Ewan's Cycling Blog

A long day with a lot of gruesome uphills but some absolutely stunning views and a lot of descent. Last night, dinner at the Radisson Blu Andermatt was pretty underwhelming. Poor pasta, terrible soup.  Not a good start. In the morning Andermatt looked its usual charmless self. The town was never one of the traditional ski villages so it’s now just a mess of ugly apartment buildings and soulless windswept squares. We’ve been here in the winter and, unlike other alpine villages, it doesn’t get better with a covering of snow. The Radisson Blu did rather redeem itself with a superb breakfast buffet but apart from that, I wouldn’t consider it a “destination hotel”. Getting to the Oberalppass from Andermatt on a bike involves climbing 600m on a twisty and busy road at gradients of 12%. Or you can take the Matterhorn Gotthard Railway  to the source of the Rhine for 8 CHF and 4 CHF for your bike. Let’s face it, that’s the easiest decision of...

Once more into the breach...but this time it's different! After the "challenges" of the Danube ride last year, I really felt that I wanted to do a long-distance self-supported cycling trip which didn't involve nearly dying on multiple occasions. I thought about doing the other half of EuroVelo 6 which would have gone from the Atlantic to Budapest or maybe cycling round Spain...although Spain in August might have been a hot and dangerous mess. I settled on cycling from the source of the Rhine all the way back to Cambridge. This is broadly the Eurovelo 15 route and (a) is downhill all the way and (b) Lichtenstein and Germany aren't likely to be as challenging as, say, Serbia and Bulgaria. However, this year the trip was going to be different. Rather than doing a solo, self-supported long distance cycle, I was going to do a self-supported long-distance cycle but with my lovely wife. Two bikes, two beans and two people ...