The Preliminary Route: The Inn is out

April 1, 2014

Now that we have actually gotten down to it, at least in a first pass sort of way, it seems like not ten but fourteen or fifteen Bikeline routes are involved in this proposed wild spin through France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Fortunately, not every metre of each route is involved, but there are goodly chunks of all of them.

Planning Central - from here all sorts of crazy routings are considered.

Fourteen Bikeline books. Fourteen not thirteen? Yes, the Inn is out, right?

The basic idea is to start in Paris (that much is for sure - we have the tickets) and head to the Moselle River. We'll follow the Moselle to Koblenz, on the Rhine. Then it's down the Rhine to Mainz and along the Main River to Frankfurt and Wurzburg. From there it's the so called Romantische Strasse to Fussen and from there East to Salzburg. This involves the Bodensee- Konigssee route and the Mozart route.

From Salzburg we will continue along the Salzach River and from Radstadt hop onto the Enns. We coast down the Enns to the Danube (Donau), and head back 500 km through Passau to Ulm. At Ulm we turn south on the Ulm-Bodensee route to around Wangen, and Bregenz. From there we will make our way to Konstanz and head down the Rhine toward Basel. That will allow us to spin around the South Black Forest.

Between Waldshut and Freiburg on the edges of the Black Forest we see there is a big mountain. We will either go over it, or wimp out and go around by way of Basel. Either way, it's back down the Rhine to Mainz, and then to Frankfurt.

That should be 4000 or more km. Maybe 5000, to allow for wiggly routes, our usual procedure of getting lost and going in circles, and side trips.

A spin through thirteen Bikeline books, one Routier, and one book twice. We'll call that fifteen!

This route goes around and vacuums up some of the prime cycling territory in Germany and Austria that we missed the last times, but also goes over some of the same areas as in the past. The analogy to vacuuming is pretty well taken. We are passing back and forth, trying to make sure we have not missed some really pretty and fun bits. One regret, Innsbruck seems to be stuck in a corner, up against the mountains, and we can not quite get in there - despite the Inn River. Maybe another time we will go there, then cross the mountains somehow and carry on in Italy.

After this trip, we will strike out and find new territory to criss cross - to Italy or Spain or southern France, for example, or maybe to Mexico/Belize or Thailand or New Zealand.

But for now, we are looking for the pretty villages and good bakeries that we know we will find in Bavaria and surrounding regions. No 4000-5000 km bike trip is easy, and we do expect some challenges with this one. However, with enough villages and bakeries to compensate, we should be ok!

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