Suggestions for 1 month flat european tours

[richie thornger]

Hello Thornies old and new, I'm hoping to get back on my bike after Christmas if my bum is finally repaired.
A year out of the saddle has enabled me to do other things but I'm itching to get the tent strapped on the back of the Nomad and get pedalling again.

The plan is to do a few one or two month tours with an inexperienced friend to get me back in the groove.

I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for month long cycling trip 1000-2000km on pretty flat terrain?
Preferably taking in a few major Northern/Western European cities. Not UK or "Yugoslavia" only Schengen countries.
Must have good wild camping opportunities as want to keep the costs down.
Just add nice scenery to this list and thats it

I've done part of the Danube / Eurovelo6 route from Ulm in Germany to Belgrade, so something similar would be perfect

[John Saxby]

Richie,  I've done a ride up the Rhine from Nijmegen & down the Danube to Vienna, missing a bit in the middle where I used the train.  My ride took about 3 weeks, so the full up-&-down might be a month. One could easily extend to route to Budapest. Not a lot of obvious wild/free-camping options, but plenty of inexpensive ones.  I've written about it here: https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=tS&doc_id=11801&v=A3

One could hook onto that, a ride north to Prague (there are a couple of routes, the Green Way from Vienna being the most popular.)  That would mean some hills, but not radical ones.  One could also hop the train from Vienna, which runs to Berlin and Hamburg.  If you rode from Prague to Berlin, or took the train, you could head north to the Baltic coast to Rostock, and then curl west to Hamburg/Flensburg area, and do a nice counterclockwise tour of the coast of Denmark. (I rode some of those parts last August/September. I haven't written about that tour, but I do have notes on routes. Send me a PM if you're interested.)  Denmark's east coast has some hills, but they're pretty gentle.  On the west coast, you could simply continue S & W to Germany & the Netherlands, taking the ferry to UK from the Hook of Holland, or from Hamburg if you wanted to shorten your journey a bit.

Hope that's helpful,

Cheers,  John

[Danneaux]

Hi Richie!

Netherlands and northern Belgium, definitely, though one would need to use care to pull off wild camping in both. I've done it and came out well, but you would likely fare much better of you joined Naaturkampeerterrainen and enjoyed their wide selection of inexpensive natural campings. See: http://www.natuurkampeerterreinen.nl/en/ I loved the ones I stayed at, which ranged from camping in the woods to farmer's side pastures, amid ducks and cows, all very friendly -- oh! And a couple of the old Waterline Defense forts from WWII.

Belgium now has approved, primitive "bivouac" sites; wild camping is unapproved/forbidden otherwise (but "happens" if one uses care). I have a website somewhere in my files for the bivouac sites. For the most part, they have a picnic table and...that's it. Pack in, pack out all garbage and waste. Most are either dry camps or near a water source that should be purified as a standard precaution (horse and cow effluent are the main problems with water sanitation at these).

Don't forget the standard approach of knocking on a farmer's door and asking if you can stay in a pasture overnight. Homeowners will often have a plot in the side garden available for you to pitch a tent if you ask. It won't be too long until someone approaches you and asks if you will join the family for a bowl of snert (the delicious, thick Dutch pea soup I miss terribly!).

So glad riding is once again on your future agenda!

All the best,

Dan.

[richie thornger]

Cheers John, I'll look into those ideas.
I've ridden the Ulm, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest part and I really can't imagine finding something to equal it for ease of cycling, scenery and landmark cities. (I wildcamped the whole way with a couple of warmshowers hosts included) It ticks all the boxes...but I've done it and fancy somewhere different for the next trip, but combining it with some of the bits you said could be interesting.

How was the Rhine?
I remember being there without my bike and it was sooooo busy with bikes, it was like London in rush hour, it was a weekend in the summer holidays so perhaps that was peak time.

[richie thornger]

Cheers Dan,
Donkeys and camels it would appear turned out to be worse than two wheels so that was not the solution I had hoped for.

Can you remember the sort of cost for the least expensive sites??

[Danneaux]

Richie,

Most of mine ran no more than 5Euro, showers about 0.50Euro extra. Here is a sitefinder; click on the location, then More Info, and rates should appear: http://www.natuurkampeerterreinen.nl/en/campsite-locations/site-finder/

Of course, there's the 15Euro annual membership fee, but that is not bad given the savings.

The NL doesn't have many hills, but they have wind in spades. The trick is to go with the prevailing, realizing that can change at a moment's notice. I got caught in some Beaufort 8-10 gusts for a time and had trouble keeping the bike on the ground. Rain along the Coast can be a given, so pack rain gear. Lots and lots of places to shop and resupply with food and water, or stop at the numerous herring and frites-and-mayo stands if you need cheap food quickly.

