. Our interest is and was in the manufacture of tricycles and bicycles. To us Karl’s ideas and skills seem to represent the best of ‘the Northern Powerhouse’ ideals, quietly working away to produce perhaps small but useful engineering marvels.

Drais Hobby Horse Races

There will be a Karl Drais Hobby Horse race around the Wasserturm in Mannheim, Germany on 11 June 2017 as part of the celebration for the 200th anniversary of the first two wheeled vehicle excursion in 1817. There will also be klapprad races on 11 June and the HPV World Championship races will be held over the weekend of 10 and 11 June.
If you wish to enter the hobby horse races contact: axel.bentz@mannheim.de. Check out: www.monnem-bike.de, www.world-Klapp.de, or www.hpv.org for more details.

Piste Cyclable / Radweg / Cycleway along the River Moselle in France November 2016

• Schengen (L)/Perl (D)/Apach (F) to Thionville: Well established well signposted route.
• Thionville to Metz: Fairly new excellent well signposted route with a link into the city centre of Metz.
• Metz to Pagny-sur-Moselle: Continuation of above route. Follow the bike signs for Woippy from cathedral square and turn off right before the canal bridge to follow the right bank. The route changes from bank to bank but is well signposted as far as Arnaville. The route follows towpaths, forest tracks and minor roads. Once you cross the departmental border into Meurthe-et-Moselle signposting and the smooth tarred path disappears. You can follow a rougher route south to Pagny-sur-Moselle where you can cross the railway lines at a level or grade crossing by pushing the button to warn the signal box of your intention or continue on along a stretch of single track path to reach the new Moselle lock and Pagny-sur-Moselle. It can take a few minutes for the rail track to be clear.
• South of Pagny-sur-Moselle: I suspect from reading the literature (http://veloroute-charles-le-temeraire.fr/etapes-veloroute-charles-le-temeraire.php) on this route that unless you are an experienced road cyclist that you would be well advised to catch a train in Pagny-sur-Moselle to Nancy. The Charles le Téméraire Cycle Route follows the D952/657 to Frouard and we did not enjoy the route as far as Pont-a-Mousson. Even on e-bikes the traffic was hairy.

We researched the route between Metz to Pagny-sur-Moselle as part of the updating of our Riesling Route guide. As the winter weather gets more unpleasant we will retire to our office to update and rewrite the book. Keep your fingers crossed.

Two hundred years of the bicycle

The first trip on two wheeled vehicle was made almost 200 years ago on 12 June 2017 by Karl Drais from the centre of Mannheim out to a pub on the road to Schwetzingen and back. The city is going to celebrate this over the next eight months. The first stage starts tomorrow with an exhibition on the history of the bicycle in the Technoseum, the provincial museum of science and technology. It runs until June next year.

Buying tickets for TER trains in Lorraine

We spent the beginning of November checking out cycle routes in the Moselle Valley in Lorraine. Rather than touring from city to city we stopped two nights in Nancy and took a train to Metz. The regional TER trains are operated by SNCF French national railways. As is usual in Europe there are two types of ticket machines on Nancy station: blue ones offering just regional TER tickets and bright yellow ones offering tickets for the whole French railways network, including the high speed TGVs. These machines speak only French, so brushez up votre Français. We found none of the ticket machines on Nancy station would accept either our German credit card or bank card. The machines do not accept notes either. We are not used to this as modern public transport ticket dispensers in Germany accept notes. We needed 14.60 € in coins which we did not have. (If I am cycling I try to carry the smallest number of coins possible to keep down the weight in my pockets.) In the end I joined a queue in the ticket office and managed to buy tickets before our train came in. We spent the day buying items separately to accumulate change. Fortunately smaller stations in France have staffed ticket offices and are often not that busy. We cycled from Metz to Pagny sur Moselle and bought tickets from a person in a ticket office.
There is another problem in buying tickets in general in la belle France. The French do not pronounce  names the way we do. It is useful when buying tickets from a ticket office to write out the name of the station you wish to reach to show the staff on the other side of the counter, because it is unlikely that they will understand your pronounciation. 
If you are buying tickets from a machine then remember that the machines although basically computers are very exact but dumb. Sensibly the TER ticket machines offer a list of major destinations in the region. If you want to travel to a small village you need to key in the first letter of the first name not the first letter of the second name in the case of a station with a double barreled name. We wanted to go  to a village called Avricourt. Its station lies between Avricourt and Igney and so the station is called Igney-Avricourt. It took a while for us to find it. Vive la France!

