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Three Great Bike Touring Routes In Europe

Posted February 4th, 2013

Every February, thousands of cyclists come to Amsterdam for the Fietsenwandelbeurs. It’s a gigantic fair centred on everything of interest for bike tourists, hikers, campers and anyone who enjoys the outdoors.

As part of the event, 3 bike routes are nominated for ‘best bike route of the year’. Here are the 2013 selections.

1. Velodyssey – The Atlantic Cycling Route
The top choice of this year’s judges is Velodyssey: a 1,200km bike route that starts in Britain and runs all the way down the western coast of France to the Spanish border. It’s France’s longest waymarked bike path and connects up neatly with the Eurovelo 6 and Eurovelo 4 routes.

2. Burgundy By Bike (Tour De Bourgogne)
The Tour De Bourgogne sounds like a food-loving cyclists’ dream. It’s a 580km bike route (soon to be expanded to 800km) that passes through the gastronomic capital of Dijon and famous wine regions around Mâcon. The route is set partly along voie vertes, canals and disused railway lines, where no motorised traffic is allowed. Detailed route descriptions and a GPS track are available from the website.

#3. The Vennbahn
At just 125km in length, the Vennbahn is the shortest of the three nominated routes. Unless you live nearby, it’s not likely to be a destination in its own right but could make a nice addition to a longer tour. It traces the path of an old railway line through Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. The website has some good information about the route and the area, including intriguing stories about the coffee smugglers that roamed the border areas of Germany and Belgium after World War II.

Posted in Belgium, Bike Touring Tips, Cycling Trips, France, Germany, Map

Helpful Route-Planning Resources For Bike Touring In Germany

Posted March 7th, 2012

The question of how to best plan a bicycle route through Germany recently came up on our Facebook group.

At first, we were stuck for an answer but after a bit of reflection we remembered a couple good resources.

#1. Naviki

This website is relatively new but looks promising. The interface is easy to figure out and once you’ve entered a start point and an end point for your tour, it produces a GPS route that can be downloaded in a variety of formats. Naviki even has smartphone apps if you’re planning on touring with an iPhone or Android handset.

The only thing that’s not clear to us is exactly how Naviki chooses a route: do they include local bike paths or only smaller roads? It’s certainly a good starting point for planning your tour in any case and you can always refine the route as you go along.

#2. Radweit

This is a totally different kettle of fish from Naviki and takes more effort to figure out but www.Radweit.de is also incredibly rewarding, once you understand how it works. The website is entirely in German so use Google Translate if your German isn’t up to scratch.

When you first access www.Radweit.de you’ll find it’s not exactly an ‘online route planner’ in the modern sense. You can’t just plug in a starting point and an end point and expect a route to pop up. What you can do, however, is access and print bike routes and maps for all of Germany and many surrounding countries.

The maps are impressively detailed and the website creator has gone to a great deal of trouble to fit only the relevant sections on each map. In David’s case, he could find information for his trip from Kiel to Munich by going to the page on bike routes to and from Munich.

On that page, he’d find a link detailing options for Kiel to Hamburg and Hamburg to Munich (outlined in red in the image below), as well as an overview of routes in Germany running to and from Munich.

Radweit

When he clicks on any of the links, he’d get a map like this. At first, it looks incomprehensible but look closely and you’ll see that on one neat sheet of A4 paper you have an entire 150km bike route. Just follow the sections in order. The end of section 1 lines up with the start of section 2 and so on…

Radweit

You can print the maps in black and white or colour, in A4 size or on A3 paper. Handy! With a little time to go through the site, you can print maps for an entire bike tour across Germany and even into neighbouring countries such as the Netherlands. Best of all – it’s free!

There are, of course, other options for planning bike tours across Germany. Our friend Blanche from the World Cycle Videos group suggested these websites:

Fietsrouteplanner – The interface is in Dutch but there’s an explanatory page in English. Note, you have to zoom in on the map a few times to see city names and if you’re typing a city name into the search box, try the Dutch spelling. It often doesn’t recognize the English spelling.
Via Michelin – There is a bicycle option and we’ve used it in the past but as we were writing this post it wasn’t working. Let’s hope it’s back in service soon!

