Planning a comfy bike trip in eight easy steps

Now that there is hope that this awful pandemic might end, and we can start to plan the joys of travel again, a friend asked me to post about how I organise my bike trips. I feel that I am still learning, and on each bike trip, I realise that I have made mistakes. That is all part of the learning experience. But here is how I plan my trips. It takes time, but I once read that 50% of the pleasure of the holiday is in the planning and anticipation. So enjoy even before you pedal that first nervous stroke…

At the time of writing, I am planning a bike trip, so in italics I have explained how I applied my approach to my forthcoming trip and so my decision-making process.

1. How long have you got? When will you be going?

First you need to decide when and how long you would like to go for.

Entirely up to you, but if I were starting from scratch, I would go for a two-week trip: enough time to build your legs up and get a decent taste: not so long that if you hate it, you suffer.

When? Usually you will have little control over this as it will be whenever you can take some holiday. If you have a choice, I have one firm recommendation that will be good for most of Europe: May. May is really delightful to ride in. April and September are also great months though the latter can be surprisingly hot as I discovered in central Italy last year.

My immediate boss tells me that she would like to take her summer holiday in August so I have to work around that. I am feeling pretty tired, so I would like a holiday before then, but I only want to do it when fully vaccinated. With my second jab due on 30 June, and allowing two further weeks before I can travel under the COVID passport, that gives me a window of two and a half weeks in the second half of July.

2. Where do you want to go?

When you will be going matters a huge amount to what is feasible and will narrow things down. Believe me, I have had to learn this the hard way. I shivered in freezing rain and sleet in late March in Alsace and the Ardennes. I boiled in 40C heat in August in Slovakia and along the Hungarian Danube, the sweat pouring down my face so hard that I could hardly see. If I had to plan those trips again and had no choice over the date, I would have gone a lot further south in March and a lot further north or west in August…

Within these parameters, there are still a lot of options, so how do you decide? Well how do you decide about where you go on a non-cycling holiday? Maybe you hear from friends, maybe you read an article in a newspaper, or maybe you read a book. Something catches your eye and you think “That could be interesting…”

Some ideas:

• Following a river such as the Rhine or Danube;
• Following a Roman or historical road;
• Following a Eurovelo route or other established bike route;
• Exploring a particular area that is rich in an area of history that you are interested in such as World War One battlefields;
• Following the route taken by an author or writer;
• Visiting a region that you have heard a lot about or even visited by car and thought “That would be great to cycle in”;
• Cycling from your home to a major city such as Paris or Berlin.

For my first bike tour in 1993, a friend and I knew nothing other than that we wanted to start in Ostend and go East. We ended up doing a semi-loop before my friend became too sick to continue. On that tour, we reached Aachen, which gave me the idea to go back a few years later and travel across Europe in stages.

OK, so not too far south or east or I will be broiled like a lobster… Maybe the Alps? Or how about the Jura? I had tentatively explored the idea of a ride there a few years ago.

3. Would it be good for cycling?

This is where you need to do some research, either using [famous algorithm-based search engine] or buying a few travel books. What is the terrain like? Do other people ride there? (Always a good recommendation.) What do they say about it? Is it compatible with what you like and your experience level? I am OK on main roads, but maybe you want a route on bike paths. Is it too hilly for you or too flat?

A good sign is if you come across lots of companies organising bike tours there. Take a look at their routes and the towns they stop in.

I do my research and there are lots of bike routes in the Jura and along the Rhone, and lots of people saying how great it is.

4. A to B or a loop?

Logistically this is a no-brainer: doing a loop will simplify things for you no end. Cheaper return train or plane ticket, possibility to travel with a bike box and packing materials that you can use on the way back. There can indeed be a sense of satisfaction in returning to your starting point after many kilometres and many adventures. Last summer, I did such a loop from Milan and I felt like a conqueror returning to the city with 1,500 km under my belt, and the knowledge that my kind host had kept my bike box ready for me.

But… Well, at least to me, there is something that little bit more satisfying about doing an A to B. The line looks nicer on the map and is more impressive when you tell friends. I feel that you get to see more terrain and have a wider experience.

Honestly, I do both, though probably more A to B than loops.

A very nice compromise would be to do an A to B but with the possibility of taking the train from B to A at the end.

If only I had thought of that… I guess that I am just a sucker for long lines… The idea comes to me of going from Basel to Lyon, right through the Jura and then along the Rhone. Anyway, there’s no direct train from Lyon to Basel…

5. Is it actually viable?

Yes, this is a mistake that I have made too many times. You get excited at the possibilities and already in your head, you are cycling through the foothills in glorious evening sunshine… What can possibly go wrong?

