Thre primary attraction of Europe for us is first of all the quality of the cycle paths - both on the ground and in the maps and other available support. Next, there is the food, and most particularly the bakeries. And finally there is the history and culture.We had come to understand about these three categories of things from our two previous visits. This trip criss crossed our previous routes, and in general our finding is the same.

So what did we run in to that is in any way new or different?

Guesthouses, for one. On previous trips these were just not on our radar. Something happened this time, and it is not certain just what. The routes, that we had chosen because in principle they both had camping and that camping was clearly marked on the Bikeline maps, just did not turn out to be as rich in places as we thought. Plus, Bikeline failed on a number of occasions, and marked camping did not exist. Then there was unusually bad weather, that drove us indoors. Plus, we must have somehow become weak or lazy, becasuse it did not take much bad weather to send us scurrying. But more than a question of finding a dry and available place to sleep, guesthouses became valued part of the actual experience. Nothing even vaguely like a Motel back home, these places were usually very old, but renovated buildings. They often had marble steps to your upstairs rooms, antique furnishings, many knick knacks, quaint, cosy, or grand dining rooms, often good in-house restaurants, interesting owner-operators, and always, breakfast included. All these aspects and places are now things we remember about this trip.

Churches. Our route took us into Catholic regions, perhaps more than before. And here were churches and cathedrals that were laden with art, with history, and with architecture. They are still the focal points of most towns and made for very interesting stops when we would arrive in each place.

GPS tracks. Bikeline now offers .gpx files for almost all its routes. We found these to be invaluable. The "Books" are great, but to really know where you and whether you are on track, the GPS is the thing. This time we came armed with both the .gpx and a waterproof case for the GPS device. Except for not being able to see the thing in the sunlight this was a great /new addition, with the gpx part being unique to the Bikeline world. (Yes, yes, there are zillions of .gpx available on the internet - but the trick is to have the route they describe be certifiably the right (best, safest) way to go, and to have it correspond to a quality paper mapping. This said, we did download the .gpx for the Kinzig route, not from Bikeline but from the Naturpark.

Despite our general feeling that cycling in western Europe is great, the routes we did this time did vary in how pleasing they were. Some had better marking than others, some more camping, more beauty, or better surface conditions. We tried to cover this a bit in writing about what we thought of each individual route.

We started out sub-titling this blog "Ten Esterbauer Bikeline routes back to back in Germany, Austria, and more." It became clear after a bit that ten was an underestimate, and we changed the title to "ten or more". Finally the table of contents listed nineteen "books". It's a bit complicated, since we did not in all cases cycle each book from beginning to end, and in some cases we did part of a book and later returned to it. On reflection, this tour seems to have been about sixteen "books" or route segments. Here they are, listed below, together with our rough ordering of them in terms of how great they were. Every one of them, though, is something we would gladly do again.

Note: this list is preliminary, and may not even have all the routes or the really correct ordering. We need a bit more due consideration

Top Five

Mosel
Donau
Middle Rhine
Bodensee -Konigsee
Colmar to Strasbourg

Middle Six

Mozart
Main - western bit
Romantische -northern bit
Rhine - southern bit
Inn
Enns

Bottom Five

Main - eastern bit
Romantische - southern bit
Crossing France
Sud Schwartzwald- Kinzig
Neckar