Germany. How to get there, where to tour ?

[andrewc]

I've toured in most of the Northern European countries apart from Germany , so perhaps time to give it a go. 


September looks the most likely month.   


How to get there ?  I'm thinking a ferry to Rotterdam or Hoek & then a train across the Netherlands to the border, but which station is the best jump off point ?  Unsure if it will be a circular trip or ride to another city ten train back.


I'd be going for 2 weeks & usually do 40+ miles per day.     I see they have a lot of long distance routes.  I've followed similar ones in the Netherlands, are the German ones good ?


What is Germany like for cyclist friendly campsites ?


All info & advice welcome.

[Auntie Helen]

Germany is great, food is top, cycle infrastructure pretty good if you ride normal bikes.

Very popular are the routes following rivers. Germany can be hilly in places!

JenM OTP did a Bodensee tour and camped so should have more info about camping options.

Pound has taken a hammering so things might seem pricier.

[quixoticgeek]

You can cycle on the pavement in Germany.

Most roads have a cycle lane next to the road, if there is not a cycle lane sign, it's not a mandatory cycle lane. Many authorities have found it's easier to remove the cycle lane sign rather than maintain the cycle lane to a suitable standard. Most drivers don't consider this. If you cycle in the road to avoid the potholefest that is the cycle lane in some places, expect at the least to get beeped at. Some German, pulling along side, winding down the window, and shouting unintelligibly at you is common.

As for which station. It depends on a couple of factors: Do you want to faff about changing trains too much? and Where in Germany do you want to actually go? Arnhem is pretty easy to get to, and not far from the German border, to get there from Rotterdam, you're probably going to want to change trains in Utrecht. From Arnhem you can easily get to the Rijn and follow that up toward Köln etc...

If you want to be even closer to Germany when you start pedalling, Enschede can be a useful option, esp if you want to head North towards Hamburg or Bremen. It's not much use if you want the Rijn, but does provide a good point for Münster, Osnabruck, and maybe on towards Hannover.

If you don't want to follow the Rijn, then Venlo or Heerlen are good jumping off points, you'll need to change in Utrecht or Eindhoven to get to either of them. Heerlen is good of you want to head towards Aarchen and the lumpy stuff near the Belgian border down towards Luxembourg. Venlo is just splitting the difference between Arnhem and Heerlen...

If you want to take the same ferry back, and don't want to do a loop, be aware that not all trains from Germany to .nl will accept bikes. In terms of direct trains, you're looking at the Hannover/Berlin line, it's got space for a couple of dozen bikes, tho you will want to book, and to get a ticket. If you're heading south, there's a long distance train that runs Zurich, Basel, Mannheim, Köln, Dusseldorf, and on to Hamburg. With this you can change for a stop train service from Dusseldorf to Arnhem, and then onwards to Rotterdam. If you've gone north, the same train runs in reverse from Hamburg via Bremen to Dusseldorf and onwards to Basel/Zurich. Again, change at Dusseldorf for a train to Arnhem. Or you can connect at Osnabruck, which in theory they hold the east/west train for the North/South train. Tho it's a tight connection, and a faff, and you do need to be booked on both trains, and it just gets you to Arnhem or Utrecht, where you change again.

Good luck! let us know where you end up visiting.

J

[T42]

My recent experience is limited to the bits just over the border, i.e. in the Pfalz and the Black Forest. Cycle tracks are mostly OK & plentiful, and the Germans seem to have worked out (mostly) that if they provide barriers then people will ride into them.

If you like plonk then try to head over Stuttgart way.  The Neckar joins the Rhein at Mannheim and will take you there. The reds there look more like deep rosé to folk weaned on more conventional reds, but once you get over the cultural shock they're very enjoyable.  When I lived there I used to ride up the Neckar tow-path, which was already tarmacked in the mid-80s.

[Rod Marton]

Where to go? Germany is full of nice places.

The aspect of Germany I like most is the small towns. These can have considerable variety - for historical reasons Germany is much less centralised than Britain - and apart from a few of the better-known ones pleasantly untouristy. However which ones you like will probably be different from the ones I like, so I'd be tempted just to explore.