Accompanied bicycles on TER trains in France

We went by train today with our touring bikes from Wissembourg, Alsace to Nancy, Lorraine via Strasbourg. What we learned was

• If you use Voyage-SNCF.com or trainline EU to book your tickets for train trips in France and you use the option to pick the tickets up at a French station, be prepared to wait in a queue if you don't use a ticket dispenser to get your tickets. The larger stations have long queues to buy tickets.  Even some of the smaller stations with staff can be difficult. The Gare de Wissembourg employs bilingual French and German speaking staff. It is used quite extensively by Germans from the South West to book complicated journeys in France and this can take time, as I found today.
• You can get all your tickets at once not only for the station you are at. Once you've got your ticket/s do not forget to "composter" -stamp- your tickets in the yellow pod devices by the entrance to the platforms, before you get on your train. Otherwise the ticket collector can fine you  40 or so Euro for an "un-composted" ticket. 
• It is a good idea to take a bungee or two to secure your bike/s, because some of the older TER coaching stock bounces around the curves. You can hang your steed up, but this appears not to be de rigeur on the older trains. If you are going to hang up your bike then do when the train in standing still, don't wait for it to move. It starts jumping about like a bucking bronco.

Edinburgh Waverley Station Bike Facilities - Watch out Copenhagen

We are both British but have lived abroad for 30 and 40 years. We have not travelled with a bicycle on a British train since privatisation. From what we read the railways in Britain do not appear to be very cyclist friendly. We read stories of British long-distance trains that take a maximum of two bicycles, so if a family of four want to take their bicycles on holiday, they need to travel on two separate trains. However we were pleasantly surprised recently on Edinburgh's Waverley Station. We wanted to take the recently reopened Borders Railway to Tweedbank. As we waited for the train I noticed a pillar on the platform. On closer inspection I noticed a number of tools, a bicycle pump and a rack to hang a bike from to ease working on it. Network Rail, the public organisation responsible for stations and track paid for this. This platform seems to offer better facililties than any Danish, Dutch or Swiss railway station we have visited.

However the warning that one should lock both front and back wheels does not bode well for bike security.

New Deutsche Bahn High Speed Trains

Amazing! Deutsche Bahn German Railways has fought against putting bicycles on ICEs, their high speed flagship trains since they were first introduced more than 20 years ago.  The fat controllers have changed their minds in a big way. The latest class, the ICE4, will take at least 8 bikes, probably in summer. It is a miracle. I hope that we can use them when the trains come into service in late 2017.

Bicycle expressways in and around Heidelberg, Ludwigshafen and Mannheim

The German Fedral Government plans to invest in new cycle freeways. These will be designed to take bicycles and e-bikes with a maximum speed of about 19mph, which means no pedestrians crossing the road, no junctions and lighting when dark. These routes are not designed for day rambles out into the country, but for commuters. The Mannheim region is planning to apply for financing for several routes:

East West: Heidelberg Mannheim Ludwigshafen and farther west in to Rhineland Palatinate.
A vaguely North South route from Mannheim to Darmstadt.
A southern route towards Karlsruhe.

I am a little dubious about the design speeds. It does not sound like much fun to ride for the slow moving like Judith and I. I just just hope I can see them before I have to hand in my bicycle clips for ever.

