The Black Forest Panorama Cycle Route

The Southern loop we wrote about yesterday is a family route. At one point does the going get tough and you can get on a train. However the Black Forest Panorama Cycle Route  is slightly longer and a lot hillier. The description uses the word challenging from time to time. The first day is 75 km long with a climb of about 500 m. In this case there is a let out and you can take the the Sommerberg Funicular Railway 300m uphill which chops 25 km off your day. The day after on your way to Villigen, the 70 km are easy. On day 3 you cycle 52 km and climb to the highest point of the trip at 1084 m. The day after, on the final day cycling is easy, mainly downhill to Waldshut and the railway station. If the vision of long climbs is not your idea of fun, then you can hire e-bikes to ease the pain.

The Black Forest Tourist Authority offers organised self guided tours with B&B, luggage transfer and lunch packets starting at around €400 for a four or five night trip. Contact service@schwarzwald-tourismus.info for more details.

Southern Black Forest Cycle Route

Cycle touring on holiday is offered by all the major German holiday companies. I was pleasantly surprised recently to see cycle touring holidays in a brochure put out by ALDI, the German discounter. It is therefore no surprise to find that the regional tourist authorities have planned and executed cycle routes and that one can book self-guided holidays.

The Southern Black Forest Cycle Route or as it is known in German Südschwarzwald-Radweg is a fairly gentle circular 240km long route around the edges of the higher regions of the southern Black Forest. The main route crosses the Rhine into Switzerland and goes through Basel/Basle. After Basel you can also visit the French nature reserve "Petite Camargue" in southern Alsace, before crossing the Rhine again to return to vineyards and picturesque villages of Markgräflerland to reach Freiburg and return to the Black Forest heights. There is a rail link between Kirchzarten and Hinterzarten. There is no shame in taking the train. If the vision of the odd slight climb is too much you can also hire e-bikes. This is an ideal route for families.

There is more information in German about trips of up to a week from the following companies:

Original Landreisen AG
http://www.original-schwarzwald.de/Radwandern-im-Schwarzwald-Suedschwarzwald-Radweg.
The company is based in Hinterzarten. Price per person sharing a double room range from € 289 to € 949 for up to a week depending on the quality of the accommodation and the length of the holiday.


Radissimo GmbH
 http://www.radissimo.de/en/bike-holidays/self-guided-tours/
This company is preparing information in English. It is based in Freiburg or Hinterzarten. Price per person sharing a double room is from €429 for up to a week. If the photographs of the Black Forest Cherry cakes shown on the website are anything to go by you may end weighing more after a few days cycling than before you started.  

The NRW online route planner extends into Belgium and the Netherlands

We have mentioned the excellent NRW route planner before, www.radroutenplaner.nrw.de/. You can use the planner to map routes thirty kilometres or so into those bits of Belgium and the Netherlands that border NRW. It makes planning trips along the Rhine, for example, easier.

E-Bike Hire in Cologne

Liebe-Bike, Hohe Straße 76, 51149 Köln, Porz, Ensen nearest underground station: Ensen Gilgaustraße offer six geared e-bikes of their own manufacture for €14 for two hours, €21 for four hours and €29 a day. The company will deliver bikes for a fee as along you order more than five bikes. A tour guide is also available.
T: +49 2203 120 20,  www.kölle-bike.de, info@kölle-bike.de.

River Rhine Cycle Route

The German Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club (a German cycling club) produces an annual guide to cycling in Germany in German unfortunately. We received our copy last week and I was interested to see that finally, at long last that the club has recognised that the Rhine Cycling route runs through six countries and it is possible to cycle in, for example France or Germany. In the past the information on the Rhine route suggested that there were no facilities in France, that the Rhine route started at Konstanz and finished at the Dutch border. There are serious amounts of information in English available under http://www.rhinecycleroute.eu/UK_front-page?set_language=en.
We are in process of rewriting our Rhine 2 book from Basel to Rotterdam as an e-book. If all goes well it should be available from Amazon and Smashwords by the middle of May, this year.

