Cyclist-friendly accommodation in Europe

This list is intended to help you find databases giving cyclist-friendly accommodation in Europe:

Germany the ADFC cycle club set up one of the first databases showing cyclist friendly accommodation: www.bettundbike.de in German only.

Austria - In 2013 the Radtouren cooperative project was started with the support of the Ministry of Economic Affairs in Vienna. Information on cyclist-friendly Radhotels are available at https://www.radtouren.at/en/cycling-accommodation-providers/ in English and other languages.

The Czech Republic - based on Bett + Bike. Accommodation is accredited by tourist authorities and must meet certain minimum criteria http://www.cyklistevitani.cz/Uvod.aspx in Czech, English and German.



Denmark - https://www.visitdenmark.com/denmark/bedbike-0 

France - The https://www.francevelotourisme.com/contenus/preparation-et-conseils/accueil-velo/searchpoi_view website offers information about the Accueil Vélo (Welcome Bicycle) project. It is of course all in French.

Italy - Hotels and guesthouses can register on an internet list.Approximately 1000 houses are represented. The hotels and guesthouses describe themselves as cyclist-friendly. The accommodation is not checked and certified. http://www.albergabici.it/en/ in English.

Luxembourg - LVI the Luxembourg cycle club has certified "bed + bike accommodation”. It uses the same logo as the ADFC website and the same criteria. www.bedandbike.lu in French and German.

Montenegro - the first accommodation with the "Montenegro Bed & Bike" sign on the door was located along the national "Top Trails" in the north and the central region of the country. In addition to the well-known bed + bike standards, there are other services such as free jersey washing, luggage transport, booking of the next accommodation and other useful ideas. www.bedandbike.me I am tempted to go, but as the boss just said, “It’s a long way to go just to get your shirt washed.”.

Netherlands - Try https://www.hollandcyclingroutes.com/practical/cycle-friendly-places-and-lodging

Norway - Check http://www.cyclingnorway.no/en/cyclist-welcome/

Slovenia - There is cyclist-friendly accommodation: Hotels, B&Bs and campsites in Slovenia, but you will need to contact the National Tourist Organisation to find out more: www.slovenia.info

Switzerland - Cyclist-friendly accommodation can be found on www.veloland.ch. Hosts must meet certain minimum criteria, which are very similar to those of Bett + Bike

Bed and Bike Luxembourg

The Bed and Bike Luxembourg website now includes a list if cyclist friendly accommodation in eastern Belgium, so if you are planning to cycle the Vennbahn cycle route from Aachen to Troisvierges (Luxembourg) you can information on where to stop. The website is in French and German, so maybe Google Translator will need to be used, but this is better than the original ADFC German website which is now only available in German after some years being bilingual in German and English. Quite why this should be so I don't know. Some years ago we suggested a quick and dirty translation method which was turned down in favour of a bells and whistles luxury full translation, but this was probably too expensive to maintain.

Booking a touring holiday in Franconia, for example or in the far east of Germany

Where do you start planning a cycling  holiday in Germany? You can, of course, fly to say Friedrichshafen and then follow the Rhine to the Dutch border finding your finding your overnight accommodation as you drift downstream. This is not a problem if you are in a small group and you start to look for your acommodation at around 4pm.
If you would like to get off the beaten track or you are worried about your lack of German, then check out the offers such as:
Those shown on www.mainradweg.de on the River Main between Bamberg and Aschaffenburg. This self-guided pre-booked trip costs 519€ pp for 8 nights with breakfast. Contrary to what "The Guardian" writes restaurant meals in Germany are less than in the UK.
The Fürst-Pückler Weg - 500km through Eastern Germany. This self-guided pre-booked trip costs 659€ pp for 10 nights with breakfast. http://www.radreisepartner-spreewald-lausitz.de/ 
The Spreewaldradweg - 420km through Eastern Germany. This self-guided pre-booked trip costs 399€ for 6 nights with breakfast.You end up on the edge of Berlin and could then spend a day or two there and follow the route round the wall, the former border with the DDR. The website is www.spreewald.de and it is in English.