Kalmit Klapprad 2016

We went to the annual Kalmit Klapprad meeting for the first time in 5 years on September 3rd. Quite why we've missed it in between we don't know. For those that don't read this blog the Kalmit Cup is a Klapprad bicycle race up hill to Kalmit hill (400m climb over 6km) from Maikammer a village on the edge of the Rhine Plain in the south of Rhineland Palatinate. A klapprad is a pre Brompton folding bike, maybe sitting dusty and unloved at the back of the garage. We travelled there by train with our Bromptons (5 and 10 gear models) and followed two race participants on single gear Klapprads from the railway station to climb about 100m to reach the starting line. They disappeared up the road as if I was standing still and I was half dead by the time I reached the line.
It is a serious race. The winner (male) took just over 19 minutes to reach the top. The fastest signora took somewhat over 24 minutes. However there are also prizes for the best costumes. The theme this year was Italy, so we spectators were treated to a cycling leaning Tower of Pisa, Roman Centurians, pizza delivery vans, Chianti bottles, ice cream cones and, of course, the Mafia. All good fun. This year the requirement that the riders have a mustache was dropped, but registration was only possible if the rider could give their start number in Italian!

Anyone for pizza?

Pizza trike followed by 2 gondolas

"Ben Hur" meets ""Death in Venice"

Bellisimo! The essence of Italy, the flag, the Romans, Pisa, Chianti, the Mafia

Packing for touring

We have just spent a few days touring along the Kocher-Jagst Cycle Route on the edge of the Swabian Alb and saw a modest number of other touring cyclists. What struck us was the amount of baggage carried by some groups with in some cases trailers. If you are camping then you do need a lage amount of gear, but over the years we have gradually reduced the amount of stuff we take with us to one set of evening gear, a spare set of cycling gear, not forgetting waterproofs, maps, guides, water bottles/s, something to read in the evening, a first aid kit and enough tools to repair a puncture as well as a spare inner tube all packed in waterproof bags - think Ortlieb. That's about it. That's all you need.
Don't forget though that if your bags are so tightly are so tightly packed that there is no room for anything like a lunchtime snack this could lead to problems. If you leave home in wet weather it is possible to forget that you will need somewhere to pack your wet weather gear when the sun shines. It is easy to do. I have done it and ended up buying a new rack pack on the next day to take my jacket and overtrousers.

Finding a room when touring in Germany

A few thoughts on the matter:
Firstly when planning your route either aim to book rooms or if you are travelling without booking then make sure that you are going to stop overnight in communities that have more than one organisation offering accommodation. This might mean that you have the odd shorter day, but this is better than spending the night in a bus shelter or having to cycle on or back for another 10 or 15km after a 100km day.
Secondly if you are using the compromise system whereby you book a hotel by phone at lunchtime, it is worthwhile checking how the accommodation looks on its website. If you don't, you could well have a surprise when you arrive.
Thirdly do not forget that you need to eat in the evening. If the accommodation lies a few kilometres from the next community and does not offer evening meals, you might well have a long walk or ride to get your evening meal.
Fourthly we have started to use booking websites, because one can book online, but be observant, these sites run on the assumption that one is travelling by car so a distance of 20km can be assumed to be nearby. The sites often only list a part of the accommodation available, so it is worth looking at other booking sites or even the hotel website itself as more and more are offering online bookings.

Bicycles in the Stoewer Museum in Wald-Michaelbach

Stoewer was a small motor manufacturer in Stettin (now Szczecin in Western Poland). The company is best known for its technically advanced cars. However it also built sewing machines, typewriters and bicycles. Examples of all these can be seen in the Stoewer-Museum, Michelstraße 1, Wald-Michelbach, Hesse, Germany. The museum is only open between 2 and 5 pm on the first Sunday of each month. Wald-Michelbach can be easily reached by car or by bus from Weinheim, Bergstraße. More information is available under www.stoewer-museum.de .