Bett und Bike

It is not good cycling weather at the moment. It is wet and cold, so we are in progress of updating the Romantic Road book. I am hopeful it will be out in ten days time.
I am glad to announce that the ADFC (the German cycling club) have finally, at long last brought out an English version of their excellent Bett und Bike (Bed and Bike) website: www.bettundbike.de. The idea behind the Bett und Bike website is that it lists accommodation where cyclists are welcomed as guests: They need only stay for  one night. The accommodation offers secure bike storage. (This is true in the main, though we have found two participants in the scheme in the last 20 years where our bikes were locked up in the open. It pays to take a lock with you.) There are drying facilities available. Simple tools are available for minor  repairs. For more major problems, your hosts know where the nearest bike shop is. Your hosts will have background information on the area on offer. Breakfasts are excellent and filling to give the cyclist a good start to the day.
The web site is much improved since it was necessary to search in German. However you do need to use German spellings of town and city names: Köln not Cologne, Hannover not Hanover and München not Munich. The federal states are given German names, so it's Bayern not Bavaria and Niedersachsen not Lower Saxony, for example.If you are searching a route then jot down the names of the towns you wish to stop in and extract the information that way, rather than using the route maps provided. The information you receive using the routes is in German.

Sleeeping in straw in Switzerland

Cycling in Switzerland is not all mountain passes and expensive hotels. There are flatter routes: The Rhine Route from Chur downstream, Route 5 the Mittelland Route from Zürich to Lausanne and Route 8 the Aare Route from Meieringen through Interlaken, Thun and Berne towards the Rhine. Swiss Trails (http://www.swisstrails.ch/swisstrails_engl/default.html) offer reasonably priced trips with luggage transport and bike hire along these routes with prebooking of farms offering sleeping in straw. It's a great holiday and would be wonderful for children, because they can also take part in the life of the farm. Quite often the farmers, more often their wives will run you and the family up an evening meal. It's an excellent and economical way to see the country. You will of course need to take a sleeping bag and a torch per person.

A "sexy" Brompton?

We are not using our bikes much at the moment, except the Bromptons for the odd trip into town or to the Rhein-Neckar Zentrum, our local mall. Cycling is faster than walking and the bikes are easier to park than a motor car. This morning as I was cycling into town, I passed a group of young women outside the church down the road when one of them called "ein sexy Fahrrad!". Our Bromptons have been called goldig (sweet) in the past, but sexy? Dependable, well designed, fun I can understand but never sexy. Perhaps the word has a different meaning in young Germans' language than in English.

French Revolutions

I am reading Tim Moore's "French Revolutions" book, about his 3000 km trip around France following the route of the Tour de France and are amazed at his ability to sink by our standards vast amounts of alcohol. Apart from his first day he drank half a litre of rosé wine every lunchtime. On his first day he drank a quarter litre. We both feel that if we drank even a quarter litre of rosé at lunchtime we'd fall asleep on the first meadow we passed.
The book is excellent, however and well worth reading.

Bicycle hire in Mannheim

Obviously we have not tried these people but they are on the approved bike hire company list put out by Deutsche Bahn (German Railways): BIOTOPIA Fahrradstation, Heinrich von Stephan Straße 2, 68161 Mannheim, T: 0621 1223077. It is a social organisation offering training and work to the long term unemployed. The building abuts platform 1 of the Mannheim Hauptbahnhof (Railway Station). The workshop repairs bikes as well.

Transport Bicycle and Rickshaw Rental in Berlin

We have written before about bike hire in Berlin. We found a new shop recently: If you wish to hire a transport trike or a rickshaw check out: 
Moghul Rikschas in Neukölln: Elbestraße 1, Ecke Sonnenallee, 12045 Berlin.
eMail: info@moghul-rikschas.de, T: 030 544 88 393, M: 0178 143 99 82. 

