You can eat all you want as long as you ride a bike everywhere!

^^ I think she would agree about the eating but disagree about the biking. The train could work but that sort of defeats the purpose of a couple's biking vacation.

I just told my Mrs. I was reading your trip report about a couple's biking vacation and she said "There's something we'll never do."

It's something I'll never do either but it does sound wonderful. Thanks for letting us do it vicariously with you.

kerouac, the trouble is I put on weight during the trip and the aching knees put me off going back into the gym for a week afterwards. This getting older lark is a real pain.

Thanks Nikki

FMT have you thought of electical assist bikes, saw a bundle in Switzerland a couple of years ago and they were helping people yomp up the hills

"FMT have you thought of electical assist bikes, saw a bundle in Switzerland a couple of years ago and they were helping people yomp up the hills"

Yes, a lot of my co-workers use these for their work commutes, coming in from villages up to 20 km away.

FWIW, a beautiful but easy on the knees bike trip (for 3-7 days) is through the water castle region in Munsterland. We're going to do that next year.
http://www.nrw-tourism.com/1/nrw/tra...-cycle-region/

bilbo,

this is FMT's wife here. Electric bikes won't cure my phobia of not having my feet on the ground. I'm an avid, fast walker, I love hiking, just don't put me on a bike unless it's a tricycle! :-D

Véronique

Véronique, I understand, I gave up hang gliding for a similar reason (and Mrs Bilbo smashing both her arms doing same). :-)

Now about tricycles....

Hang gliding... Feeling nauseous now! :-)

just bkming this for use with our up-coming trip.

thanks, bilbo - just what the doc ordered. [how are the knees]?

Too bad you missed the food section at the Salon de l'Agriculture that just ended!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX20tMiLZTU

Great info as well as a fun read.
bilbo, If you see this - I'm curious about the reasons behind taking the train so much en route.

cybor, what we tend to do is set us a large target to travel and then stop when we want for as long as we want. The use of the train allows us to do the bits we like without exhaustion.

I think we plan for 50km a day with a couple of days off. Designing train options allows for flexibility. I suspect we achieve something like 40km a day in reality. I havn't linked you to last month's Denmark ride (but follow my name back if you like) and we did the same.

Over the years this has worked out well, we've even stopped somewhere for lunch and decided to stay the night (Romania in the middle of a monsoon), this means that booking a hotel is part of the fun, but outside of high seasons we seldom have a problem (never slept in a ditch yet and only once in 25 years had to use a taxi leaving bikes in a restaurant in the Algarve)

Makes sense. Thank you

Makes sense. Thank you