Hotel accommodation in Buhl-Lorraine near the Rhine Marne Canal

A hotel recommendation, if you are cycling along the Rhine Marne Canal between Nancy and Strasbourg, which is in itself much to be recommended. It is now part of the Pan-Europe Cycle Route Paris - Prague. Much of the canal towpath is now a cyclepath:

The former Cactus Hotel on a small industrial estate in Buhl-Lorraine which is near to the Rhine Marne Canal is now an Ibis Budget hotel. It has a bike garage which is available as long as you arrive early enough before the reception closes, otherwise there is an adequate fence to lock bikes to. The rooms are more than adequate if a bit on the tight side. You can book it via the Internet which saves fighting with the joys of the French language. There is a decent restaurant nearby called Le Cabane de Marie, just by the roundabout on the D45 road where you turn off left for the hotel, coming from the canal. As far as I remember the restaurant is closed on Mondays.

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.

Public holidays and weather in Europe

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

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

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

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

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

Bike Sport Hotels in Germany

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed we are fans of the hotels and B&Bs on the  ADFC’s Bett und Bike list. The club has recently added a new category to its lists: Bett und Bike Sport hotels. These are more upmarket hotels offering features in addition to those normally offered by Bett und Bike accommodation:

• Tour suggestions and/or guided tours for mountain bikers, road racing types and even common or garden tourists like us two.
• A very secure bike storage room so you don’t have to sleep with your 10 000 Euros worth of carbon fibre and Campag gears.
• Mountain and road bike hire.
• Good drying and washing facilities for you, your clothing and your bike, but not all the same room.
• A workshop and information about nearby dealers who can help you when need help.
• Maps, printed guides, energy bars etc.
• If you want to cycle on your last day, you can arrange to take a shower in the afternoon before you depart for home, which saves you having to climb mud-encrusted into the BA or Lufthansa machine home.

These hotels are to be found in the southern Black Forest, in the Sauerland a mountain biking and winter sport area SE of Dortmund and in the Hunsrück W of the Rhine around Hahn airport. There is more information including a list of hotels to be found on a flyer obtainable via a link on http://www.bettundbike.de/. Don’t go for the English version, because although there is more information available about the concept, there is no link to the flyer. The flyer, of course, is in German but there are links to the hotel websites and these are more often than not in a sensible language, i.e. English.  A quick survey of the flyer suggests that the hotels are reasonably priced and some offer package deals for a week's or long weekend's holiday.

Cyclist- and bicyclist-friendly accommodation in Europe

We wrote about the German Cycling Club's BettundBike.de/en website earlier, in 2013. It is an excellent website offering lists of cyclist-friendly accommodation (Hotels, pensions, guest houses, youth hostels camping sites) in Europe. The idea has spread into neighbouring countries.

In addition there are other sources of information in websites listing cyclist-friendly accommodation:

• Austria Vienna Wien.info has 130 cyclist friendly hotels/pensions/guest houses on its books.
• Belgium 
• Flanders http://www.visitflanders.co.uk/discover/flanders/cycling-flanders/bed-and-bike/index.jsp lists 300 places to stop, that offer all that that warms the heart of the touring cyclist.
• Wallonia An Internet search did not reveal any website offering information about cyclist-friendly accommodation in the French speaking province of Belgium. 
• Croatia There seems to be no specific information available on cyclist friendly hotels but on the other hand we suspect that all the hotels in Croatia are cyclist-friendly.
• Denmark The http://cyclistic.dk/en/ website has lists of cyclist-friendly accommodation in Denmark.
• France In our experience all French hotels are cyclist-friendly and with one exception over about 35 years of cycling in France, we've always had somewhere to lock our bikes away, in the countryside in sheds and in the cities conference rooms or unused offices. 
• Netherlands The http://www.allefietserswelkom.nl/kaart shows a map of the Netherlands with accommodation marked. By clicking on the map one links to the hotel and hostel websites. The website is in Dutch, but the accommodation websites often offer an English version. 
• Poland There seems to be no specific information available on cyclist friendly hotels but on the other hand we suspect that all the hotels in Poland are cyclist-friendly. There are links to accommodation on http://www.poland.travel/en/cycling/cyclist--environmentalist/. 
• Switzerland Check out http://www.veloland.ch/en/accommodation.html

Value for Money Cycle Tourists' Hotel in Passau on the Danube Cycle Route

By chance we found and stopped in the Rotel Inn in Passau recently. It's on the Danube Cycle Route. We can recommend it. The beds are 2.50m wide as are the rooms. The rooms are not ensuite but the facilities are across the corridor.  Fifty Euros for a double room or 30 Euros for a single plus six Euros each for breakfast. The hotel is clean, comfortable and the breakfast is value for money. It is five minutes from the Hauptbahnhof (main railway station). There is WLAN/WIFI if you ask for it at the desk.

