Finding a bike inner tube in Germany when shops are shut or just a bike shop

When we are touring we always try to set off with at least one spare inner tube per bike. If we have more than two punctures we try to buy another tube. Murphy's Law will then come into play and the odds are that we'll need a spare inner tube once shops have shut. However the well organised Germans have a cure for this. Many German bike shops have Schlauchautomaten (bicycle inner tube dispensers) similar to cigarette machines but healthier, fitted on an outside wall. The next question then arises where do we find a bike shop? Schwalbe, the German tyre and inner company has supplied our local bike shop with signposts so that strangers can find their way to the shop and the inner tube dispenser. These signs can also be used to find a bike if your bike needs  repairing. A good idea and an excellent bike shop.

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.

Hire Bikes on the Rhine in Marckolsheim, Alsace, France

 The Tourist Information Office in Marckolsheim has stable touring bikes and e-bikes to hire for half a day, a full day or for a week.
Tourist Information: Office de Tourisme** de Marckolsheim et Environs 13 rue du Maréchal Foch, T : 03 88 92 56 98, E: marckolsheim(at)grandried.fr, W: http://www.grandried.fr/en/leisure/bicycle-rentals.htm, Half daily, daily or week long hire €12 per day for adults and €8 per day for children

Comparing ADFC Route Quality Ratings

The ADFC, the German cycling club has started a rating system for cycle routes. These are mainly in Germany but a few are in Austria. We wrote about these last year. Since then more routes have been added. We will write about these shortly.
We were glad to see that the Tauber Valley Classic Route along the floor of the valley received a five star rating, but surprised to see that the Romantic Road Cycle Route only received three stars. The Romantic Road joins the Tauber Valley Classic Route for 70 of its 420km. We looked at the results in detail:

We have cycled both routes often. What struck us was that the Romantic Road got much lower values in four areas:

• Ease of riding. It is true that the Tauber Valley Route has just about no barriers with only one flight of steps and thus deserves the 5 stars. There are some barriers on the Romantic Road. It is the longer route by far.  We don't think it deserves such a low marking.
• Surface: The Romantic Road has some stretches that are not tarred, whereas the Tauber Valley route has far fewer, but the former is much longer.
• Sign posting. We don't think the Romantic Road sign posting is poor. We have never had problems following the route. Sign posting can be improved easily, but it is the responsibility of local authorities, rather than the Romantische Strasse Touristik Arbeitsgemeinschaft GbR, the tourism body responsible for marketing and coordinating activities along the whole route.
• The route design. This has a low weighting and it is not easy to assess.

We suspect that there will be improvements in the above areas which will improve the ratings of the Romantic Road Cycle Route.

On pavement (sidwalk) and on cycleway parking in Viernheim

I was interested to read in our local paper this morning that the town council has issued a request to motorists to take more care in parking in the older parts of the town with very narrow streets. The available road is then often less than 3.20m wide. Emergency vehicles and the like it would appear, are having problems getting past vehicles parked opposite each other.
In addition because of this problem of narrow streets, parking with two wheels on pavements (sidewalks) is tolerated, but motorists are supposed to leave a 1m gap between the car and the wall to allow pensioners with wheeled Zimmer frames, wheelchairs, pram pushing mums and children under eight on bicycles to pass without hindrance. Children under eight must use the pavement by law. This gap of 1m is often ignored. At the moment these children are forced out into the road.  The town council requests parents, teachers etc.  make the law clear to any motorist they find parking so that the pavement is blocked. This might however lead to unpleasant scenes. German motorists are not amused when one points out that they are wrongly parked.

In addition cycleways are often  regarded as a parking place.
I suspect a campaign by the town's parking wardens issuing tickets would be more effective. Even though it might well be political suicide for any council taking this course of action.

Using empty shops as bicycle garages in Vienna

We spent some time in Vienna last year. We didn't take the Brompton folding bikes. In fact we didn't cycle at all. Viennese public transport is superb with frequent underground trains, trams and buses, so there was no need to cycle at least for the ten days or so we were there. However the Viennese city fathers are encouraging cycling and there was an exhibition in the Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst (Austrian Design Museum) on classic bicycles where I also picked up a copy of "Cycling Affairs: Smarte Ideen für Rad & Stadt" (Clever ideas for bikes in the city) published by the Creative Agency of the city of Vienna. The book discusses the prizewinning suggestions in a design competition on cycling in cities. There are over 400 suggestions displayed in the book. We are not going to discuss all of them, but some of the ideas deserve publicising further.
The winning idea was to use a number of small empty shops as bicycle garages, called Rad WG - bicycle flats or apartments, where bicycles can be stored safely and, warm and dry, protected from the weather. Participants would receive a chip card to get into the rooms. These offer room for bike storage with video camera surveillance, a basic workshop and an information terminal. A smart phone app could be used to show where room is available nearby. These bicycle storage areas would also act as meeting place for cyclists to swop ideas and receive or give advice.
A big problem seems to me to be the question of who owns the shop. Who would pay the rent?  The chances of success when cyclists have to pay rent are low. Mannheim station has a parking garage for bikes in an old baggage dispatch hall next to the station which costs 30 cents a day for a monthly ticket. I think it does reasonably well, but the station square is littered with bicycles chained to fences. Not all of these bikes are old clapped out bikes for the city that are unattractive for thieves. In Britain at least perhaps one could use the former public libraries which are being shut down at every opportunity.

