Now people's thoughts are turning to this year's adventures I just thought it was worth posting something about a great trip we did late last September. Basically we spent Friday cycling from home in East London to Harwich, caught the overnight ferry to Hoek Van Holland and then set off pretty much due east, arriving in Berlin on the next Friday night - so 7 days' riding across the Netherlands and Germany. We then had a couple of days sightseeing in the city before a complex sequence of 1 overnight train, 4 more trains, one ferry and then yet another train to get us and the bike home (which all worked remarkably well).
We broadly followed Eurovelo route 2 - but made our own interpretation to omit overly circuitous sections or those with bad surfaces for lengthy stretches. So we ended up with some main roads (either with decent cycle tracks alongside or in other cases well behaved German drivers giving plenty of space), but lots of lanes and motor traffic free paths too. We stayed mostly in youth hostels which was interesting as it tended to be us and a school party in each place, but we were made quite welcome and even worked out how to beat the children to breakfast in some cases!
I'm happy to post more route details and some thoughts on maps etc for this type of journey if anyone is interested.