Questions to ask a bike hire company

If you are planning to hire a bike or an e-bike for a touring holiday then it is worthwhile checking the following points:

• Saddle:  
  • Can you take your own saddle with you and fit it before you leave? 
  • Can you leave the hire company's saddle with the hire company?
• Pedals:
  • If you normally cycle in clip pedals then check whether you can take your own with you and fit them before you leave? This is not as silly as it looks. A friend of ours hired a bike in Ireland some years ago and was surprised to see on arrival that the hire bike had the curved steel rod cranks often fitted to children's bicycles.
• Bags: 
  • Does your favoured bike have a rack? Try and avoid carrying a heavy rucksack on your back.
  • Will it take your brand of panniers?
  • Do you need a pannier? You can always buy bungees or straps to attach a small bag to the rack.
  • Can you attach a bar bag to the handlebars? This is often not possible with e-bikes.
• Locks:
  • Does the hire company offer locks free of charge?
    
  • Are they just the rear wheel frame locks beloved of cycling midwives, as seen on TV?
    
  • Can you hire a better lock so that you can attach the bike/s to a fixed object?
    
• Mudguards/Fenders:
  
  • It does rain in summer in much of Western Europe in spite of the brightly coloured photographs in the tourist office brochures. I realise that bikes with mudguards/fenders don't look as cool as those without, but muddy legs don't look cool either.. Obviously this does not apply if you are going mountain biking and are used to showering with your bike and your clothes after a day out in the hills.
• Helmet:
  
  • Helmet wearing in Europe is not compulsory. In fact in countries with heavy use of bicycles as a means of transport, e.g. Denmark, the Netherlands, it is unusual apart from keenie-beanie road men and women. If you wear a helmet when touring in these countries you run the risk of being thought a German. Some hire companies throw bike helmets in with the deal others charge you a Euro or so a day to hire.
• Punctures:
  
  • It is worth enquiring what to do in case of a puncture? Does the hire company supply a tool kit, a pump and a puncture repair outfit? Bigger supermarkets will sell cheap spanners and puncture repair kits.
• Spare batteries for e-bikes:
  
  • Hire e-bikes see some kilometres in a season, so it is worthwhile trying to pin the hire bike companies down to find out what the typical range of their batteries is to decide whether to hire a spare battery. A spare battery weighs more than a kilogram.

• Water Bottle
• Does the hire bike come with a bottle or a holder? 
• If it's just a holder would your bottle fit in it? 
• Does your pannier and/or rackpack take a bottle?
  

English is a simple language, nicht wahr?

Our local paper the German language "Mannheimer Morgen" has problems with the English language. Homophones like "boarder" for "border" are very common. However the editorial team has excelled itself in an article about the new waste heat and electricity plant in the Plymouth Royal Dockyard - designed and run by the MVV, the Mannheim utility, opened by Prince Charles this week, when it described the plant as being in the "Royal Duckyard". 

Cycling in Latvia

An area that has not been explored by cyclists much, as yet, is the Baltic Coast and we came across a website offering information and a map of cycle routes in Latvia. One can buy printed maps but also download a pdf file. Latvia is crossed by the Iron Curtain Trail.

http:www.vidzeme.com/en/cycling/cycling-maps-and-brochures

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.

Bike Hire in Wismar

The following companies offer bike hire in Wismar:


Buddha Bike´s
Owner: Martina Fritz
Dankwartstraße 49
23966 Wismar

E-Mail: info@buddha-bikes.de >>>

Telephone: +49 (0) 3841 – 4 73 62 02
www.buddha-bikes.de



Fahrrad Wulf
ABC-Straße 13
23966 Wismar
T:+49 (0) 3841 282787
Fax: +49 (0) 3841 213448
E-Mail: info@fahrradwulf.de

www.fahrradwulf.de

Both websites are in German. The word for Bike Hire is Fahrradverleih.

How you celebrate the invention of the bicycle?