Romantic Road

There is a short two minute film on YouTube which gives a good idea of what to expect in the villages, towns and cities along the Romantic Road in Bavaria (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNA9hD-joEg&feature=youtube_gdata). Our eBook from Amazon or Smashwords.com will also help with the roads and cycle tracks in between the settlements if you decide to explore this historic patch of countryside.

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

An excursion from Kleve

We have written about knooppunts, a grid based navigation system for cyclists in the Netherlands, in the past. We mentioned as well that some of the German communities on the Dutch borders have invested in this type of waymarking. These include Emmerich and Kleve both of which are on the Lower Rhine. Kleve is well known to the British because of its connections to Anne of Cleves, one of Henry VIII's wives. However the town has connections to another European blue blooded family: Orange Nassau the Dutch royal family.
The tourist office in Kleve has laid out the 53km circular Oranierroute starting in the Tiergartenstraße  following: knoopunts 26 - 4 - 3 - 88 - 86 - 80 - 81 - 80 - 85 - 10 - 25 - 32 - 31 - 6 - 30 - 96 - 81 - 94 - 5 - 26. If you follow this tour you can visit the Huis Bergh chateau, one of the biggest  in the the Netherlands, climb to vantage point to look across to Kleve, take a barefoot walk, have a short ferry trip to Millingen aan de Rijn before returning to Kleve. There is no shortage of cafes along the route. There is a website: www.kleve-tourismus.de where you can download a flyer in German about the route. A word of warning though the map is rather indistinct.

Bike Hire in Cherbourg, France

The area around Cherbourg is an excellent place to cycle. On a recent trip through the city we found a bicycle hire company: Location de velos, Port Chantereyne, Cherbourg, Tel: +33 (0)2 33 03 76 75. 2013 prices for touring-city bikes were:

• Half day €9
• Day €15
• Two days €25
• Three days €32
• Four days €39
• Five days €46
• One week €56

Safer tram lines?

One of the more exciting aspects of urban cycling in continental Europe are tram lines. Judith's knee still bears the scars she received when she fell off her bike, after the front wheel jammed in a tram line, some years ago. Tram lines are cunningly designed to take and hold a bicycle wheel. Whether it is front or back you will suddenly find sideways motion is impossible and the bike stops moving, all at once, with embarrassing results. They also offer a surprising wide flat area of metal which is slippery in wet weather and can lead to breakaway of the back end of the bicycle. This is interesting, but to be avoided.
VBZ, the Zurich traffic authority has started a pilot project to see if  tramlines can be made safer. It has filled a short stretch of tramline with rubber. The tram compresses this, but cyclists can ride over the filled section without the unpleasant effects mentioned above. The first results of this test phase are due in spring 2014. For more information in German see: www.stadt-zuerich.ch/masterplanvelo.

An idea for cycle clubs

The ADFC section in Ottersweier, a village south of Karlsruhe in the Rhine Valley, organises free bike parking for the annual Dorfbachfest, a typical jolly German weekend fest with grilled sausages, beer and umpah bands. The village council supplies a car park and galvanised wire builders' fencing. The ADFC supplies volunteers to guard the bike park, organises a ticketing system and has an information stand. The chairman of the ADFC group and the organiser of this action wrote that cyclists are overjoyed to find secure parking and it is a good way to acquire new members.
I realise that do's with umpah bands and beer are few and far between in Britain, but there will be large numbers of cyclists to watch le Tour next year in Yorkshire and there will be more mass cycling events in London, so CTC local groups could help themselves and the cycling community by laying on bike parking at various events.
5 January 2014: I suppose it could even be seen as one of the ideas supported by David Cameron in the Big Society project.

e-Bike Holidays in Switzerland

Over the years we have cycled a lot in Switzerland. When we talk about these trips with friends and acquaintances both cost and the mountains are mentioned. "Too expensive and we can't climb Alpine passes!" However I have recently picked up a Swiss national tourist office brochure with details of an eight or nine day trip across Switzerland from Lake Geneva via Interlaken and the Jungfrau region to Heidiland and the River Rhine through the mountains but over them. In 2013 the cost was about £1000 including e-Bike hire, luggage transfer and, bed and breakfast stopping in normal hotels. A similar trip stopping in youth hostels would have set you back about £825.  The e-bike flattens out the passes. Check out the trips in 2014 on http://www.swisstrails.ch/.

Bicycle Parking in Bensheim

Bensheim is a small town (about 40 000 inhabitants) in our county lying in the Rhine Valley between Heidelberg and Frankfurt am Main. The railway station has excellent bike parking facilities including bike boxes and bike racks.  There appear to be difficulties in the main shopping street, but there are moves by shops and stores to install more bike racks. In addition the council has set up a working party to investigate a bike parking garage. This might well use the model in Strasbourg. This would not be free of charge. I have my doubts about how prepared German cyclists are, to pay for parking, but we will keep our eye on matters and report. 