Our new website

We have just uploaded our new website: www.bicycletouringeurope.eu. It needs some work, but we have been thinking about it for months. It will summarise a lot of the ideas in this blog.

Bike Hire in France

I have just spent some time looking at the SNCF (French Railways) bicycle website recently as we putting together an article for "AtoB". The website is in French unfortunately, so if you don't know your le's from your la's you might find it less than useful. However if you looking for a place to hire a bike in France then check out: http://www.velo.sncf.com/louer-un-velo/les-loueurs-agrees-sncf/. This is a site that's simple to follow. Just click on the map in the region where you want to hire to a bike, to generate a list of louers (hirers) approved by the SNCF. Each region of France with the exception of Limousin (aucun louers) has a number of hire stations spread across the region. The list offers address details, telephone number, website and opening times.

Bike hire in the Czech Republic

As we blogged two days ago you can hire bikes in Prague, but if you want to to at the views  Z českých luhů a hájů - From Bohemia's woods and fields, it might well be better to hire from elsewhere in the country. CD, Czech Railways offers trekking bikes for hire at railway stations over large areas of the country between April 1 and October 31. This is a bit late for this year, but next year…

CD offers:

• On selected lines you can transport your rented bike by train free of charge
• You can store the bike free of charge at ČD luggage storage locations
• You can usually return the bike at a different location from where you rented it
• You can reserve a bike in advance
• Low rental rates. In 2012 it was about €8 for one day and €48 for a week. Prices vary from region to region.

More information is available on http://www.cd.cz/volny-cas/. Click on the map to find detailed information on hire stations and prices.

Bike Hire in Prague, Czech Republic

We found the following. There may well be other bicycle hire centres in Prague. We can neither recommend nor advise you against these shops. The shops are listed alphabetically. We think that city hire bikes are not going to be pristine and new, but well maintained, a bit like your bike at home, hopefully. By the end of the season the bikes will be well used.  These companies also offer guided tours of the city.

Bike Rent

Hotel INTERCONTINENTAL

náměstí Curieových 43/5
Prague 1 ( Pařížská st.)
110 00 Czech Republic
e-mail: info@bikerent.czhttp://www.bikerent.cz
T: + 420 725 40 56 15
Bike Types: City bikes.

Broadway Bike and Scooter Rental

Telephone: +420 774 345 747 (Non-stop reservations, Info line)
E-mail: info@rentcarprague.com Office: Jindrisska 7, Prague 1 (Inside the arcade, opposite the main Post Office)

Skype:  rentcarprague1

City Bike

Králodvorská street 5, Praha 1 Czech Republic

e-mail: info@citybike-prague.com

phone: +420 776 180 284

skype:  city.bike.prague
Bike Types: Trekking bikes, cruisers and tandems

Praha Bike - Tours & Rental

Dlouha 24
Stare Mesto
Prague 1
11000
Czech Republic
info@prahabike.czhttp://www.prahabike.cz tel:+420 732 388 880
150 bikes.
Bike types:
-Mountain 26"wheel bikes-Trekking/Hybrid 28" wheel bikes-Tandem-Kid's bikes-Team Bike(bike for 7 persons!)

Cycle Touring in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia

We have recently found two websites that are of interest for cyclists planning to cycle in the Czech Republic and Slovakia: www.cykloserver.cz for information about cycle routes and route planning and http://www.cyklistevitani.cz/ for cyclist friendly accommodation.