Cycle touring. Booking accommodation in advance.

We decided on a recent week long tour following the Inn Valley Route to book all our accommodation in advance. Some of our nights were spent in youth hostels. In our experience it is very difficult to find a double room with or without shower in a youth hostel just by turning up at the door.

We also used booking.com to book accommodation on several nights. This site avoids problems with landlords who would normally bar touring cyclists because they only wish to stop for one night. Single night book bookings are accepted. I presume the other websites offering booking are similar.

The great advantage is that the room is booked and guaranteed. There is no need to flog yourself into a heart attack to get to the hotel by 18:00, say, in case the owner decides you are not coming.

There are a few problems however with these systems:

• These websites do not always have all the accommodation in a city, town or village on their books. This means if you don't find a hotel on one site it pays to check one of the other booking sites.
• Check exactly where the hotel or guest house is. We just booked ourselves into a hotel about 200m (about 650') above and 3km away from the cycle route. It was a long walk pushing a heavily laden touring bike.
• Another snag is that these organisations fill your email in box with offers afterwards.
• In our experience there do not appear to be many B&Bs on these websites' lists. There are however special websites offering B&Bs. Feed B&B and the name of the country or the area you are interested in into your favourite search engine.
• Make sure you know how to get to the accommodation. Use one of the map apps to download the exact position. 

Biking/Bicycling/Cycling in Berlin

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

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

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

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

A hotel near Mont Ventoux

I have noticed the authors of other blogs receive gear and other goodies to test. This doesn't happen to us, but we do get the occasional eMail giving us info about bike hire or places to stay. This hotel is in Provence and we have walked nearby at Christmas. We could have cycled on most days as well, though whether our aged pins would get us up Mont Ventoux is debatable. The hotel looks like it is worth checking out.

LES GERANIUMS
Hôtel *** Restaurant
Place de La Croix
84330 Le Barroux
TEL 04 90 62 41 08 FAX 04 90 62 56 48
RCS CARPENTRAS B 448 394 577
les.geraniums@wanadoo.fr
www.hotel-lesgeraniums.com

Cyclist friendly accommodation in the Netherlands

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

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

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

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

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

Cycling in Sweden

We have recently come back from a trip along the Inlandsbanan - Inland Line, a railway line running roughly north south in Sweden. We spent some time in Malmö and Stockholm on our way to Mora and were surprised by the number of bicycles and the excellent bicycle facilities. Why we should have been surprised in the case of Malmö is not clear as it is only a hop, skip and a jump from Copenhagen which has probably the best cycling facilities in the world. Sweden is not a cheap place to visit, but empty spaces and wild life in the north or the greenery of the south coupled with good waymarking mean it is an excellent place to cycle. You can cut costs by using one of the Swedish Youth Hostels which also welcome grey and white heads such as ourselves. The official Swedish Tourist Website is here. This is a country where everybody speaks English. The only Swedish I know is "Hej, do you speak English?".
Cykelfrämjandet, the Swedish Cycling Club has followed the example of the ADFC in Germany and set up a Bed & Bike website. Some parts are in English, but the hotel/hostel/guesthouse descriptions are in Swedish. However this is why you have Google Translator on your computer.
If you are interested in a guided tour then check out www.swedenbybike.com. This website which is mainly in Swedish in August 2013, but a full English version is promised. The idea is you find a tour that looks interesting and then contact the tour operator via the website.
We will discuss bicycle service and hire in a later blog.

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Accommodation on the lower River Weser IV

