Back to trip overview | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI
Preparations and travel
This is the second year Tara and I decided to fully dedicate our vacation days to bikepacking. After last year’s long trip from Niagara Falls to New York City and back to Ottawa and a lot of riding already this year we believed to be ready to tackle Europe this time, adding a bit more complexity to trip planning. Not only because it involved a transatlantic flight – we were also registered for a long-distance running event (Chemnitz Marathon) in Germany, which we wanted to incorporate into our touring plans.
The overall itinerary
Our original plan was to cycle from Germany’s north coast all the way to Venice in Italy. That plan had to be scratched when I found out that booking a train back from Italy to Germany wasn’t possible by the time I tried; apparently reservations for bicycles sell out very quickly.
We decided to alter our route, avoiding the need of public transport: Starting from Lübeck at the Baltic Sea, cycling all the way south via Chemnitz and Regensburg towards Munich, crossing the Alps into Austria to Innsbruck, then turning westwards through the Allgäu to Lake Constance, before crossing the Black Forest into Freiburg and finishing it up in Heidelberg. Those roughly 2000 kilometers would let us experience a great mix of landscapes from coastal regions, calm paths along rivers and canals, country roads through central Germany’s low mountain ranges and forests, alpine regions, farmlands, as well as countless picturesque castles, towns, and villages along the route.
Detailed route planning
During last year’s bikepacking tour through New York State we planned every single overnight stay in advance. This did not seem feasible this time around. A lot can happen during five weeks of vacation, and we wanted to stay a bit more flexible and spontaneous. A couple of fixed dates provided a rough structure for planning: we needed to be in Chemnitz three days before the marathon race, and a couple days after for recovery. There was a high school reunion that I wanted to attend a week later, just outside of the same town. And of course we had our flights booked.
The first two nights after arriving in Germany we planned to stay at a good friend’s place in Plankstadt, South-Western Germany, and relatively close to where our flight would arrive. I figured we needed some time to deal with a potential jetlag, reassemble our bikes, and do some smaller test rides. I booked train tickets from there to Lübeck, where we wanted to start the actual trip. That then gave us three days to reach Chemnitz, about 550km away.
Using the RideWithGPS platform I started mapping out a route following the Elbe River to Magdeburg before crossing south to my hometown and booked two accommodations along the way on AirBnB and Booking.com. Since we’d stay in Chemnitz for more than a full week during the Marathon and high school reunion, all remaining routing and booking details had time to wait until later. I was going to bring my iPad with me, which would allow to plan routes and overnight stays relatively comfortable as long as there was WiFi available.
Traveling to Germany
Taking my bicycle on air travel has not been anything new to me but travelling with two bicycles and plenty of extra luggage turned out to be somewhat adventurous. For my own bike (titanium frame, carbon wheels) I used my Scicon triathlon soft case bike bag. Tara’s carbon gravel bike got packed into a hard case Thule bike box. In addition, we checked in two suitcases in which we packed most of our luggage, including all the panniers and bike bags.
All our gear arrived safely at Frankfurt airport. After a quick health check of our bike frames and wheel sets, we made our way to Plankstadt, using Germany’s dense train network. For two nights a good friend provided shelter for us to settle, relax, recharge body batteries, do some test rides, and get ready for the coming five weeks.