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. 

Hiring e-bikes

We have a problem at present. We want to finish our new e-book version of "Rhine 2"covering the Rhine from Basel to Rotterdam. Our printed version is now both out of date and print, but does still attract orders via older versions of the website (www.bergstrassebikebooks.com) which can be found on mirror sites in the Internet. We do have the upstream version "Following the Rhine gently upstream Rotterdam to Basel, a Cycle Tourist’s Guide" available from Smashwords and Amazon, which will be updated this winter.
The problem is that we need to cycle about 280km across the Netherlands from the German border to the Hook of Holland. We cannot do this until the middle of November.  In the Netherlands November means gales from the west, the way we want to go. To be sensible, we need an e-bike each. We can hire them, but of course when we are done we will need to return the bikes. This means a train journey with changes. Do the operators on the Dutch railways offer accompanied transport of e-bikes? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could hire a bike in Arnhem or Nijmegen and drop it off in Rotterdam? It is possible to hire bikes in cities in Switzerland and drop them off elsewhere in Switzerland. We have two possible cures:

• We could persuade Batavus or Gazelle to lend us a bike each for the publicity.
• We could buy a couple of Dutch e-bikes from the Gazelle Outlet Shop. These bikes in the Netherlands are cheaper than in Germany. The problem then is our local bike shop owner would probably scrag us and rightly so.

Czech cycleways

We went to a lecture last year at our local bike shop given by an employee who had cycled alone from Viernheim to Istanbul and returned via a different route with his girl friend. She described the return journey though the Czech Republic and mentioned the difficulty they had cycling on the rough paths there. We were surprised to hear this, but our experience is similar, although we only walked along a few km of Czech cycle route a few weeks ago. The tracks were bumpy, covered with layer of 1" sandstone pebbles, more suitable for the robust bikes the continental Europeans call trekking bikes than the thin tyred Audax road bikes many Brits and North Americans use for touring. Signposting was very good.
We did however find a new EU sponsored cycle- and footpath running from Doubrava, Czech Republic to Bad Elster west of the Bily Halstrov/Weiße Elster river as part of the Elster Cycleway from As (Czech Republic) to Halle an der Saale (Germany) which had a smooth high class tarmac surface. Maybe things are looking up.

Czech cycle route signposting on a minor road

City Hire Bikes in Heidelberg, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen

In April of next year the cities in the Rhein-Neckar metropolitan region, i.e. Heidelberg, Ludwigshafen and Mannheim will set up a joint bike hire system à la Barclay Bikes in London or the velib system in Paris. The VRN, the regional transport authority has been authorised to issue a call for tenders. It is planned to incorporate the new bike system in the present combined payment system for public transport tickets and car sharing.
This move has perhaps initiated one major change: From 1 January next year cyclists will be able to buy a €1.80 bicycle ticket allowing them to take bicycles on local and regional trains before 09:00 on weekdays. Up to now one needed to buy an annual season ticket to travel with a non-folding bicycle between Mondays and Fridays in the morning rush hour which ruled out occasional transport on trains.

Le Tour - a book review

I was  checking what is available on the Smashwords e-book website on cycle touring in Europe, last night and discovered that  Selwyn Parker's "Chasing the Chimney Sweep" can be bought there.  "Chasing the Chimney Sweep" is an account of four friends who followed the route of the first Tour de France for a month during one summer about a decade ago. The book was originally published as a paperback by Penguin in Australia or New Zealand. Friends who visited NZ, brought back a copy and lent it to us. It is an excellent description of a long cycle tour through the French countryside, including what can go wrong. The history of the early Tour de France is recounted in fascinating detail. Those early cyclists make the rest of us look like milksops and the bikes were definitely instruments of torture.

However the book should come with a health warning. The author has strong opinions about various matters and some of these almost caused us to throw the book across the room in disgust. (We too have strong opinions!)

• He thinks, for example, that using panniers is "uncool" for stylistic reasons and he and his partner cycled with heavy rucksacks. Unfortunately they happened to choose the hottest summer since records began and so cycling wearing a rucksack was very uncomfortable. They needed to send some stuff back to the Antipodes by post. The other couple camped and used panniers. They appear to have fewer problems. 
• He then moans about the cost of using the French Postal Service.
• Unfortunately he doesn't agree with the idea of "When in Rome…". He dislikes French coffee, because he likes to drink a very weak milky coffee at breakfast and the French hotels don't offer exactly what he wants.

However we recommend the book highly with some reservations about rucksacks and coffee.

Everything runs like it's just been oiled.

The city of Mannheim, Germany offers free bike checks in the summer at various events and it is an excellent way of showing folk who don't cycle much how make their cycling easier, by pumping up tyres, oiling chains, adjusting gears and making sure brakes work. It's a very popular service. The queues can be very long. When I first saw this I was impressed, although the ADFC Bergstraße has organised a stand for years at the biannual closure to motorised traffic of the Bergstrasse between Heppenheim and Darmstadt. We have even helped on the stand. I was also impressed to realise that the CTC had organised a similar service at the Prudential RideLondon weekend. This is obviously something that meets a public need.