Wertheim, A new town joins the Romantic Road Part I

Wertheim am Main, lying between Würzburg and Frankfurt am Main, has been attempting to join the select club of members of the Romantic Road for over ten years. It has finally achieved its aims and is now a member. The route of the Romantic Road is now changed. It runs west from Würzburg to Wertheim which lies at the confluence of the Rivers Tauber and Main and then follows the Tauber Valley south towards Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Wertheim itself is an interesting mediaeval town and well worth visiting. What this change means for cyclists is that the cycle route will be extended. I am not too sure how, but there seem to be two options:

• Follow the Main cycleway for about 6 hours downstream towards Frankfurt am Main to Wertheim through Karlstadt, Gemünden and Marktheidenfeld, and then take the ADFC Five Star Tauber Valley Route.
• Climb over the hills between Würzburg and Wertheim which appears to take about three hours. 

Myself I would go for the longer flatter option as the Main Valley is spectacular in this section and it's less work. 

There is, of course, nothing to stop you taking the old route out of Würzburg. It is an interesting series of ups and downs with a former Jewish community house and a pilgrimage chapel on the way. At the moment the weather is inclement and we will wait until the spring to check out the new signposting. We will then write an addendum to the Romantic Road guide.

Bike Hire in SW France

Bike touring in France is getting better year by year and I was interested to come across a bike hire company in Southwestern France. Bike Direct offers a good range of touring bikes, tandems and accessories at reasonable prices (http://bikehiredirect.com). We have cycled in this area and it was very enjoyable.

Bike hire is offered in the Charente (16), Charente Maritime (17), Dordogne (24), Gironde (33), Deux-Sevres (79), Vienne (86), Haute-Vienne (87) and from 2015 in the Vendee (85). - See more at: http://bikehiredirect.com/#sthash.UONMKkxK.dpuf

Bike hire is offered in the Charente (16), Charente Maritime (17), Dordogne (24), Gironde (33), Deux-Sevres (79), Vienne (86), Haute-Vienne (87) and from 2015 in the Vendee (85). - See more at: http://bikehiredirect.com/#sthash.DSE5Dbhi.yvQrfWNi.dpuf

Moselle Valley News

The cycleway along the Moselle Valley near Metz in Lorraine, known by the French as la véloroute "Charles le Téméraire" (V50 Moselle Saone) has been extended to Moulins-lès-Metz. This means it is possible to cycle on quiet roads or cycleways from the French-German-Luxembourg border to Moulins-lès-Metz. After that our feeling is that it is better to cycle up into the hills as described in our book: "The Riesling Route".

Mannheim's battle with the bicycle

To take one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epigrams about Cologne slightly out of context, but still on the Rhine: Mannheim, Germany, whose "…pavements are fanged with murderous stones", has problems with bicycles. Agreed the first trip by the hobby horse, the forerunner of the bicycle was made in the city. To this day local school kids follow his route one day of the year and there will be major big time celebrations in 2017 two hundred years after the day when Karl Drais swung his leg over the not very comfortable seat of his invention and propelled it and himself to a pub in Rheinau, at that time a nearby village, now a suburb of Mannheim.
However after that Carl Benz built a cycle car, but still a car and his wife nipped off to Pforzheim in 1886 to come back the next day. The age of idly sitting about during individual travel was upon us. The Daimler company, successor to Carl Benz, still builds buses and lorry engines in Mannheim. The next Mannheim inventor in this area of technology was Heinrich Lanz, initially an importer of American and British farm equipment who developed the Bulldog tractors, propelled by a semi-diesel motor. Mannheim can truly be said to be a pioneer city for individual travel, both motorised and unmotorised.
Is it a bicycle city as is repeatedly declaimed by the city fathers? I doubt it. There are some good cycle paths and there is an active cycling community, but it is still major fight to cut down space on the roads for motorists. Without this there will be no real improvements for cyclists.

Bike repair for schoolchildren

The Heidelberg branch of the ADFC, the German cycling club offers weekly repair sessions every Monday where young people can learn to carry out simple repairs on their bicycles. These free sessions - Schüler-Radwerkstatt on Mondays between 15:00 and 18:00 are led by four youngsters and the training officer of the ADFC Heidelberg.  These sessions give young people the chance to repair their bikes under instruction and thereby learn to carry out simple repairs to their bicycles. It strikes us as a good idea that could be taken up by bike clubs and youth groups elsewhere.

