route to Brno

[chrisbainbridge]

my wife's nephew is having a wedding blessing/reception next June just outside Brno

There is a possibility I can get the time off to ride there.  I am basically looking for advice on which port to users we are pretty equidistant from Hull and Dover, even Harwich.

If I do Rotterdam or calais to Brno in RidewithGPS the routes are identical once past Leverkusen in Belgium and come out at 1300km for Rotterdam and 1500km for Calais

I can spend the winter poring over the maps but wondered if anybody had any good ideas about routes, done it before, etc.
Thank you

[Jurek]

my wife's nephew is having a wedding blessing/reception next June just outside Brno

There is a possibility I can get the time off to ride there.  I am basically looking for advice on which port to users we are pretty equidistant from Hull and Dover, even Harwich.

If I do Rotterdam or calais to Brno in RidewithGPS the routes are identical once past Leverkusen in Belgium and come out at 1300km for Rotterdam and 1500km for Calais

I can spend the winter poring over the maps but wondered if anybody had any good ideas about routes, done it before, etc.
Thank you

ZigZag (Rimas) might be your man.

[quixoticgeek]

my wife's nephew is having a wedding blessing/reception next June just outside Brno

There is a possibility I can get the time off to ride there.  I am basically looking for advice on which port to users we are pretty equidistant from Hull and Dover, even Harwich.

If I do Rotterdam or calais to Brno in RidewithGPS the routes are identical once past Leverkusen in Belgium and come out at 1300km for Rotterdam and 1500km for Calais

I can spend the winter poring over the maps but wondered if anybody had any good ideas about routes, done it before, etc.
Thank you

The route from Rotterdam means not cycling in Belgium. And not cycling in France. This dramatically improves your trip.

J

[chrisbainbridge]

looking at the calais part did seem to be a trek along the coast to Dunkirk which I remember as a not very nice industrial area.  Thank you

Is Belgium bad because of drivers or terrain?

[quixoticgeek]

looking at the calais part did seem to be a trek along the coast to Dunkirk which I remember as a not very nice industrial area.  Thank you

Is Belgium bad because of drivers or terrain?

Drivers.

J

[Frank9755]

My mother in law lives in leverkusen and we rode there one weekend, from london via Harwich / Hoek, and a stop in nijmegen
It's very flat and mostly pleasant, but a bit busy as you get into the rhine/rhur conurbation.  It's not as fast as I thought it would be, mainly because the Dutch bit is quite bitty.
Lovely ride though.  I can dig out my route if it helps.

[Karla]

I quite liked cycling in Belgium!

Anyway, a few years ago I did Brno-Berlin and then caught the train to Amsterdam for the ferry
  Read all about it here

[FifeingEejit]

My limited experience of Belgian cycling was into Brugge from the Netherlands version of Gretna Gree, and then onto Zeebrugge.
Up the canal to Zeebrugge was fine, blatting round Brugge was fine, riding into Brugge however I suddenly got deposited on the wrong side of the road by the cycle path along the canal.

Pity that ferry is no more.


I also found walking round the Brugge area much more pleasant than say Liege or Brussels.
Thinking of it Kortijk and Iper wern't bad either, hm...

[Auntie Helen]

looking at the calais part did seem to be a trek along the coast to Dunkirk which I remember as a not very nice industrial area.  Thank you

Is Belgium bad because of drivers or terrain?

Drivers.

J

Also road surface quality. Mind you, NL is often not great.

(Here speaks someone who lives in a nice bit of Germany where car is king and local roads are po-po smooth)

[Frank9755]

I quite liked cycling in Belgium!

Me too.  Flanders more than Walloonia though.
Never had issues with drivers.

[Rod Marton]

It's a good few years since I have ridden in that direction, but my preference would be to stay further south. This would make more sense if going from Calais, of course. The scenery is definitely better, albeit lumpier. So (very roughly) I would go through Belgium, cross the Ardennen into Germany, cross the Rhine somewhere around Worms, then via Nurnberg to the Bohmer Wald/cesky les. From there it's a fairly direct ride across southern Bohemia towards Brno.