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Mannheim will celebrate 200 years of cycling next year. One of the suggestions made to celebrate this is that downtown Mannheim should be car free for the weekend of 11 and 12 June. This idea was suggested by the Green Party and is backed by the SPD, the German centre-left party. The reaction of the local shopkeepers could be summed up in the phrase, "Are you off your trolley?". The centre-right CDU suggested a car free Sunday. The Greens want a car free weekend and the shopkeepers pointed out with some force that 60 or so % of their turnover for the week is on Saturdays. Eighty % of the customers come from the Umland, from the region. Most of these come by car. Some shop keepers have responded by threatening to close their shops on the Saturday. One suggestion is that the roads leading to the multistorey carparks should be kept open, which does not find favour with the Greens. I personally am not that worried about a car free day, especially as trams and buses would be running normally. I do wonder what all the fuss is about. I don't think a car free day will encourage people to cycle thirty or so km into Mannheim.

Cycling the Camino's Aragon Route

We have recently walked the Aragon Route of the Way of St James: Somport Pass - Jaca - Sangüesa - Puente la Reina. I had been asked by a friend for information on the possibilities of following the trail on a mountain bike, so we kept our eyes open. 

The Aragon arm of the Camino is not the main route. It is much quieter. We saw ten other pilgrims/walkers and four cyclists in the ten days we were walking the Aragon Route. We joined the main trail for a few km on our last day. We saw about 40 pilgrims and 2 cyclists in the hour we walked down into Puenta la Reina. I suspect the Aragon Route is a lot wilder and more mountainous than the main trail. There is little information about cycling available from Tourist Offices. I enquired whenever I had chance. 

The “Camino de Santiago en bicicleta” is a club dedicated to cycling the Camino. Most of its info is in Spanish, including maps. People do cycle the route. There is a guide in Spanish available from the “Camino de Santiago en bicicleta”. The Kompass 1:100 000 walkers’ map struck us as being useless for cyclists from what we could see. 

Bicycles in German TV Police Thrillers

Judith and I are great fans of "Tatort" (Crime Scene) fresh episodes of which are shown on German TV three Sunday evenings out of four. The programme features a police team from a number of different German cities and regions. One of the most popular features a Kommissar (Inspector) and a pathologist in Münster, the cycling capitol of Germany. The inspector cycles a lot in the city centre. What I find unbelievable is that he arrives at a crime scene or a block of flats, he leaps off his bike, throws it to one side and runs into the building, leaving the bike unlocked. His bike is almost always never stolen! In one of the earlier episodes he lost his new MTB and there was a running gag of the inspector seeing his bike and running off to retrieve the bike. With this experience he still leaves his bike unlocked. Weird!

Spezi Germersheim 2016 Initial Impressions

Our first feeling was that there were too many people attending the 21st Spezi Special Bikes Show in Germersheim this year. It was very difficult to take photographs in the halls. It could have had something to do with the weather. It was brass monkey weather and wet with it, at least on Saturday, so the outdoor exhibitors definitely had to stamp their feet to keep them warm. We spent some time wandering around the three halls but I have never run round the outdoor stands as quickly.

My second feeling was why  the Germersheim Stadthalle administration cannot organise fitting fresh roller towels in the male WCs. There are four machines but in my experience over the years only one will have a wet wrinkled tail of towel hanging from it.

SPEZI is the world's largest show for recumbents, recumbent tricycles, quadracycles, folding cycles, tandems, family cycles, velomobiles, transporters, electrical bikes, special needs bikes, adult kick scooters, child and load trailers, customised designs and accessories. Our feeling was that it is still a show for the type of bike or trike that causes onlookers to ask questions. The show has got a bit slicker over the years, but it is still down to earth and you can easily spend half an hour or so chatting to chief engineer of a bike or trike company. There aren't many salesmen or -women in suits knowing little about the products only how to sell on the stands. My feeling is that we visitors are all trike/folder/cargo bike fans/freaks/nerds together with family and friends looking at vehicles for disabled or vertically challenged members or mates. The market for disabled folk plays a major role. I was surprised but I read today that Transport for London has found that around 15% of disabled people in London actively cycled for transport in 2014, compared to 18% of non-disabled people.The other trend I felt was important was city centre logistics and transport for craftsmen using cargo bikes and e-bikes. There were even four British bike or trike manufacturers represented.

