Thoughts on hiring bikes on the Romantic Road between Würzburg and Füssen

We are rewriting our Romantic Road guide book at present to make it more compact and readable. Judith is rewriting the pages at the moment. When she is finished I'll play the editor and copy-edit. My job at the moment is the boring one: checking our appendices - accommodation, bicycle shops, bicycle hire etc.
I have noticed that more bike shops are renting bicycle and e-bicycles these days. However, and this is a big disadvantage, we have only found one shop offering a one way hire either from Würzburg to Füssen or vice versa. Considering that cyclists on the Berlin-Copenhagen Route can hire a bike at one end and drop it it off at the other, i.e. in two different countries with different currencies, it strikes me that it should be possible to cross one province: Bavaria with a set of bikes, picking them up at one end and dropping them off at the other. If you hire at one end and wish to take the bikes back, it's not that expensive to travel back to your start point by local train, but it takes at least six hours involving one or two changes.
There is one company that will allow you pick up a bike in Füssen (with pre-programmed GPS) and drop it off a week or so later in Würzburg. The Romantic Road cycle route is about 420km long and so a week would be a pleasant trip. The company is Radstation Allgäu, Abt Heß Straße 11, in the Multicycle store, D-87629 Füssen, Germany, T: 0049/0171/2056371,  info@radstationallgaeu.de, http://www.radstationallgaeu.de  (in German and Portuguese). A week's bike hire with bike pick up will cost you 179€ or a five day trip with four nights accommodation in middle class hotels for 599€. The company has a minibus and will pick you up after a week or so's cycling in Würzburg or somewhere before. How much this return trip costs is not clear. You could also just hire a bike or an e-bike for a week for between 55 and 120€, cycle to Augsburg or even Donauwörth and take the Via Claudia Augusta cycle route back to Füssen.

New Books about Cycling in Europe and on the Romantic Road

We have produced two new e-books.

"Cycling the Romantic Road from Würzburg to Füssen" available from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/291295. We have a printed book which is similar but covers the route in both directions. You can order it from us via http://bicycletouringeurope.eu/.

"Cycling in Europe" available from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/245564
 and from Amazon. Check your local Amazon shop for "Cycling in Europe" on the Kindle site. "Cycling in Europe" is a collection of advice and hints about cycle touring on the continent.

We are in process of writing "Rhine II" Basel to Rotterdam. Here are a few photographs taken on our last research expedition.
Judith hard at work in Zons, an historic village between Cologne and Düsseldorf.

 Neil photographing the harbour quarter in Düsseldorf.

To find out what is in the green baths, visit Düsseldorf or drop us a line via the comments facility.

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.

"Mainly in High Gear" available as e-book.

"Mainly in High Gear" our guide to cycling around Lake Constance will only be available as an e-book in future from Smashwords.com and shortly as a Kindle book. We have just published the new updated book on Smashwords and will prepare the Kindle version over the next few days.

Lake Constance on a bike, a tandem or a trike

We are rewriting our Lake Constance book - "Only in High Gear" as an e-book on Smashwords and on Kindle. It really is a superb place for a family cycling holiday:
Almost no hills.
If a day goes on too long there are ships aplenty to climb on.
Every lakeside community offers swimming beaches.
Three countries to choose from.
What we have noticed though is that the cosy world of cycle touring is not immune to financial trends. The high cost of the Swiss Franc means that the Swiss hotel trade has been hard hit as tourists stay away. We have noticed that some hotels have closed. We try to suggest ways round the cost of holiday making in Switzerland in the guide - where to eat and where to stay.
We hope the book will be in the electronic bookshops in about a month.