Rhone Cycle Route - Valence

I have written before that the French have discovered the advantages of cycle tourists for the hotel and restaurant trade. We recently stopped overnight near Valence in one of the B&B chain hotels which are normally slightly out of town centres. We decided in the morning to cycle into Valence and took the Rhone Cycle Route. I don't how the rest of the route is, but if this stretch was typical for a conurbation then the French have cracked cycle touring. It was initially on a footpath/cyclepath along the Rhone bank and then followed quiet well signposted roads into the city centre. The town did not seem to be as old as Avignon, Nimes or Orange, but it made for a pleasant morning, swanning round the town on our Bromptons, peering in a number of very odd shops. Napoleon was a member of an artillery unit there before his rise to power. There is a life sized statue of him reading some military tome much favoured by the selfie types to add a little spice to their photographs.

Good clear signposting

Frequent clear information boards

Judith caught me looking over Boney's shoulder.

Cycle touring in Provence around Mont Ventoux

Every time we go to France I notice the growth in cycle routes and cycle touring facilities. Gone are the days when the only technique, which was a good one, for the cycle tourist was to follow the white roads on the Michelin maps. It still is a good way for cyclists to get about, because France is a big largely empty country, but these days there are many cycle circuits and  signposted long distance routes available to the cyclist.
We were in Malaucène recently. This village sits at the start of one of the routes up Mont Ventoux often a make or break climb on the Tour de France.  Its bars, shops and streets are filled with the Lycra® clad. We did, by chance, have our Bromptons with us in the back of the car, but since the hill has been conquered by not just one, but several dozen Bromptoneers

(e.g. http://www.freewheelingfrance.com/where-to-go/cycling-ventoux-brompton.html, 

http://velojanaway.co.uk/velojanaway/bromptoux/mont-ventoux-brompton-queen-stage/), 

and because we were visiting non-cycling friends, we decided not to bother shocking the Lycra®-clad and spent our time travelling about the area, eating large meals, etc. The kind of thing many of us do in France.
As conscientious bloggers we investigated the cycling possibilities of the area in various tourist offices and found piles of pamphlets describing circuits on the south side of Mont Ventoux. These are available in digital form on the Provence Cycling website: (http://www.provence-cycling.co.uk).

A sunny day near Mont Ventoux

Cycling in the Autumn along the Carp Route

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

Excellent signposting

A mediaeval protein factory

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

VW and the diesel engine exhaust software fiddle mess

So the big news of this week which has largely pushed the refugees off the pages of the German press is VW's fixing of the software used to control diesel motors, so that under test conditions the car used up to 5% more fuel per mile, but emitted less nitrogen oxide. In normal operation the motor did not meet the values laid down by legislation. VW will in all probability modify the software controlling the motor so that it uses more fuel in future, but emits less nitrogen oxides. This could well mean that VW owners in Britain and elsewhere probably will have to pay 5% more fuel costs and maybe more tax, as the amount of pollution put out by the car often determines the road tax paid by the owner.

To make one thing clear. I am horrified by the actions of VW. I am also amazed. My experience of German engineers after 30 or so years working in German industry has been that they are pernickety in the extreme and thus not always easy to work with, but I have never had any reason to doubt their honesty, at least at work, apart from filling out travel expense forms.

VW diesel car owners are faced with the prospect of ca. 5% higher fuel costs.

If you have a diesel engined car what do do when the costs rise? A few answers:

• Get on your bike. Up to 5 miles distance a bike is as quick as car especially when you don't have to find a parking spot. 
• If the cycling possibilities in your neighbourhood are restricted or even life threatening join an organisation like the CTC in Britain or the League of American Bicyclists in the USA to press for improvements. The day that the CTC or the League has as many members as the motoring organisations is the day when politicians will really sit up and listen.
• Walk. Think about buying a pensioner Ferrari, i.e. a shopping trolley. Use your local shops.
• We do most of our shopping on foot or by bike. We buy less but we still have enough to eat. We throw less stuff away though. 
• If there is any, take public transport. It helps if it is electrically powered like a tram or Bombardier's clever induction charged battery buses. 
• Plan your trips so that you don't need to drive as far.

A cycle museum on the Rhine

The Rheinhessisches Fahrradmuseum, Schloß Ardeck, Schlossgasse 12, 55435 Gau-Algesheim between Mainz and Bingen on the left bank of the Rhine is a small bicycle museum. It is open on public holidays and Sundays between Easter and the second Sunday in October from 11am to 5pm. The website gives details of arranging a tour outside of opening hours. It has four departments: The bicycle in Rhine-Hessen, the bicycle as a means of transport, the bicycle in art and cycle sport. Entrance is free, but there is nothing to stop you giving a donation. http://www.fahrradmuseum-rheinhessen.de/startseite.html in German.
It'll be open this  year in 2015, on 3, 4 and 11 October 2015, so if you are planning a Rhine tour it's worth organising it, so you can visit the Schloß. We don't mention the Schloß and its museum in our two Rhine guides, but I will put them in shortly. The Rhine guides are available as e-books from Smashwords and your local branch of Amazon: “The Rhine End to End part 2: Basel to the North Sea", "Following the Rhine gently upstream Rotterdam to Basel. A Cycle Tourist's Guide".

