E-Bike Hire in the Black Forest (Germany) near Basel (Switzerland)

The Black Forest features some serious climbs and those of us who are long in years are beginning to think about renting an e-bike, rather than our usual technique of cheating by sticking to river valleys and even taking to the train or bus to ascend the hills. Over the next few weeks we will try to list those hotels, organisations and shops who rent out e-bikes in the Black Forest. We will also try to mention in addition whether a hire company has normal bikes in case you have purists or keeny-beanies in your party. There are over two hundred e-bike charging points in the Black Forest and a goodly number of hire points. While your bike is charging you can lunch or eat a serious sized portion of Black Forest gateau. (All of the portions of BFG in this neck of the woods are enormous.) Obviously you need to check beforehand whether your hire point has bikes available and whether in the case of a hotel the management is prepared to hire to non-guests. You will need a passport or identity card and probably a returnable deposit to hire the bikes in addition to the rental fee.

Where	Tel/Internet	Open	Comment
Stadt Neuenburg am Rhein, Rathausplatz 5, 79395 Neuenburg am Rhein	T:+49(0)7631 7910 www.neuenburg.de (in German)	Mon, Tue, Th, Fri 9-16:00 Wed: 9-18:30 Sat: 10-12:00	4 E-bikes
Pappelhof, 79415 Bad Bellingen	T: +49(0)7635 81130 www.pappelhof-badbellingen.de	Daily: 9-18:00 Closed on Sundays	4 E-bikes Half day: 10€ Day: 16€
Schwarzwälder Hof, Von Andlaw Str 9, 79415 Bad Bellingen	T: +49(0)7635 81080 www.ebike-bellingen.de	Daily 8-18:00	30 E-bikes Half day: 10€ Day: 16€
follow me, Bahnhofstraße 1 79539 Lörrach	T: +49(0)7621 165551 www.fome.de	Mon-Sat 9-18:00 Closed on Sundays	15 E-bikes Half day: 17€ Day 22€ Other bikes available

Basel Cycle plans

We have cycled through Basel fairly often and it is an interesting place to cycle, what with other cyclists, trams and motor cars, lots of motor cars. We are rewriting our Rhine II Basel to Hook of Holland guide as an e-book so I have been doing some research to update our notes. I was interested to read that Basel City has produced a new cycle plan which aims to separate the commuter cyclists and tourists, children etc. (http://www.bzbasel.ch/basel/basel-stadt/so-will-basel-zur-velofreundlichsten-stadt-der-schweiz-werden-126338189). The link is in German. As well the planners want to ensure that the needs of cyclists are taken into account in new road schemes. When this wonder is going to happen is not clear, but don't hold your breath.

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.  

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.

Transport Show in Cologne Part 1

On July 28 we visited the RDA Workshop in Cologne, Germany. We travelled by train and had the first interest of the day as we waited in Mannheim for our Intercity northwards. A long train en route for Basel drew in across the platform and the last two carriages had strikingly different liveries. They turned out to be the Minsk-Basel and Moscow-Basel sleepers. Although in summer we would not have expected bits of snow encrusted here and there, we later heard reports of searing temperatures and forest fires among Russia’s forests so perhaps there had been a few whiffs of singed paint work. From one of the carriages a party clearly wearing Eastern European fashions, stepped out, then shook hands with a large jolly blonde woman, as we tried in vain to catch a glimpse of a samovar within. Mannheim railway station, a prosaic workaday place disappeared as Anna Karenina, steppe and taiga seeped from films and books into our mind’s eye. Then the doors slammed, Minsk and Mocba disappeared down the track towards Basel and Switzerland.
Our journey to Cologne was protracted by technical problems, the wrong sort of rain or a landslide or two so after a cup of dreadful DB coffee we returned to thinking of Russian trains. It had always been possible to get to Russia by train from hereabouts, even with the Iron Curtain still in place. Commuting daily from Weinheim to Frankfurt in the early nineteen nineties Neil had occasionally observed dark green, very old-fashioned rolling stock three times a week, which linked Berne with Moscow. It was an interesting, though not a particularly enticing, thought at the time, with the hostile wastelands of East Germany and Poland to cross. To us island born Cold War children it also hinted at romance and impossible distances. Imagine an Edinburgh to Istanbul Express stopping at Wigan North West!
You could easily get a couple of Bromptons in those wagons we thought, even if carriage of bicycles is officially forbidden. One of our minor forms of what some cyclists call ‘soft anarchy’ is to quietly travel with a bike in a bag on some of Europe’s more exclusive trains. Does one still need a visa for Moscow or Minsk, and where on earth exactly IS Minsk? (Capital of Belarus, some distance west of Moscow itself.) Research has revealed that just boarding the train and hoping to set off in either place for the other by bike isn’t that easy since many travel restrictions still exist and individual journeys by cyclists are regarded by the authorities as dangerously eccentric at the least.
However we were on our way to a Workshop, aka Trade Fair about bus and group travel but with increasing interest in cyclists. Who knew what ideas and information, what routes and fantasies, we would have by the late afternoon?