Over the next few days we will write about the exhibition, but here is a photograph of the Schwalbe stand. I wanted to ask whether one could buy a 16" JUMBO JIM tyre (on the right below) for a Brompton but my nerve failed me at the last minute.

Henty Wingman

If you need to take a suit to work and you want run or ride there by bike or motorbike to arrive at work with a suit that looks presed and not like you have slept in it, then check out the Wingman from Henty: http://henty.cc/. It's a suit bag that wraps round an inner bag which you can wear as messenger bag or strap it on the bike. I have not seen the gear and the nearest stockist is in Frankfurt. Anyway I am a pensioner and have stopped going to work. From the YouTube film I've seen it looks well made and is an excellent idea, albeit very speciaised for a limited range of uses. It will take the stuff for the office like the suit, shirt, tie, shoes and socks. It will take a tablet. If you want to use anything else, like a laptop I think you will need to buy the Wingman Backpack which resembles a tubular rucsac.  

Do you need an excuse to avoid the London Marathon?

In case you wish avoid taking part in or watching the London Marathon on 24 April 2016, then consider going to the Special Bike Show in Germersheim, Germany on 23 and 24 April 2016. More interesting I suspect as well and the beer is cheaper. See you there.

A Brompton saves the day

German public television offers a fictional police procedural programme on one or other of the channels every evening. Last night (8 April 2016) we watched the latest episode of "Der Alte" on ZDF about a murder squad in Munich. The main suspect was visited by two detectives primarily to unsettle her and to what see she did next. Outside another detective waited in a large BMW to follow the suspect when the other two left. They left. Suspect comes downstairs. She climbs on a fashionable training bike, one of those mudguardless fixies and flashes off. The detective realising he cannot follow her by car, opens the boot, produces a Brompton, which he unfolds rapidly in a professional manner and nips off to follow her to the flat of a witness. The suspect intended to silence the witness for good, but the Brompton riding detective was able to arrest her and the case was almost solved.
I wonder if a Brompton is standard issue in all of the big BMWs driven by the Munich Police on TV? Will we see more of our beloved bicycles in future? The series has just come to an end at the moment, so we will have to wait a few months to see.

E-bikes for the over 60s

As we wrote recently, we borrowed two e-bikes over the Easter weekend to take part in a course for whiteheads in Mannheim organised by the Police at the Jugendverkehrsschule (Road Safety Centre for Children). We spent the Easter weekend cycling with electrical assistance around the neighbourhood. On Tuesday afternoon nine e-bikers met and listened to a policeman who himself has no car and uses an e-bike for transport on:

• legal aspects of e-bikes in Germany, 
• e.g. maximum allowed speed, 
• pedal assisted rather than electrically propelled
• no need for a licence plate or insurance placard 
• helmet not proscribed but very highly recommended
• motor position
• Most useful of all for us was the statement that if one hires an e-bike as one leaves the hire station one should securely mount the bottom on the saddle and both feet on the pedals before starting pedalling to keep control of the bike. It is difficult to keep control of the bike standing up with one foot on a pedal.
• discussion on helmets and the Swedish head airbag system.

The police officers then checked the positioning of our helmets on our heads -

• one finger between eyebrow and front of helmet
• the down straps should be vertical
• maximum two fingers space between chinstrap and neck. 