Google Maps for Cyclists, Great but…

Whilst cleaning the layers of papers, mail, scribbled notes and similar off the desk in the office, I came across the August September  issue of  "Radwelt", the ADFC members' magazine. I scanned through it to see if there was anything of interest I could use in the blog before I flung it in the bin. A big mistake, because I started to read it so the pile of papers on the desk stayed the same. I found a paragraph on the new Google Maps cyclist routing function. Basically the "Get Directions" function has been extended to include bicycles.  The bicycle routing app does not yet work in Germany, but has been opened for use in Switzerland and in Austria. If you request a cycle route in Germany, you receive the message: "We could not calculate directions between …" although you are shown the cycle paths and routes in the area of interest. These still need a lot of work, at least around Viernheim, where for example the signposted cycle route along the old railway line to Lampertheim is not shown.

I checked out cycle routes in Switzerland. As test routes I used Grindelwald to Meiringen and Andermatt to Basel.

• There are two cycle routes between Grindelwald and Meiringen: 
• Grindelwald to Interlaken and follow National routes 8 and 9 to Meiringen on the south side of Lake Brienz. 
• Grindelwald via Grosse Scheidegg and Rosenlaui to Meiringen.
• Both of these routes are to be found in our Cicerone Guide: "Cycle Touring in Switzerland", ISBN: 9781852845261.
• Google Maps suggests neither route. It shows a route down to Interlaken and then along the main road between Interlaken and Brienz on the north side of the lake. You can pull the route using the cursor across the screen to follow one or both of the suggestions above. This is fine if you know the area, but less than useful if you don't.

• There are again two signposted cycle routes between Andermatt and Basel
• Swiss National Cycle Route 2 along the Rhine.
• Swiss National Cycle Route 3 through Lucerne and Aarau
• The Google route follows neither following "Route 2" through Schwyz, Arth and Rheinfelden. What this Route 2 is not clear. It could be Road 2. You can pull the route using the cursor across the screen to follow one or both of the suggestions above. This is fine if you know the area, but less than useful if you don't.

Before one uses Google Maps to work out cycle routes in Switzerland, we would advise cyclists to obtain a copy of Switzerland Touristic Cycling Map (1:301 000) from Kümmerly + Frey ISBN3-359-00533-1 or check out the maps section of www.veloland.ch. Once Google Maps suggests a route then check to see if it does really follow cycle routes and modify it accordingly, if needed.

PS We have informed Google and await their reaction.

Bike Hire at Weeze Airport

It is often easier and cheaper to fly to a country without a bicycle. On the other hand a major disadvantage of bike hire is having to return the bike to the start point, especially if you wish to cycle along a linear route like a river. Niederrhein Tourismus, the tourist authority for the Niederrhein (Lower Rhine) an excellent cycling area northwest of Cologne have cracked this problem, by setting up a region-wide network of bike hire stations. You can hire from one station and return it to another. The bikes are popular. We saw several groups using them last week when we were cycling in this area.  With over 2000 km of signposted  cycle routes you will not be bored.

The bicycles cost €9 a day for the first two days, €8 a day between the third and fifth day and €6 a day after that. Returning a bicycle to a different hire point costs €4. You can reserve bicycles in advance on http://www.niederrheinrad.de/. 

The bicycles are sensible Dutch tourers manufactured by Koninklijke Gazelle and are ideal steeds for the flat Rhine plain. The bicycles feature:

Seat height is adjustable with quick release without tools
Special frame design for comfortable cycling
Tyres with puncture protection  
Gel saddle
Sturdy baggage carrier
Easy to use 7-speed hub gears
A coaster/back pedal brake
Easy-running hub dynamo

Bicycles are available at Weeze Airport from the 2-LAND Tourist Information Office, Flughafenring - Terminal, 47652 Weeze, Tel +49 (0) 28 37 - 66 63 82 from 09:00 until 22:00. If the Tourist Office is closed the left luggage counter takes over. Not only can you pick bikes, you can drop them off here as well.