The ten most beautiful bikes in 2015

In recent weeks both the BBC and the "Observer" (A British heavy Sunday newspaper) have featured reviews of bicycles, in all cases by their motor car journalists. I do begin to wonder whether these characters actually ride bikes rather than just praising their aesthetic qualities. If we ignore the full enclosed cycles, less than half the bikes shown in the BBC list have mudguards (fenders) and none of the "Observer"bikes shown over the last three weeks had any mudguards. Has it stopped raining in Britain these days? No mudguards means not only wet legs, but wet, dirty legs and the black stripe down the back of the shirt shown, for example, displayed by Chris Froome on his yellow jersey during the last day of the Tour de France on the Champs Elysee. I despair, I really do. If we are going to have articles on bikes, what about articles on bikes normal folk can afford and that can be used as a means of transport and why do motoring correspondents have to write them?

Mannheim powers through Part II

Did the app used by Mannheim to encourage cyclists and maybe non cyclists to cycle to work function. In our case definitely yes. Unfortunately we were away on walking trips for much of early September, but we definitely put in some hours on the bikes to get us out of Finland when we got back.

Cycling Tours up, and around Mont Ventoux

By chance we were stopping in the excellent Domaine des Tilleuls Hotel de Charme in Malaucene, one of the hotels of the Ventoux Club Hôtelier association (www.ventoux-hotel.fr) last weekend and met a group travelling with Forever Holidays Ltd. I was impressed with the friendly but clear, professional way the guide prepared the customers, a group of road bike men, for their trip around  Mont Ventoux. If you are interested in pulling on the Lycra and pushing aluminium or carbon fibre bikes up some serious hills in France with sag wagon backup, but are worried about not having any French or travelling around an area without any noticeable public transport then check the company out. You do not have to be male to travel with the company, this particular group was all male, but the female of the species is obviously welcome too. The company also offers bike hire and self guided tours.

Road bikes for hire in Berlin

If you are looking for a road bike to hire in Berlin, then check out:

Aspire Cycling (Road bike specialist)
This company delivers your bike to your hotel, B&B, crash pad etc. It offers Canyon Carbon Frame Endurance CF bikes. The company also offers guided tours. The company is not cheap but offers value for money especially when you check out the prices the airlines will charge you to get your bike to Berlin, the quality of their bikes and the service they offer. At the time of writing the first day's hire cost 65€ with serious reductions for longer term hire.
http://aspirecycling.com/
info@aspirecycling.com
T: +49 173 7457479

Emergency Services for Cyclists

Like a lot of cyclists over the age of 18 we also own a motor car. When we are travelling in the thing we know that if it starts to make funny noises, a tyre punctures or the gears stop functioning we can ring a motor club hotline and sooner or later a representative of the club or a contract garage will appear and repair the damage. Until recently these services were not available in Germany for cyclists. If your bicycle gears went belly up, you needed to walk or get transport to the next town or village to find a bike shop or if your bike was stolen, you had to find a bike hire station, etc. This service for cyclists has been available in the Netherlands from the ANWB for some time. I was pleased to read that the German ADFC is now offering a similar service (ADFC-PannenhilfePLUS) as an additional package to members for 11.90€ (individual) or 19.90€ (family) annually covering the EU and Switzerland and Norway. A 24 hour hotline will provide those insured with information about bike repair workshops and bike hire stations, send a sag wagon if the bike is damaged beyond repair or organise a return home. This applies to all bicycle problems except punctures. This could well be adopted by other bicycle clubs, even the CTC, the cycling charity. Then of course the various clubs could cooperate to make life easier for cyclists travelling abroad, but is this asking too much?

Saving weight when touring by bicycle, can you take it too far?

This is a cautionary tale that's worth bearing mind when you come to pack for the tour. Judith talked to a member of our walking club during a ramble. We are well known as cyclists and enjoy discussing cycling, so we are often asked our opinion about cycling matters. It turns out that the member and her husband started to save weight when cycle touring using hotels by not packing any nightwear. We assume they slept in the altogether. All went well until they found that the hotel they'd booked had showers/WCs across the corridor from their room rather than having facilities en suite. We always take simple night attire: a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts for me and an old thin light weight nightshirt for Judith. I don't think the extra weight adds much to the load.

