Ewan's Cycling Blog

 That was maybe the nicest 100km of riding we have ever done. Lots of this The wide open plain of the Baar plateau  And quite a lot of this The gravel paths through the Schwartzwald And even time for some of this. Endless opportunities for Apfelkuchen. But before all that fun, we had an incredibly hot and sweaty night — but not in a good way.  On previous trips hotel stays have been conditioned on whether or not there was a heated towel rail to dry one’s washing on, it appears that for the next 12 days it’s mostly going to be about whether or not the hotel has air conditioning.  The Hotel Linde does not.  However, Donaueshingen does have a sizeable population of people who own cars without silencers and who like to drive around at 2am shouting a lot.  It was a challenging evening. Breakfast was the usual 3 star fare but seated amid some…eclectic…decoration which seemed to be a fusion of Far Eastern influences and a 1950s East German apartment.  We didn...

Once again it’s time for a long-distance self-supported cycle trip across Europe. After the success of last year’s Rhine Cycle Trip  (i.e. we had fun, didn’t get divorced, avoided most of the things that can go wrong) there was an intensive planning session just after Christmas where we investigated the possibilities for a trip this year.  A ride in North America was a possibility but the US and Canada are really sparsely populated which makes it hard to route and plan.  Also, logistics is hard. We seriously considered Warsaw to Tallin or Vilnius to Tallin.  These would have been a bit shorter than usual but would have been new countries, lots to explore, lots of history but maybe more challenging weather and the proximity to Russia was…problematic. Cycling from the Rhine to the Danube following the Rhine-Main-Danube canal was a nice idea since it would have linked the ride last year to the one the year before but it turned out that there was a lot of it which was t...

This final post of the trip will have multiple sections. One the traditional travelogue of the day and the rest on gear, clothing, kit, route etc. The day Due to some weird interaction between the Vodafone Maritime service, timezone changes and Apple's alarm app, we woke up at 4:30am. Two hours before disembarkation... This was not a great start to the day. The ferry had already docked and we stared at the trucks unloading in the early dawn light our of our giant porthole window. There were hundreds of trucks and, watching them driving off, one gets an insight into how much cross-border trade and transport goes on "under the hood" of economies. If only the Tory party had realised how much of this goes on day after day after day before they threw a giant bag of Brexit sand into the gears of the economy. But you're not here for the economic commentary. "Tell us more about the biking stuff Dr K", "Were there any gravel fac...

Top marks to the Eye Hotel (named after the famous British R&B covers band) for a quiet room amid the Utrecht freshers party central scene. We enjoyed another fabulous Dutch breakfast spread and then headed out on the road. Today was just over 100km to Hoek van Holland and we had a lot of time to get there. Leaving at 9am meant we would get there around 2pm and have four and a half hours to wait for the ferry. So we dawdled. Endless perfect cycling infrastructure. The Netherlands are an absolute joy to cycle in. I’ve gone on and on about how great the cycling infrastructure is in cities and in the countryside and I’m going to go on and on about it a little bit more. Cycling is embedded in the country in a way that we could only dream of in the UK. From signage to just how many types of cyclists there are, it’s eye opening. We live in Cambridge which has the highest density of cycling per head of population in the UK and it’s nothing compared to wa...