Well what can go wrong is that when you actually get to plan it, it can involve a level of logistics so complicated that it would make a military commander’s head spin… You can discover that to get from your home in Sprotsburgh to your intended starting point in Paradiseville means a day and a half of mixed transport, including a six-hour donkey ride over rough terrain… Difficult enough on your own, but with a fragile bike to transport and protect?

Very occasionally it is worth it. I was determined to start my ride from the southernmost town of Europe in… the southernmost town. That meant a flight to Athens, a two-hour layover, a flight to Heraklion in Crete, renting a car, driving two hours with the bike in its travel box, dropping the bike at my hotel, driving back to the airport and returning the rental car, and then taking a three-hour bus back to the hotel… It was fine: I spent a day in the rental car, touring the hills of Crete. But not something I would do every day.

So my advice is to look at the arrival and departure logistics early on. Not just can you get there without too much hassle, but can you get you and your bike there without too much hassle? And for the arrival, can you get your bike there in a state that you can unpack it without too much hassle? (For the departure, can you pack your bike without too much hassle? This might mean procuring a cardboard box.)

And here is the odd thing, because usually it is much easier to go by plane than by train. Why? Because airlines are used to taking boxed cargo and lots of luggage whereas trains are much more restrictive.

So take a look. How easy is it to get there? By plane, ideally you want to get there in one go, but if not, you want a decent layover between flights so that there is no danger of your bike getting lost/delayed. (On the flight to Crete, I fretted, only for my bike to make it to the arrivals hall before I did.)

By train, you need to see whether it is possible to take your bike at all and if so in what form. Here in Europe, international ICE Trains ban bikes altogether, TGV allow them subject to being partially dismantled, and Eurostar has a decent system for paying a bit more and having the bike delivered separately.

A slight trick that I have discovered and now use. Often the difference in cost between second class and first class is not that much. But in first class, there tends to be a bit more space for luggage, and conductors tend to be a lot less sniffy about someone taking a disassembled bike in a bag… Just saying…

Changing trains? This can work but only if on one of the legs, you can carry the bicycle in its ordinary state. So for instance, I would consider a journey that involved taking the TGV for the first leg, having a solid hour to put my bike back together, and then taking a regional TER train. What I would not consider is having to take said bike on one TGV to Paris-Nord, getting it across Paris to Paris-Gare de Lyon, and then loading it fully packed onto another TGV.

My initial search results are a horror: nothing from Brussels to Basel in early July. So I try on another website, that of the French SNCF and see that yes, it is possible to catch an early morning train from Brussels to Strasbourg and then a regional TER train to Basel just under an hour later. Perfect! More than enough time to put my bike back together.  I also check and see that there is a direct train back from Lyon. Slight complication is that the rules on bike bags are not very clear… So let’s hope that the First Class trick works…

6. Sketch out a general route

OK? That all look good? Now it is time to sketch out a route and see how feasible it is for the time you have available, the effort you want to put in.

Sometimes what I do is to print out a map of the area that I want to ride through and mark on it all the interesting places that I would like to go through. Sometimes what becomes clear is that I will immediately have to rule many of them out. Usually, I can see a general outline.

So then I go online and use a bit of bike route-mapping software like RideWithGPS and sketch out the route, putting my starting point and end point and then pulling the route this way and that, adding ‘control points’: the towns or bike routes I want to follow.

Very quickly, I get an estimation of the rough total distance and total climb.

How does it look?  Suppose you want to ride 50km a day, and take a day off every 3 days. That means for a 15-day trip, allowing for a day to get there and a day back, you are looking at a rough total distance of 500 km. If anything, it should be closer to 475k or so because inevitably you will have to tweak the route to take you to hotels and sights of interest. Or avoid real bastard climbs…

This is the next figure that you should look at: how much you will be climbing.  I like a mix of rolling countryside, the odd solid climb, and a bit of flat, so I operate by a rough rule of thumb that for every 10km of distance, I should be doing about 100m of climbing. Above that, I will be doing more climbing than flat and below that, I will be more on the flat than in the hills. Up to you but I find the 1:10 to be a good ratio.

At this point, as long as the distance and climbing are not wildly out, I recommend saving your route and then playing around a bit with the route to tweak the distance/ climbing to your liking.  I often save a number of variants of the general route, making them ‘standard’, ‘easy’ and so on…

One thing that you should think about is the direction of your route. If you are doing a loop, is it better going clockwise or anti-clockwise? If you are going A to B is it better going north to south, south to north, east to west… A factor here might be the prevailing wind… I once rode south from Tallinn to Vilnius only to be told halfway by a bike mechanic in Latvia that 9 out of 10 bike tourists went the ‘right’ way: south to north, with the wind behind them.

