Bike and Barge Tour

[Slammin Sammy]

Hello all,

My wife and I are planning a month-long holiday in Cornwall and the Continent after picking up our bikes at Bridgwater. We thought about doing a river cruise and ride on the Rheine, Danube or others, but the major cruise ships don't seem to cater for BYO bikes very well.

Does anyone here have experience with the bike and barge tours that are advertised? We're wondering about amenities and riding difficulty, as neither of us are as spry as we used to be 

Any advice or heads-up would be most welcome.

Thanks,
Sam

[geocycle]

Riding on the big European rivers is very easy.  Usually excellent surfaces to off road paths.  Handling a boat on these monsters might be a bigger challenge!

[John Saxby]

Thanks, Sam, and welcome!

Are any particular rivers/regions of interest?

I rode from Amsterdam to Vienna via the Rhine and Danube last Sept/Oct, and thoroughly enjoyed it all.  In Austria, I met a group of seniors from Quebec who were on a "Bike and Boat" tour, riding from Passau to Vienna by bike, then going by boat from Vienna to Budapest and back by boat -- all in ten days.  BUT, they were renting bikes from the tour company.

Saw lots of tour boats on both the Rhine & Danube, but none, so far as I could see, included people with their own bikes. (I found myself surfing tour-boat passengers on walkabouts in several spots -- no-one had bikes, that I could see.)  So, I'd echo Andy's observation that the tour operators don't encourage BYOBike.

I did a quick search on Crazyguyonabike.com, looking for "Europe + bikes-&-boats" and that generated a lot of journals -- one would have scan these to see what's offered.  Here's the link:  https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/search/?query=Europe+%2B+bikes-on-boats&main_type=journals   

To augment what you learn from the Thorn forum, you might post a question to open a Crazyguy forum, and see what answers you get.  (There's a lot of info on Crazyguy -- sometimes it can be difficult to winnow through to find what you want.)

If you'd like to have a look at my journal from my trip last fall, here's the link:
 http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/2012Rhine-Danubetrip   I did take a short trip on the Danube ferry between Weltenburg Abbey and Kelheim, to see the Danube Gorge -- that's a standard item on the Danube Cycle Way.  There may be other local riverboats which take bikes, as well. Expect a Google search of German and Austrian Tourism-Office sites for those two rivers would turn up useful information.

I was camping about 2/3rds of the time, and that may not be to your taste; but the journal does give a good recap of the kind of cycling you're likely to encounter -- so several reviewers have told me, at any rate.

Good luck, in any case, and enjoy your new bikes!

John

[John Saxby]

Hi again Sam,

Apologies for the reference to "Andy" in my message -- it was your observation about cruise boats & BYOBikes.

(Had been reading 2 - 3 threads on the Forum & managed to make them into a blur -- Canajans get a bit dopey in the spring sunshine, y'know...)

J.

[Slammin Sammy]

Thanks for your input, John. Crazyguy is my main inspiration for touring, and it's where I discovered Thorn bikes!

The tours I'm referring to are advertised as "bike and barge" tours, which are scheduled voyages of small craft of a few dozen people, where you can rent their bikes or BYO, and either partake in a guided tour or do your own thing. In particular, I am interested in hearing personal stories and recommendations from anyone who has taken one of these trips. I saw one advertised as an eight day holiday, only to find out upon inspection that it only included three days on board a boat!

We are most interested in the Danube tours, as they appear to be quite scenic, but we will need to be quite specific in our tour dates, so that restricts our choices.

I will certainly read your CGOAB adventures over the next few days. Thanks heaps!

Regards,
Sam