Do you have a website to suggest? Share it by leaving a comment!

Posted in Bike Touring Tips, Germany, Map

34km Wallgau to Seefeld

Posted August 8th, 2007

The pitter patter of rain falling on our tent woke us up this morning, just as it carried us off to sleep the night before. Usually the weather clears before long though, so we packed up all our bags, had our breakfast and started getting the bikes ready. Just as we were about to start taking down the tent, the skies opened and we crept back inside our shelter. We sat there for well over an hour and still the rain poured down. There was really nothing to do but to make a break for it so we dressed up in all our waterproof clothes and made a dash outside, pulling the tent down as quickly as possible and then pushing on down the road with water dripping down our noses. We saw a few other crazy cyclists out in the wet, but mostly we had the trails and roads to ourselves. On these cold, soggy days we try to make lots of stops so we first went for coffee, then groceries and to the tourist bureau. Every few minutes in the warm and dry is a boost to the morale. Our spirits got a real dash, however, when we checked the weather: four straight days of rain are in the forecast. It could be a wet week ahead! We did get the occasional break in the rain but mostly it kept true to the prediction. Wet, wet, wet. By the time we reached the mountain resort town of Seefeld we were fed up, tired and grumpy. With our tent soaked, we thought a campsite with a hot shower might be just the ticket. There’s only one in Seefeld and it’s a ritzy spot with prices to match but when the campsite comes with a sauna and heated TV room we can relax and eat meals in, it’s worth it.

Posted in Austria, Cycling Trips, Germany, Journal Entries

66km Gartenberg to Wallgau

Posted August 7th, 2007

The foothills of the Alps gave our legs got a workout today and a good thing too since the truly lofty peaks aren’t far ahead. We’ve got at least one mountain pass in our path tomorrow and within the next few days we’ll have the chance to climb to nearly 2,800m to Italy‘s famous Passo di Stelvio. The weather and our mood will determine whether we make the hike but at the moment it’s a tempting thought. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good challenge and mountain climbs are always a thriller; for the view and sense of achievement at the top as well as for the eye-watering descents. For the moment, however, we are content to roll along the ups and downs of the tail end of Bavaria. We’ve continued to follow the Isar river and have stopped more than once to read on its banks and swim in the clear blue and very cold water. There were also plenty of local beer gardens in our path so we propped our bikes up against a fence and treated ourselves to a cool drink. When in Germany…. Despite the beer, we were making quite good time and hoped to cross into Austria today but rain set in late in the afternoon and instead we stopped for a final night in Germany, camping once again close to the Isar river.

Posted in Cycling Trips, Germany, Journal Entries

61km Munich to Gartenberg

Posted August 6th, 2007

Getting out of cities is almost always a challenge and leaving Munich was no exception, even though it’s a city we love and know well. We missed turns for the bike path we tried to follow, fought traffic and dodged numerous crowds of photo-snapping tourists before we finally reached the Isar river and the trail leading out of the city. When we finally got underway we found a side of Munich we’d never seen before: hundreds of people out swimming and sunbathing on the banks of the fast-flowing Isar. Smooth white rocks made up the beach and nearby there were plenty of green tree-filled fields. It looked like an idyllic spot to spend a sunny afternoon. We stopped for a few minutes to dip our toes in the water but soon carried on, down a woodland trail that will take us all the way to Austria. We were glad to have thick tyres on the bike because the path was often covered in gravel and bumpy. Hills also reappeared – something we haven’t really had in some time – so overall things were a little more challenging than the smooth, flat roads we’ve become used to but nothing we couldn’t handle. All through the afternoon we saw people jumping in the river and sailing down its waters in plastic inflatable boats. The current was quite fast and we wonder how some of them got back upstream at the end of the day! Near sunset we found a clearing in the woods to pitch our tent and gladly flopped into bed. Normally we’d feel rested after a few days in one place but with so much running around to see family and friends we now are trying to get back into our normal pattern.

Posted in Cycling Trips, Germany, Journal Entries

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