We cycled into Bremen, stopped for a quick glance at a historic building or two, lunch and then, as ever, had trouble getting out of the city, even though we had only drunk coffee with our Bratwurst. We stopped underway in a village between Bremen and Bremerhaven. We would try to avoid the hotel in future. It was very noisy, so we will mention neither its name or the village.
The next day we fought a Dutch style headwind to reach Bremerhaven where we were faced with the problem of finding our hotel. It was for once dead easy to find. We followed the cycle route into town and arrived at Bürgermeister-Smidt-Str 1 near the Columbus Center. Our hotel was the havenhostel (T: +49 (0) 471 30 96 69 0) at Bürgermeister-Smidt-Str 209. Part of the Straße is in a pedestrian zone where cycling is only allowed between 22:00 and 10:00, so watch out  and walk unless you wish to contribute to the city's coffers.
The havenhostel is a former navy barracks, built around 1902. It offers simple lean but clean accommodation. The rooms are large and all ensuite with plastic floors. Breakfasts are self-service, but good. The staff are very friendly. At 75 Euros a night plus 6.50 Euros pp for breakfast in a big city the rooms are good value for money. One slightly weird thing is that the website is only in German though the staff speak English. Evening meals can be available during the week, depending on demand. It was weekend, anyway, when we were there. We ate an excellent Lobscouse in the Treffpunkt Kaiserhafen, "The last pub before New York" in the docks and a good Italian meal in a nearby restaurant the night after.

Accommodation on the lower River Weser III

We met our one flooded section on this day and discovered the only way through is to pedal fast and ignore the wet feet.

Keep on pedalling!

So far we had been paying about 50 Euros a night and decided to make a stop before Bremen where, according to the Bett und Bike website, prices for a double room can be as high as over 100 Euros. We arrived in Thedinghausen and discovered that the bridge over the River Eiter on the edge of the village was being rebuilt. As a result the village was host to a number of visiting building workers and there was no room at the inn for us. We talked to the mayor, but he was unable to help and so cycled 2-3km to the off route village of Morsum where we stopped in Döhlings Gasthaus at Zum Fleet 1 (http://www.doehlings-gasthaus.de/,  doehlings-gasthaus(at)t-online.de, T: +49 (0) 4204 91710). It was fine. If you decide to eat the cold cuts Platte then order one between two of you. Two were too much for us.

Accommodation on the lower River Weser II

The next night we stopped in Bücken, Lower Saxony in the 18th century Pension Rosengarten, (Manfred Behrmann, Markstraße 15, D27333 Bücken. T: +49 (0) 4251 6522, F: +49 (0) 4251 671796, E: info@weserradweg-rosengarten.de/). This is an excellent B&B where we enjoyed a pleasant room, a superb garden and an extensive tasty breakfast. 

A garden is a thing of beauty and a job for ever,

The house was built in 1740.

Accommodation on the lower River Weser I

We cycled last week from Minden to Bremerhaven along the Weser Cycle Route. It was a great trip. We started in pastoral splendour amongst large fields dotted with cows and good views across the river with the occasional barge.  We visited the ancient city of Bremen and then followed the Weser estuary with sea going vessels as far as Bremerhaven. The route appears to be unknown in Britain which is a pity.
We had met our friends Maxa and Tim when they joined our train in Kassel and we travelled to Minden together. After lunch in Minden we set off down the Weser or parallel to the Weser as although  the river levels were not as high as on the Elbe, parts of the cycle route were blocked by flooding. At about 16:00 after about 20km we discussed where we wanted to stop the night and decided to stop at the next Gasthaus. Within 200m a notice board pointed us left to the Mühlengasthof & Pension "Zum Letzten Streich". * This was an excellent decision. We had small but comfortable ensuite rooms and for one night lack of space is no problem, especially at these prices: 27 Euros per person in a double room. Dinner in the beer garden was excellent and breakfast equally so. A bike repair service and e-bike battery charging is available. The owners are mildly offbeat souls. The house and gardens are decorated with mosaics and ornaments that remind me of those created by the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The owners feed and offer shelter in the garden to 18 ± sterilised cats, castoffs from the local farmers. (No fear if you have a cat allergy, the cats know their place. They stay in the garden and on the ground floor. Just check the chairs before you sit sit down.) The pub has an annual blues night at the end of June. What more could one want?

*Mühlengasthof & Pension, Großenheerser Mühle 4, T: +49 (0) 5765 7330,
info (at) windmuehlegrossenheerse.de

The decision makers at work. The notice board is on the left of the photograph.

Mühlengasthof & Pension "Zum Letzten Streich".

Youth Hostels

The regular reader of this blog will have noticed that we are fans of Youth Hostels, even though our youth was some time ago. We noticed recently that some German Hostels are now offering one night membership for €2.50, rather than insisting that one takes out annual membership to stop for one night. This is unfortunately only for people 26 and under,  for some hostels and is only for a limited time, but I think it is a pointer to the future. The Swiss Youth Hostels have a similar system for everybody and Dutch Youth Hostels do not demand membership, but offer you a rebate if you are a member.

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.