Has anyone rode through Germany?

[GmanUK65]

If anyone has seen my earlier thread, they would be aware that I am planning a tour around Europe in a couple of years. Part of the tour will involve travelling through Germany into Innsbruck in Austria. Getting to Germany does not seem any problem with riding through Netherlands but trying to work out a route through Germany seems a nightmare. Has anyone attempted touring through Germany, or does anyone know where I can gain information either online or paperback?

 

[HobbesOnTour]

Hi,
I don't mean to be negative, but a quick Google will throw up a lot of options.
Depending on what you want to see and do, the easiest is probably to follow the Rhine as far as Lake Konstanz and then on to Innsbruck.
Alternatively, the Rhine, join up with the RomantischStrasse at Heidelberg and go as far as Fussen and then (uphill!) to Innsbruck.

http://cycle.travel/map will give you lots of options and flexibility.

And as for your other thread.... buying a bike on Finance? For a trip in 2-3 years? To cycle in Germany?
You could spend a grand, but you really don't need to. An old mountainbike, throw on a rack (or 2) and away you go. You could put a bike together for 100 if you're not loaded too heavy. You're never going to be far from a town and a bike shop if the worst comes to the worst (wurst?)

Holland, Germany & Austria have great cycling infrastructure. And public transport that takes bikes in case of emergency. You're overthinking this.

 

[Tigerbiten]

I've cycle toured in Germany, up the Rhine, down the Elbe, along the Baltic.
It easier than in the UK as the cycle paths tend to be a lot better.

How much of an "official" route do you want to follow.
If you want an "official" route, look at joining parts of the EuroVelo routes together until you there.
For an unofficial route start with something like the OSM cycle map, https://www.opencyclemap.org/.
Red lines on it are national routes, purple lines are regional routes and blue lines are local.
Just join the lines together from your start to finish.

Easy ...........

 

[Andy in Germany]

Cycling in Germany is easy: I do it every day...

German infrastructure isn't quite Royal Dutch Standard in most places but even in Stuttgart, a town reckoned to be pretty pants by German stndards, you can generally find a route that avoids the worst of the main roads, and between towns we have a massive network of Feldwege, which are not officially cycle ways, more 'farm tracks' but they are generally surfaced and car free, you just have to watch out for tractors and pedestrians. I can cycle from our village to most nearby towns following these Feldwege and rarely touch a major road or gravel trail.

Most major roads these days also have a cycleway alongside -most of the time- although sometimes the ideas designers have come up with to get around junctions can be... 'creative' they generally don't involve detour of more than a few hundred metres. I usually double check Google Earth.

Signage is a bit iffy sometimes because it is the responsibility of local towns so you can be happily following the signs in town A and then suddenly find that they have changed colour from red to green or shrunk or in some cases vanished altogether (Stuttgart I'm looking at you here) but that is improving and is now rare enough to cause much harrumphing on cyclists forums.

I'll have a look at the maps I have when I get back tonight. If you use an online map always check the sattelite images because unfortunately some don't differentiate between a Feldweg that is surfaced and one that is two muddy ruts in a field: I just looked at OpenCycleMap for my village and it has this problem. Others are made for politicians to claim there are lots of cycleways and can't tell the difference between a traffic free cycleway and a main road. Google isn't bad but the best I've found so far is Map My Ride, surprisingly.

As others have said, there are several long distance routes, often along the main rivers like the Rhine. These will take you most of the way you need to go to be honest: I managed to travel a lot of the Rhine route using a Bakfiets which isn't the easiest of touring bikes to use.

 

[Heltor Chasca]

Cycle.travel , Kamoot or Ride With GPS. Plenty of options to end your nightmare and start your dreams.

 

[Heltor Chasca]

A bit pointless to be planning for something so far ahead in terms of routes and bike buying. Anything could happen in the meantime.
Wait until nearer the time, then do all your research, there could be new routes by then, new touring bikes, anything.Or you could have just changed your mind

I can’t disagree more. Part of the adventure is planning and dreaming.

 

[gaijintendo]

I can’t disagree more. Part of the adventure is plannig and dreaming.

I planned an extremely boring 10 day long tour, and had a whole ten days to lament it.

I'd spot cool things to do ten miles this way off track, and not have the time to take the detour and advantage of the time.

I would try and establish whst general route works best for you, and do some virtuao tourism.

Given it is two years away... maybe even learn about the history of the region. Read a book, listen to relevant In Our Times etc.

Then give yourself a couple of months to pick your route.