We went out to the test track where he cast an eye over the various bikes. The Road Safety Centre has a model road layout with roundabout and we were soon pedalling round the track weaving our way through slaloms, cycling tighter and tighter circles and braking to order. This went on for three quarters of an hour before we retired to the classroom again to drink a cup of coffee and do the written road safety test normally done by school children. We passed the test.
We then got on our bikes for a half hour ride round very quiet suburban roads with a policeman front and back.
We can recommend this type course highly especially if one has not cycled for some years. If your local or regional police do not offer this course then check out your local bike shop or the local cycling club to encourage them to organise this type of course.

Changing trains in Augsburg Station and enjoying the odd snack

Augsburg Hauptbahnhof - Central Railway, or if you insist, Train Station has long been a bête noire where we were concerned. It is one of the few major German railway stations without lifts/elevators and so if you are going to change trains here give yourselves plenty of time. You need to walk and carry your plus baggage down a steep flight of steps to the tunnel running under the lines and then up another steep flight to get to the platform you need. If you cycle to Füssen along the Romantic Road, for example and wish to take local trains back to the main lines then Augsburg is one place you can change to a long-distance train. The good news is that lifts/elevators should arrive in 2021 or 2022. Until then it is probably better to travel via Munich.
This is a pity because you will miss a snack bar called URBAN Fu:D in the Augsburg Hauptbahnhof which offers an excellent range of freshly made snacks, muffins, coffee, tea, etc. It is opposite the bookshop in the entrance area of the station.

First impressions of an e-bike

We are on reasonable terms with the owner of our local bike bike shop. He has invested heavily in quality e-bikes - Flyer, Kalkhoff and Reise und Müller, to name just a few. He has three or four slightly older Flyers that would-be customers can borrow. The police road safety department in Mannheim our nearest big, well biggish, city offers short e-bike training courses for seniors. We signed up for one and have borrowed two of the Flyers from the bike shop for the course, which is on the Tuesday after Easter. The shop was closed from Good Friday until Easter Monday. We picked the bikes up on Thursday along with a pair of spare batteries. The batteries were old and somewhat ropey with a range of about 40 or so km using a mixture of standard and eco settings. We had a few days to acquaint ourselves with the bikes.

The bikes are eminently sensible hardtail city bikes with adequate baggage racks, hub gears, step over frames and an upright cycling position. They are a wolf in a sheep's clothing. They look like and are as practical as a grannie bike, however once underway one reaches 25kph very quickly even using the eco setting. The bikes are great. Continuous speeds of 20 or even 25 kph are possible against a head wind that would have us travelling at half this speed on a solely human-powered bike. They are eminently suitable for longer local trips.

Will we buy two? Not at the moment.  We have developed a mobility concept that fits our lifestyle well. We walk or cycle within Viernheim, mainly on our Brompton folding bikes or use the local bus. We both have pensioners' travel cards that give us free travel over a wide area once we have purchased them. They cost about €400 annually. For day walks we use our pensioners' travel cards to give us cheap travel into the Odenwald or the Palatinate Forest. Once in the hills the provision of local bus and trains there is good enough to allow us enough flexibility to enjoy linear walks. For multi-day bicycle tours we can use our touring bikes or even our Bromptons.  We do use the car occasionally to travel to places that cannot be reached easily by train or bus, e.g. Dinkelsbühl to talk to the Romantic Road Tourist Authority and for our annual trip to Britain.

We see at least two major problems:

• The bikes are heavy to push or carry on to trains.
• Where would we store them? At the moment our normal bikes are stored in the cellar and I can  just about manage to stagger up and downstairs with them, but Judith finds it just about impossible. We would like to install a bike garage at the front of the house, but we need planning permission for this.   

At the same time I think we will hire e-bikes when they make sense. If we were to write another cycle touring guide an e-bike would be a godsend.

• If Cicerone, the best known British outdoor guide publishers ever asked us to update our Swiss Guide we would only take on the work if we could hire e-bikes.  It is eight or nine years since we wrote the last guides and neither Judith's or my pins have got stronger in this time.
• As we wrote recently the Romantic Road has been extended to include Wertheim and we should investigate the route between Würzburg and Wertheim once the signposting has been redone. In which case I would be tempted to take local train to Würzburg from Mannheim and hire e-bikes there for day.

