This bike tour was 87
days long. We were aware of the impending introduction of the 90 day in any 180
days visa for Europe, so wanted to keep the tour under 90 days to avoid any
hassle should it be introduced while we were in Europe. As it turned out, we
didn’t need to worry. While Greg could have continued to ride indefinitely,
Wendy was about ready to come home.
We stayed at 36 hotels in 37 rooms. The hotels ranged from ungraded, and 2* to 5*. The majority were 4* hotels. For this trip, we pre-booked only our first and last hotels as we knew we were going to be in those cities on those dates. All the others were done during the ride and did take a lot of time to research before booking. Greg would have liked to just wing it and book something on the day in whatever place we decided to stop at, while Wendy was not as convinced that this would work as many smaller places do not provide aircon, not even a fan, and Europe can get hot. Some places are also tourist hotspots and are noisy at night. The ability to close the window and still be cool is a must.
We rode on six Euro Velo routes, through six countries for just under 2,500km. The routes we rode on are: #2 – Capitals Route; #3 – Pilgrim’s Route; #6 – Rivers Route; #7 – Sun Route; #13 – Iron Curtain Route; and #15 – Rhine Route.
We rode beside the following rivers: Danube, Vltava, Elbe, Havel, Ems, Ruhr, Rhine, Waal, Nederrijn, Oude Rijn (a branch of the Rhine Delta), and Meer of Buurwatering.
We spent most of our
time in Germany (39 days); with 11 days in Hungary; 4 days in Slovakia; 11 days
in Austria; 6 days in Czechia; and 12 days in the Netherlands.
◦ He never felt comfortable leaving the
e-bike locked outside when we stopped to have a look at something when riding
from one overnight stay to another. He feared the bike/s would not be there
when we came back.
◦ He didn’t like using the e-bike to
get around a city to visit the sights on a rest day for the same reason as above.
He feels that thieves target places that cycling tourists like to visit.
◦ The batteries are quite heavy and while
many hotels now have recharge points in their bike storage location, some don’t
and therefore the batteries must be taken off the bike every day for charging
in the hotel room.
◦ Even when they don’t need charging,
we took the batteries out of the bikes to make them bike less attractive to
thieves. Wendy had no problems in removing the batteries when required.
◦ While he enjoyed riding the e-bike,
pressing the boost button when he got to a hill or battling into a headwind, he
wonders whether overall it’s worth the extra time, worry and effort. Wendy
definitely believes it is well worth it.
◦ He also wonders if he is being overly
pessimistic/paranoid and after a while the novelty will wear off and he’ll
become more relaxed about touring with an e-bike. We must admit that we haven’t
really given insurance much thought. Although we’ve always had travel
insurance, which did cover a bike Emirates destroyed once, we never checked
about the e-bikes. I suspect you can insure anything if you cough up enough
money
◦ As a big plus, Greg is certainly not
as tired at the end of a day’s ride as he was in France two years ago when we
rode the Loire on manual bikes. So that might indicate that it won’t be long
before he won’t have a choice in what bike he rides if he wants to continue
cycle-touring. This is something that Wendy observed, mostly quietly but did
bring it up when Greg stated he didn’t want to do another e-bike tour. He will probably
just keep riding till he drops off the perch one day happily riding along.
◦ Also, a positive, e-bikes are
becoming increasingly popular in Europe, and a lot of people are using them for
touring. So, one can imagine that it won’t be long before they will be in the
majority. That may take the heat off them as targets for thieves. When we parked
overnight at the hotels most of the other bikes in the storage room are
e-bikes.
◦ The other option is to hire them but
there are limits on that as we don’t know of any hire companies that allow
multi country hire. If you want to do a completely organised tour, there’s
plenty of options available in most countries in Europe. For multiple countries
you could catch a train to the next country and pick up another bike.
Communication devices
We both had our iPhones which were invaluable for communicating with each other and navigating. Wendy took her iPad for hotel research and booking, and blogging. For some reason, this new iPad was just not playing the game so Wendy believes a small, lightweight laptop may be the go for next tour.
Clothes
To save about 1kg, Greg ditched the long-sleeve cycling jersey for a long-sleeve lightweight shirt that he could also wear out to dinner. However, this shirt does not have three back pockets so he had to stow his hanky, lip balm, etc in his shorts which made them difficult to reach while riding. He will go back to a normal riding shirt for next tour and take a ‘dining-out’ shirt.
Health
We both had a few minor sniffles for no more than 24 hours, and Wendy had some blisters on her feet from all the walking at the start of the tour. Apart from that, we managed to avoid all nasty bugs for 12 weeks!
Other
