February 2014

So, I’ve spent hours reading the Rough Guides to Italy and Germany, the Cicerone Guide to The Rhine Cycle Route and a few internet blogs (usually for trips nowhere near the Rhine; you know what it’s like, you see someone has crossed Outer Mongolia on a bike and you spend the next three nights reading their diary), but we’ve still not definitely decided on our route or even our starting point.  We are juggling a number of issues – the need  to finish the trip before the end of June due to other commitments, worries about the weather and the logistics of carrying the bikes on some form of transport – to name but a few.  Having watched the carnage due to snow and icy conditions during the Giro d’Italia in May 2013, our original idea of starting our tour in the north of Italy early in May doesn’t seem like such a good idea.  We suffered from snow storms during our last tour in the north of Portugal and Spain and we weren’t trying to cross high mountains at the time.

Current thinking is to start out from here in Málaga early in April and ride up to Santander to catch the ferry to Plymouth.  We would then cycle to Nottingham, stay a few days with family and friends and then make our way over to catch the ferry to Holland.  The route up to this point would cover some familiar ground, having covered some parts of it previously during our 2011 tour.  In Holland we would be able to follow the Rhine from ‘sea to source’ in Switzerland.  Apart from the advantage of arriving in the mountains later on when the weather should be better, it builds flexibility into the trip should we run out of time because we can hire a car or catch a train at whatever point we want to make the journey home.  Result!

March 2014

The ferry from Santander to Plymouth has been booked for 30 April, so now at least we know our starting point and rough starting date.  We didn’t really want to have to book it because now it puts us under pressure to be there on time, but the ferries from Santander only sail once per week and we couldn’t risk getting there and being stuck waiting a week or two for a place on the ferry.

I’ve started to plot the route up through Spain to Santander, then from Plymouth to Nottingham and onwards from Nottingham to Harwich, where we’ll catch a ferry to the Hook of Holland.  However, we’ll leave the plotting of the Rhine route until we’re actually doing it so as to give us absolute flexibility for that part of the trip.

We’re currently checking the bikes over and ordering the bits and pieces that we need.  The thing we’re not doing is getting out and keeping fit!  I’ve returned from our January visit to see the family in the UK with a horrible chest infection, so it’s now two weeks since we were last out on our bikes.  Hope it won’t be an action replay of last year when we set out on our tour very unfit. 

April 6, 2014 We go tomorrow……

Well, it did turn out to be a bit of an action replay of last year.  January and February were a bit of a write-off as far as getting out on the bikes was concerned.  It hasn’t been that cold or wet but we’ve had week after week of hurricane-like winds, so we didn’t put in as many kilometres as we would have liked.  March has been much better so we’ve been out a fair bit over the last month.  The weather forecast for the coming week is looking settled and warm, so we’re good to go.  We’re just getting all the last-minute stuff done, so tomorrow we go……