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.

Ways of encouraging cycling to work

We are thinking of building a bicycle box for the front of the house and came across the Velo-Boxx which is manufactured in Belgium. It would appear that Belgian tax laws are very cyclist friendly:

Pursuant to article 64 (b) of the Belgian Income Tax Code (WIB of 1992; assessment year 2010), the Velo-Boxx is a 120% deductible expenditure;
ｰ all costs incurred or borne that relate specifically to encouraging employees to cycle to and from work to the extent that any such costs have been incurred or borne in order to:
- Acquire real estate, to build or renovate a facility for parking cycles during the
working hours of the employees; or
- Provide sanitary conveniences or changing rooms, with showers as appropriate.

An excellent idea.

A hotel porter for cyclists or where can I hang my panniers?

We as sensible cyclists use Ortlieb panniers. They are very waterproof and fit on most bikes easily, but when they are half empty they are floppy and look untidy. You often need to scrabble about on the floor to pack them. This is true for most panniers using lorry/truck covering sheets. The owner of the Hotel Neuhaus in Neuhaus near Cuxhafen on the Elbe Cycle Way* noticed this and fitted hooks to take panniers on the walls or radiators of his rooms.
On a bike underway panniers are utilitarian and you can forget about them. However if you need to carry your panniers up to your room using the loops on top of the bags you shortly notice that the blood circulation in your fingers is seriously restricted. It is not pleasant. The owner of said Hotel Neuhaus has developed a trolley on which you hang your panniers to transport your bags from the bike storage area to your room. He is investigating patenting the device. The hotel sounds like a good place to visit. The owner also offers baggage transfer for groups. The hotel's website is www.hotel-neuhaus-oste.de. The big snag it's in German, so use Google Translator.
*BTW it is better to cycle up the Elbe rather than downstream as the prevailing wind is from the west.

Bicycle and e-bike hire in the upper Rhine Valley (Southern Rhineland Palatinate, North Baden) in Germany

Bellorange Fahrradverleih offers a range of hire bicycles in the South of Rhineland Palatinate and North Baden (Black Forest) for both short and long periods. The website is in German, but you can check the location of the bike stations, look at prices "Preise" on the website or ring the company on +49 6323 957 423 1,  where you can chat in English. Bikes can be picked up in:

• Edenkoben.
• Bad Bergzabern.
• Wörth.
• Speyer.
• Bad Dürkheim.
• Bad Wildbad.
• Enzklösterle.

Bikes can be returned to other locations. Many hotels in the area offer this company's bikes for hire. Many of the hire sites only have a few bicycles and so, it is necessary to book, at the latest, a few days in advance. For the busy periods, school holidays, public holidays and the like, for example, it is better to book as soon as you can.

There are two sites in Edenkoben, one of which is the company's central warehouse. This is near to the railway station. Bike hire here is at the time of writing 10% cheaper than in the other locations. Need we say more? Information about rail travel in Germany can be found on http://www.bahn.co.uk and local public transport (bus, railway and ferries) in Rhineland Palatinate and Northern Baden-Württemberg  can found on http://www.vrn.de.

Prices are reasonable. There are serious discounts for multi day and for group hire.
The company offers:

• Touring bikes with 8 gear hub gears and a back pedal brake.
• Touring bikes with 24 gear derailleur gears.
• Premium touring bikes with 30 gear derailleur gears.
• Mountain bikes.
• Pedelecs (e-bikes). As long as all goes well we hope we can hire at least two of these bikes to follow the Rhineland Palatinate Route, mentioned last week.
• Trailers for drink crates, dogs and children. Not all at the same time.
• Helmets.
• Gloves and other oddments. 
• Extra batteries for e-bikes.

We have yet to hire from the company, but from our written contact it seems to be well organised. We will report after our trip later in the year.