Take care in Bensheim

We are members of the Letzebuerger Velos-Iniativ (Luxembourg Cycling Club). Together with the City of Luxembourg and the Luxembourg government the club has produced a mini Highway Code for all classes of road users. In the cyclists' section I noticed the line that one should not overtake to the right of other road users. It is a pity that this brochure has not been distributed in Bensheim. We had cause recently to cycle along the cycle path along the edge of the Bensheim bypass. Although the path was quite wide some idiot woman on a bike insisted on squeezing past us on the right although there was plenty of room on the left. She was giggling so maybe she had looked on the wine when it was red. Just about as daft as the motorist who insisted in standing in the cycle path to lean into the car to help his wife change a baby's nappy/diaper. They might have unblocked the child but they succeeded in blocking the cycle path even though there was room on the left hand side of the vehicle on the footpath.
Though the latest news is that the town council is going to support cycling to the tune of 25 000€, which is probably half an inch of a new road for motor cars. 

Mannheim powers through

I have been rude about Mannheim in the past and its relationship to cyclists, but some thing that has impressed me is the "Mannheim gibt Kette" app (https://www.mannheim-gibt-kette.de), part of a programme to encourage people to cycle to work. Just about every national cycling club and health insurance organisation has a programme of this type, offering the chance of winning small prizes for cycling to work. The Mannheim app for the inhabitants of MA and the employees of the city council sums the distance cycled each day and propels one on a virtual journey along the Iron Curtain Trail from Kirkenes, Norway to Carevo, Bulgaria, offering tourist and geographical information and photographs of the areas covered. There are chances underway to answer questions to double one's daily kilometres for five days. The app is well designed. It is written by "GEVIO - Gesundheit und Prävention", 67256 Weisenheim, Germany (http://www.gevio.com/softwareloesungen/business-bike-contest/). A company that offers packages of measures to improve employees' health. Unfortunately the information on the web is in German but an email to the company's contact address: support@gevio.com will bring information in English.

We have cheated, although we live just over the border in the small Hesse town of Viernheim and no longer work, we joined the game just to see how it functions. In our case we are largely not replacing car journeys by bike journeys, but trips by public transport and on foot. If we win anything we will come clean and send the gift back. The main prize is a trip to Amsterdam. Whether we will achieve the twenty days cycling necessary to be entered in the lottery for the big prize is debatable anyway.
Does it work? Yes! Since we have joined we have tried to cycle about 18 or 19km through the local woods on every day we can. Other teams have finished and we are still virtually cycling through the Finnish woods and actually cycling in Viernheim. Will we make Latvia before the cutoff date? We will do our very best.

Flow gently sweet cycle traffic (with apologies to Robert Burns)

Cycling in Heidelberg is not all nudge tactics to improve behaviour as described yesterday. The city fathers and senior planning staff meet regularly for a trip around the city and campus with representatives of the cycling community, where the cyclists can discuss actual problems with the evidence before them. A recent trip looked at parking facilities at the university library, bollards that not only restrict four wheeled traffic, but bikes with trailers as well and speed limits for motorised traffic amongst other matters. All in all the group examined twelve sites in Heidelberg where cyclists have problems and improvements were promised.

Five minutes more that could save your life - the Plus 5 campaign in Heidelberg

Thirty percent of all journeys in the centre of Heidelberg are made by bicycle. In comparison the figures for Mannheim - ten km away - are 12 to 15%. Many of these journeys to Heidelberg University and/or the university clinic. The main university campus and the university clinic lie on the north bank of the River Neckar, to the west side of the main road from the Ernst-Walz Bridge. About 7500 cyclists cross the bridge on summer days. There are narrow cyclepaths on both sides of the road. The bridge is also busy with motorists. It is only possible to cross the main road by waiting for two crossing phases of the traffic lights at the northern end of the bridge, so there is a great temptation to cross the bridge on the cyclepath on the left against the flow of traffic. This is against the law and in spite of the findings of German insurers that riding the wrong way along a cyclepath is six times more likely to give rise to an accident. The Police, the City of Heidelberg, the University and the University Clinic have worked together to reduce the number of collisions largely due to the impatient riding on cyclepaths on the wrong side. The police have been active in giving out warnings, putting up posters at hot spots, rewarding those who cycle according to the law with current buns and publishing an Internet site (www.aktionplus5.de in German). One of the main themes was the idea of adding five minutes to one's journey, so that riders could travel more leisurely and show more consideration to others. All of these measures have been effective. During the period the campaign was running in the second half of 2014 accidents fell by 11%.
Interestingly enough the Plus 5 team showed another side during the dark months in the winter. Cyclists' lights were checked in November. The methods used were drastic: If a cyclist was underway with inadequate lights, he or she was given the choice of chaining the bike up and walking or letting the air out of the tyres to push the bike home. Whether these harder techniques will be used in future on those who insist on cycling the wrong way on cyclepaths? It's hard to know.