 

[Andy in Germany]

If someone wants to go to Germany then just go on a 100 quid bike and get off.
My friend did LEJOG, just packed a change of clothes/ washbag and did it. No point messing about.

Considering I spend a lot of my cycling time on my €200 commuter bike and it hasn't collapsed yet, I'd say that's doable. I think we have a tendency to over plan when going somewhere new.

Given it is two years away... maybe even learn about the history of the region. Read a book, listen to relevant In Our Times etc.

Then give yourself a couple of months to pick your route.

Sound advice. Germany is packed with history and cool places to see. Just around the corner from us there's a castle that looks like Neuschwanstein that almost no-one outside Germany has heard of because it's not Neuschwanstein, and because there are half a dozen like it nearby.

 

[GmanUK65]

Hi,
I don't mean to be negative, but a quick Google will throw up a lot of options.
Depending on what you want to see and do, the easiest is probably to follow the Rhine as far as Lake Konstanz and then on to Innsbruck.
Alternatively, the Rhine, join up with the RomantischStrasse at Heidelberg and go as far as Fussen and then (uphill!) to Innsbruck.

http://cycle.travel/map will give you lots of options and flexibility.

And as for your other thread.... buying a bike on Finance? For a trip in 2-3 years? To cycle in Germany?
You could spend a grand, but you really don't need to. An old mountainbike, throw on a rack (or 2) and away you go. You could put a bike together for 100 if you're not loaded too heavy. You're never going to be far from a town and a bike shop if the worst comes to the worst (wurst?)

Holland, Germany & Austria have great cycling infrastructure. And public transport that takes bikes in case of emergency. You're overthinking this.

Your not being negative, it is good advice. Following the Rhine is a good idea. As for the bike, I want a touring bike which is the reason I am getting one.

 

[mjr]

If you use an online map always check the sattelite images because unfortunately some don't differentiate between a Feldweg that is surfaced and one that is two muddy ruts in a field: I just looked at OpenCycleMap for my village and it has this problem.

Only in the rendering. The underlying database contains data on how rough the highway is and cycle.travel uses it, showing unsurfaced parts of a plotted route in green. Other renderings may use it, or you can check routes on osm.org cycle layer by using the pointer query tool, the arrow with a question mark, but that's almost as tedious as looking at satellite imagery.

 

[snorri]

I can’t disagree more. Part of the adventure is planning and dreaming.

I can't disagree more, for some of us, planning is tediously mind blowing and/or sleep inducing. Just get on your bike and cycle until half of your allocated time for the tour has expired, turn around and come back another way.
No plan, no cares, no stress, freedom!
There is definitely more than one way to approach cycle touring.

 

[Grant Fondo]

Following the Mosel down to Trier is particularly nice, epic scenery, Roman architecture and great wine....wish i was there right now

 

[Andy in Germany]

Only in the rendering. The underlying database contains data on how rough the highway is and cycle.travel uses it, showing unsurfaced parts of a plotted route in green. Other renderings may use it, or you can check routes on osm.org cycle layer by using the pointer query tool, the arrow with a question mark, but that's almost as tedious as looking at satellite imagery.

I'll try and check that, if I can work out how. I can imagine it working for roads and major routes but there are several hundred kilometres of 'feldweg' in our town alone, so I'm not sure it would be that detailed.

Mind you, our town produced a cycle map for several years which showed a 'cycleway' which was nothing more than a field: not even a dirt path, just grass and occasionally hay bales. After protests from cyclists one councillor even claimed he'd used the cycleway and it was 'perfectly fine'.

 

[Ticktockmy]

My way for planning a tour, is once a country is decided, select a start point and a turn round point if you intend to start and finish at the same place, draw a straight line between the two, and use that as a centreline for your tour, then you can wibble wobble around it both outbound and inbound. Or just go with the wind on your back and see where you go. Have a look on Crasyguyonabike https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/

 

[Tigerbiten]

I'm slightly different because I ride a recumbent trike and pull a trailer while on tour.
So the only public transport I can use is ferries, so I cycle from home to home.

Once I've a rough idea where I'm going, I'll check the various online maps to get a rough overview of the route.
Then I plan the first 4-5 days.
Once I get towards the end of the planned section, I'll check paper/online maps to plan out the next 4-5 day section in more detail.
Doing it this way means it's easy to divert off the rough route if somewhere looks interesting.
It's how I ended up in Riga after cycling down the Danube to the Black Sea, just a short 1,300 mile detour north before heading back west toward home ...........