Personally I'd recommend staying south of, say, Cologne; further north the landscape can be flat and windswept (although Schleswig-Holstein is quite scenic). If you don't want to go too far by train, then Trier or even Luxemburg city would be a good starting point. This would give you easy access to the Mosel valley, Eifel and Hunsrueck, and you shoud be able to reach the Rhine at your pace. However I've no idea about train connections, I've always cycled there.

If you're planning a linear tour, then I'd head towards Bavaria. This will give you some good variety in scenery. Again I'm not going to recommend a particular route, just a couple of warnings. The large towns on the Rhine can be unpleasantly busy: Worms is probably the best place to cross the river. And Germany has a lot of ranges of hills.

Weather is fine in September, generally like the UK but a bit drier.

[JenM]

JenM OTP did a Bodensee tour and camped so should have more info about camping options.

The only cycle/camping I have done in Germany is along The Rhine where the campsites were fairly frequent and with good facilities, many with dedicated areas for cyclists etc. They tended to be large campsites often with a restaurant.

The only issue that I had was that the year I travelled there was a lot of flooding along The Rhine so some of the campsites I had thought I might stay at were closed until the flooding subsided.

I am sure you are aware of the Bikeline range of cycling guides.https://www.esterbauer.com/international.html
A map on their website shows the routes they cover which may give you some inspiration. The only downside to the guides is that many are only in german, but the maps are easy to follow.

I'm off shortly to cycle along the Loire and the Moselle....so if you want info on the Moselle, give us a shout.

No idea about travelling on the trains, as I have always cycled

[yoav]

My experience is that German intercity express trains don’t take bikes so you have to travel by a series of local trains. It takes longer so take that into account.

[quixoticgeek]

My experience is that German intercity express trains don’t take bikes so you have to travel by a series of local trains. It takes longer so take that into account.

Newer ICE4 rolling stock does take bikes, which slightly complicates things from the previous state of "No bikes on ICE trains" they had before. There are a number of long distance non highspeed IC services that take bikes (the Hamburg/Basel, & Berlin/Amsterdam trains suggested above), they aren't as quick as an ICE, but if it means you don't have to make 4 changes, and use trains that stop at every lamppost, it's an improvement.

If you install the bahn.de app, or use their website, it allows you to search by whether or not a train takes bikes. This can be very useful.

J

[andrewc]

Hmm.  I was thinking of the Northern bit for convenience.    In the past I've ridden to Groningen (fairly close to the border) & got a direct train back to the Hague.  I've also got a direct train back from Maastricht (close to the border) to Bruges & ridden back to Dunkirk for the ferry.   I actually rode over the German border at Millingen a few years ago, then turned around & rode on to Arnhem.

[Auntie Helen]

Northern bit is cool - you can pop in and visit me! I’m between Venlo and Düsseldorf.

The flatlands of Kreis Kleve have some lovely scenery and great cake shops. There are good opportunities for rides around the Rhein: Arnhem, Nijmegen, Kleve, Xanten (lovely Roman town in DE) and more.

[Regulator]

I've toured in most of the Northern European countries apart from Germany , so perhaps time to give it a go. 


September looks the most likely month.   


How to get there ?  I'm thinking a ferry to Rotterdam or Hoek & then a train across the Netherlands to the border, but which station is the best jump off point ?  Unsure if it will be a circular trip or ride to another city ten train back.


I'd be going for 2 weeks & usually do 40+ miles per day.     I see they have a lot of long distance routes.  I've followed similar ones in the Netherlands, are the German ones good ?


What is Germany like for cyclist friendly campsites ?


All info & advice welcome.

I did the Rhine route a couple of years ago in September.

Ferry from Harwich to the Hoek.  Cycle into Rotterdam. Train from Rotterdam to Cologne (the ticket people at Rotterdam Centraal printed off an itinerary which included not just the stations for changes, but the times of trains, platform numbers and where to stand on the platform to be by the bike carriage). I then cycled the Rhine/Waal route back to Hoek.

Camping was fine.  No need to book.

German drivers are far better than British around cyclists (although not quite as good as the Dutch or the Spanish).

[bludger]

I rode to Bonn and back via hoek, nijmegen, and cologne. I think I broadly used eurovelo 15 in Germany, but may have taken a shortcut using Google maps at one point.

To be honest I had a safe and comfortable time but I'm not in a hurry to return to that region of Germany again. If I revisit I'm going north or across. I didn't use any trains.

