The Idea

After my unsupported trip through Spain and France in 2011, our German friends gave me a German book entitled Deutschland Der Länge Nach by Hendrick Torfman (Trolsen 2011). I suppose they thought it was quite amusing to show me that Germany had it’s long distance cycling routes as well; the UK’s End to End is a similar concept. Well, I thought, that might be considered a joke or a challenge, so I decided to have a look.

This time Liz wanted to come along in the car, firstly driving to Nenzing in Austria to visit one of our daughters-in-law’s mother, then up to Oberstdorf to start the ride, joining me each day for lunch and at the campsites, before heading off to Braunschweig to see Eva and Jürgen for a few days and finally meeting up with me again on Sylt, from where we would take the car ferry to Denmark and thence back to Harwich. As usual, muggins had the big idea, but it took Liz to put the practical touches to the logistics.

My experience of the previous year told me that above all else at the end of a tiring day in the saddle it’s a good idea to know where you’re going to stay the night. The alternative is to find the desired campsite either doesn’t exist, is full or closed. So this time round I spent a lot of time researching camp sites and e-mailing them to book a place. I used the website http://en.camping.info/. It worked a treat, with a response from each one, sometimes on the same day and at the most a week (usually the French ones on the way down to Austria). Only one did not accept tents and it a was a simple matter of rerouting to an alternative. Again I plotted my routes using http://bikehike.co.uk/ and then downloaded the GPX files to GPS device.

The principle piece of kit I changed for this trip was my tent. Apart from the bicycle itself it’s the most expensive thing I had with me. It’s worth spending time looking over what’s available. A really useful site that discusses tent selection is https://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/camping-hiking.html.

We took the Channel Tunnel to Calais, drove to Lille and camped there the first night. We spent the second night at Nancy, and arrived at Nenzing on the third evening. Nenzing has one of Europe’s best campsites and pre-booking is a necessity. It’s so good that I walked past the facilities block twice thinking it was a private house before realising it was what I was looking for.

We spent two days at Nenzing, visiting the Nenzinger Himmel ‘alpine’ valley and experiencing a mixture of showers and bright periods. On the sixth day we drove through the mountains to Oberstdorf to spend two nights, enabling me to ride up to the southernmost part of the route before setting off on the journey proper on the eighth morning.