A really nice route would entail flying into Amsterdam, training north to Friesland, then heading south along the North Atlantic (north-to-south; I've gone the length both ways, but most of the prevailing is from the north) to Amsterdam or perhaps Leiden (where some of my past English relatives stopped for a couple years on the way to America to meet the Irish half of the family...along with those from LeHavre, France and Germany and Hungary...), then either further south to Zeeland (Vlissingen, Middleburg) and/or east to the Green Heart (Hoge Veluwe, the big national park in the middle with bits of African Savannah melded with blooming heide/hather and forest with lots and lots of animals you can view from big photographic blinds), then on east to Maastricht, a very nice city. The hills (Yes, the NL has a few, and they are respectable) begin just east of there in Vaals, culminating in the Vaalsburg and Drieponte Park where The NL, BE, and Germany all abut borders.

You'd have a nice, flat ride though all but the Vaalserberg, camping opportunites -- particularly in the East -- are abundant, and the Natuurkampeerterreinen campings would fill in the gaps. I love the Weert, NL area especially (one of our Forum members hails from there) and Zeeland is "Old Dutch" with lots of farming and open spaces. Attitudes range from surprisingly conservative on the SW North Atlantic coast to nude beaches near a military base in Zeeland as you approach the Schelde. Google has blanked out the base from all its maps and -- unfortunately -- a bit immediately around it, but it is still easy to navigate.

Generally, people in the south and east of The Netherlands seemed to eat more heartily of a non-seafood diet, being a bit further from the sea. More pork and that love snert compared to fish and my beloved raw pickled herring on those little red-and-white plaid paper trays with diced onions. I'm getting hungry thinking about it!

Thinking...if you did an end-to-end from N-S along the North Atlantic, then threw a left at Zeeland, you could have a nice ride all the way to Brussels and still avoid hills. If you didn't mind some small rollers, you could continue to one of my favorite places in Belgium's "bread basket" and see Jodoigne. Not much there, really, but a really nice mix of farmlands and smaller hills. Oteppe is nice, too. So many great places in that part of the world!

All the best,

Dan.

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Richie.  Echoing Dan's suggestions, Denmark also has "teltplads", tenting sites, similar to the sites Dan mentioned in the Netherlands.  I used the "Cykelkort Danmark" (=Denmark Cycle Map) produced & sold online by scanmaps.dk -- but maybe I bought mine at Stanford's in London, or at my map store here, can't remember.  Anyway, that 1:500,000 map + the good signage in Denmark, was plenty good enough for the 8 days or so I spent there last year.

Denmark tends to be more expensive than either Germany or the Netherlands, and in the West, where my daughter & I spent most of our time, the population density is lower, so there are not as many small cafés, especially in the more rural areas. The towns along the coast have plenty, however.  There are forests where you could wild camp, as well as regular European campgrounds with showers, etc. Some (most?) of those require a "Europe Camping" green card.

As for the Rhine, I was riding in the last two weeks of September, and it wasn't crowded at all. I stayed in campgrounds, and found them good value -- €10 +/- for a site, with showers and an on-site bar and restaurant. Except for an urban c/ground in Düsseldorf, they were not crowded, and I thought they were good value, certainly by comparison with anything I've found in North America.

Hope that's helpful, Richie.  Happy to provide more detail if you need it.

Cheers,

John

[richie thornger]

Thanks for the link to campsite website Dan. Those sites do look nice.
After picking out about 15 random sites the average price for high season comes in at about 15-20 euros per night for two people and a tent.
Usually about 5euros per person plus 5 euros per tent but some sites do a 2 person and tent deal whilst others even allow free tent in low season.
The cheapest I found for two people and tent in my random search was 12 euros for two people.
So its good to know what's out there.

As my only experience with campsites in Europe when cycling has been the one in Paris I was hoping i could find cheaper

At 15-20 euros per night whilst not expensive, it does start to get near the cost of a room in an air bnb house (outside of major cities).

This will really help with planning budgetwise. Thanks.

[martinf]

France has quite a few long-distance routes that are more or less flat, as they follow rivers or canals.

One I plan on doing someday with my wife (who prefers cycling in flat places) is the Loire valley route, easy to get to from where I live in South Brittany. This starts near St Nazaire on the Atlantic coast and follows the Loire up through the "Chateau" country, lots of monuments, vineyards, villages and some sizeable towns.

The Loire route can be pretty much as long as you want, because it links to the Danube cycleroute, albeit with a few hills as you cross from France to Germany. Generally plenty of camp sites in the Loire valley, at least in summer, don't know about the opportunities for wild camping.

There are other possibilities, for example the "Canal du Midi" in the south, which I haven't done.

I've done the French Atlantic coast twice, once in 1978 wild camping in winter, more recently in autumn 2011 using hostels/hotels. This route is more or less flat from the Loire valley down to near the Pyrenees. Nowadays it is possible to do most of it on off-road cycletracks, often a bit sandy, so not so good with a derailleur bike. Lots of pinewoods, so opportunities for stealth camping, but the woods are used by hunters in autumn/winter, and don't light any fires or you will get a visit from an angry policeman.

Interesting detours are the series of islands, linked to the continent with bridges or causeways - Noirmoutier, Ré and Oléron. These all have a good network of cycle paths. I spent 4 months doing survey work on Ré in 2014. Camping is possible, but I reckon wild camping would be difficult unless you are very good at stealth. And best avoid July/August, as too many tourists. This probably applies to the other islands and near coastal resorts on the mainland.