So I sketch out my route from Basel to Lyon via Geneva based on the two long routes that I have found: the Jura mountain route and the Eurovelo 17. I figure it better to go from Basel because that means that I will be slightly downhill over the distance…

My first sketch comes to 511k and 6367m of climbing. The first figure is fine because I am happy to average at 60. The second?  Well could be OK but I need to look at the map. The first 260k contain 4800m of climbing. Oofff!  Time to save the route and test out a route with less climbing. I do so, hogging the lakes and quickly end with a route that comes to 484k and 3544m: quite a difference! OK, so my trip is definitely ‘on’. I can probably mix a bit of the two to get a nice balance.

7. Are the individual stages doable?

OK, so you do this and it looks OK. One final thing to check before you commit: are there towns and villages with accommodation reasonably spread along the route? If you are travelling in the thick of Western or central Europe, the chances are almost certainly yes, though if you are booking your trip last minute and in high season, you might want to check on [nameless popular online booking website] that some of the smaller towns are not booked up. In more sparsely populated territory like the Baltic countries, Scandinavia, and the Balkans, you should definitely do this. It might mean doing a really long ride one day and a relatively short the next. This was the case in Albania, where I ended up riding 115k from Gjirokaster to Fier and then 40k from Fier to Berat. Sometimes you just have to do it. The only time I was really out of options was riding through European Turkey when my trip depended on a small town with only one hotel and making a jink to the coast.

I do a rough breakdown of my days from beginning to end, including rest days.  It does not need to be exact: just a rough estimation.

To do this, I go to my overall route and I ‘select’ bits of it in turn, starting from the beginning. What I am looking for are towns and villages along the route at reasonable intervals. Using the main map, I can get an idea of whether a place has a few hotels – and if necessary, I can confirm on a hotel booking site (see below) – and places to eat. I then ‘select’ the part of my route between the town I am starting from that day, and the town I have in mind. What you will then see is a more detailed profile of that part, with the distance, climbing and other details. Does it look reasonable to you? If not, can the route be tweaked a bit, or do you need to find a town closer to your starting point?

So, starting in Basel using my ‘easy’ route, I spot the town of Balsthal, and select that part of the route. It gives me 44.5km and a climb of 622m: a hilly ride but OK given that my distance is not that much. To check, I go on the booking site and confirm that there is indeed a hotel there that has vacancies for that night, though only one, so I book it with free cancellation.

I do this day by day, with a rough eye on towns where I can take a day off every 3-5 days. These need to be towns with something to do: exploring the old town or hiking. When I have done this, more or less for the whole trip, I then plot it against my planned dates. Does it all work or am I trying to squeeze too much in? Are there too many hard days – long rides or heavy climbing – in a row? Will I have enough time to actually appreciate the towns and landscape that I am riding through? In other words: will it be a fun holiday?

Actually I end up with one day spare: good to have in hand to either fit in another destination or come home a day early. I can see when I look at the train prices for the return from Lyon. The first days of my trip look like this:

Friday	Brussels	Basel	0
Saturday	Basel	Balsthal	44	622
Sunday	Balsthal	Tramelan	56	1251
Monday	Tramelan	La Chaux en Fonds	34	560
Tuesday	La Chaux en Fonds	Pontarlier	64	938
Wednesday	Pontarlier

The climbing is a bit tough, especially on Day Three, but I will have a shorter ride on Day Four to compensate, and the second half of the trip is much easier.

One final check at this point before you go ahead and commit: take a look at all the small towns or heavily touristed destinations on your route and do a very quick check on a hotel booking site that something is available on the night that you plan to stay there. If things look tight and the reservations are cancellable, go ahead and book.

Balsthal and Tramelan only have one or two hotels so I lock them down quickly.

8. Go for it…

Now is the time for action and no regrets. Book the travel tickets… Get the bike reservations if necessary…

Then go and book the hotels, starting with the smaller places and leaving the big cities until last. For my advice on how to book hotels… you will just have to wait…

Then go and plan individual day routes. Here I start to pay more attention to the details of each route, making sure that I am not being sent along some muddy trail or along the side of a dual carriageway – though occasionally you have to do these. I send the yellow Google Street View guy on several parachute drops to spy out the terrain for me.

Then start to get your gear together…

That’s it. That is really all there is.

Have fun…

I will let you know how it went. To be continued…