[Regulator]

Northern bit is cool - you can pop in and visit me! I’m between Venlo and Düsseldorf.

The flatlands of Kreis Kleve have some lovely scenery and great cake shops. There are good opportunities for rides around the Rhein: Arnhem, Nijmegen, Kleve, Xanten (lovely Roman town in DE) and more.

I like that area of Germany.  We have quite a few friends around Mönchengladbach and Düsseldorf, as Mum used to run a school exchange there.

[bhoot]

We have cycle toured in Germany twice, both times arriving at Hoek and cycling across NL first. Our initial trip was camping - and we headed up from Winterswijk (in NL near the border ) to Munster, then via Osnabruck to Hamburg (worth a day's sightseeing), then northwards to Lubeck and then to the island of Fehmann to take the ferry to Denmark. It was a few years ago but I do remember camping in that area not being super easy with longish stretches between sites (certainly not compared with NL where there seem to be campsites around every corner). Munster had a decent municipal site just outside the city centre but the following night we ended up on what appeared to be a closed campsite near the Dummer See - so no facilities open, but fortunately a great bar which did food and had wifi very nearby. I have no idea how we got this so wrong as looking at google maps there seem to be many campsites there! Possibly other areas are a bit more touristy and hence better equipped, in all fairness when we found them some sites were very nice. Our second tour was a ride from home to Berlin - this time using hostels/hotels with bigger distances (we only had a week) - pretty much leave Hoek and cycle East.

The first tour we started using German marked cycle routes but found some of them a bit too NCN-ey for our liking on the tandem and for covering 70-80 miles per day, probably better if lower distances are your target. So we tried to switch to more roads, and found the German cycle maps very unhelpful in this respect as the cycle route marking completely obliterates what is underneath it so you can't see if it's a proper road or a path. We ended up trying to pick minor roads via google maps on the phone which was interesting. I think we also had a small scale torn from a roaf atlas page to keep going in the right general direction.

For the second tour we had learned our lesson and armed ourselves with the cycle maps, a road atlas and also the detailed book of the Euro Velo which helpfully did indicate what the surfaces were. From these we made a composite route - deviating from the Euro Velo where it indicated bad surfaces or went up gratuitous hills or took big diverts from the straight line. In fact many "traffic free" sections were excellent - beautiful smooth concrete paths across fields or very nice tarmac. We also found some good cycle tracks beside main roads, some of them evidently quite new. I have to say our experience of German driving wasn't quite the same as QG's (on either of our tours). We found them very well behaved even when we were riding on quite main roads, and I think notched up only one aggressive incident in the whole time (a short ride in Essex would have produced at least 5!). Maybe tandems fare better than solos, although I don't think everyone realises when they come up behind you. One thing we learnt to do watching the locals was to ignore some of the cycle tracks through villages as these were essentially bumpy footways - we noticed local riders joining the road at these points so we just copied them.

Route finding on the long distance routes is quite interesting - there seem to be bicycle signs which you follow at junctions, but they don't realy confirm which route you are on or where it is going (think NCN signs with no number on them). Eventually we worked out that if you get to a junction where routes split then you do get informative signs, having chosen your route you just follow the (red I think) bicycles until you come to another decision point. This make it very tricky if you miss a bicycle. We cycled around one place 3 times trying to escape and in the end resorted to the road atlas map and road signs plus assessing which way was east.

All in all though we loved cycling there. For eating the bakeries are your friend, many have nice sit in areas where you seem to be able to buy food at bakery prices and then have it served on proper plates with real cutlery, and they usually had nice loos too. Some supermarkets also had a small eat in bakery area. Ice cream parlours also seem to be quite a big thing in Germany and it seemed most small towns had one.

Our second tour was mod September and the weather was fantastic with high temperatures and sunshine all days we were cycling (hence the need for those ice creams), just a bit rainy at the end in Berlin.

We returned from Berlin by train which is had the potential to be a bit risky especially with a tandem. We booked by calling Deutsche Bahn in the UK to get the bike bookings sorted - sleeper to Duisburg (sadly it no longer goes through to Amsterdam, and may not even run at all now) followed by 3 connections to get us back to Rotterdam (2 local German trains and 1 Dutch intercity train). All worked fine.