Bicycle Rental in Switzerland

The Swiss are amazing. Their country is not a natural place to build railways, so they build them up to the top of mountains. They live in a country that does not naturally spring to mind when one thinks of cycle touring. The country is full of mountains and lakes, so common sense would suggest that it is a great place to go mountaineering, hill walking, sailing, or sailboarding or board sailing but cycling? The gut wrenching pictures of the top of the Tour de France climbs come to mind, but can we expect grannie to make it? Yes, we can! You too can, actually. We did, too. The Swiss have done the impossible and turned their country into a cyclist’s paradise with 4500 hire bikes.

If you arrive in the country without a bike and want to hire a bike for a day or two, the good news is there are bicycle rental stations all over the country at railway stations, hotels, youth hostels and camp sites. The bad news is the bikes are not cheap. In 2012  the basic bikes: touring bike, MTB and children's bicycles cost CHF 33 a day for one day if you return the bike to the same rental station and CHF 40 if you drop it off at another station. The rate drops to about CHF 22 a day if you hire for a week, about CHF 17 if you hire for two weeks. (At the time of writing one Euro was worth: CHF 1.20, $US 1 about CHF 0.93 and £1: CHF 1.50.) The bike rental company is called Rentabike. Its website: www.rentabike.ch. The website unfortunately is only in French and German. If you cannot speak either language use Google Translator. We have never hired from Rentabike. We don't live that far away from Helvetia, so always take our own bikes. Helmets are supplied. What we have noticed is that it is a good idea to take a few tools and a puncture repair outfit. They are not supplied. However it is probably not a advisable to wave your repair kit under the noses of the hire station personnel. They might not appreciate you taking their bike to bits.

Although the major Swiss bike rental company is Rentabike, there are others. We picked up a leaflet about a bike shop in Basel (Basle) called Obst&Gemüse GmbH, Kasernenstrasse 32, CH-4058 Basel, T: +41 (0)61 683 07 80, hello@obstundgemuese.org, www.obstundgemuese.org. The shop will rent you a Bakfiets, a Bullitt or a Christiana cargo bike for a weekend. If you have ever fancied buyuing one of these, but thought you would like to give it an extended try, here's your chance.

On-the-spot fines for cyclists in Zurich, Switzerland.

As promised yesterday here are a number of offences for which you as a cyclist can receive an on-the-spot fine in Zürich. I assume that similar fines apply to the rest of Switzerland, but unfortunately this blog is a nonprofit effort and we cannot afford to travel from city to city and canton to canton in Switzerland to pick up a list of fines, so for safety's sake assume that these apply throughout the country. Some of these appear to be ignored but you shouldn't push your luck. You might just meet a policeman who takes matters seriously.

You can be fined CHF 20.- :

• For riding without holding the handlebars or taking your feet off the pedals.
• Stopping on Zebra Crossings.
• Carrying an item that prevents you giving hand signals.
• Riding more than two abreast.
• Being towed or pushed.
• Cycling without lights through a lit tunnel. 
• Carrying a person who is more than seven years old, unless there is a seat for this purpose, I assume.
• Parking your bike where it is forbidden.
• Cycling without a bell or a lock.
• Cycling on too worn tyres.
• Turning right without giving a hand signal.

You can be fined  CHF 30.-:

• For ignoring traffic signs.
• Cycling on pedestrian ways.
• Cycling on a cyclepath in the wrong direction.
• Not stopping completely at a Stop sign.
• Turning left without giving a hand signal.
• Cycling in a bus lane (or does this only apply to motor cycles?)
• Cycling on a path that is not suitable for bicycles or is not intended to be used by bicycles.
• Not using a cyclepath or a bicycle stripe.

 You can be fined CHF 40.-

• For cycling without lights on a lit street during the hours of darkness.
• Cycling on the pavement (US sidewalk) or on road stripes for pedestrians.
• Carrying a person who is or less than seven years old, unless there is a seat for this purpose, I assume.
• Cycling without a rear facing reflector.

 You can be fined CHF 60.-:

• For cycling without lights on an unlit street during the hours of darkness.

• For ignoring a traffic light.

 Happy cycling!