Welcome to the first page of what we expect and hope will be another long installment in what has become our Grampies series of blogs.
In the coming 30 days we will post the usual fascinating updates on what gear is coming on this trip and what is not, and where the route is going. We will start pedalling in ernest after flying into Paris, April 30, 2014.

Probably anyone who has ever driven a car or a bicycle knows the feeling of wanting to get driving or cycling, when shown a picture of an open road. For us, an open road is not just a piece of pavement, but also a plan and a map and knowing where we can spend the night and what we are going to see. The closest thing to an open road for us, then, is a cycle map that clearly and openly shows these things.

In the world of cycle maps, the top of the line in our view are those put out by the Verlag Esterbauer company, usually under the name of Bikeline books. These mainly cover routes in Germany, but there are ones for Provence in France, for New Zealand, and others. When we get our hands on a Bikeline book, we automatically want to go cycle it. If we pick up a Bikeline book that is already on our shelf because we have cycled it, we want to cycle it again!

Once you know this, you can see why one of the most mindboggling experiences for us happened in the Globetrotter outdoor store in Hamburg last year. There, they had a wall of Bikeline books!

Heart

0

Comment

0

Link

Log in to comment or reply

The virtual equivalent of this wall (and more) exists on the website of Stanfords Books, in England. Have a look HERE. If you click on the "GRID MAP" on the left hand side of the page at Stanfords, you will see even more of where the Bikeline books cover and how many routes there are.

The other thing about the Bikeline books is that they cover mostly Germany and Austria. (However, I just clicked on that Gridmap myself and see all the other countries with coverage, WOW!). Outside of Netherlands, Germany and Austria are (in our humble opinion) absolutely the prime places for flat out cycling fun. They offer a blend of just enough challenge with history, architecture, food, farms, natural environment, and interesting towns and cities to make for the perfect cycling adventure.

We have moseyed around western Europe twice now, but still feel there are lots of primo routes and places we have not touched, or that we zoomed through too quickly to fully absorb. So here we go, still skimming the cream of the routes - whether cycling newly acquired Bikeline books or pulling parts of golden past ones from the shelf.

Before we left for the Southern Tier in the USA, we had worked out a ten book preliminary itinerary. We are not quite back from the Southern tier yet, and that itinerary is in a file back home. Obviously one of the first things to be added to this blog as soon as we are back will be a map of where we are going and a list of which Books we are blithering about. Stay tuned for it!