Intro: A slow meander across the EU
We've got our flight to Paris booked for 7 August. We've got our flight back from Frankfurt to Calgary booked for 30 October. We have our first night set up with a Warm Showers host in Nantes on 7 August. The rest is waiting to get filled in as we go along .....
It's time for another extended bike tour. The summer of 2015 saw us knock off a long held dream, a ride across Canada (link to journal here). Last summer we stayed local, hiking, backpacking and cycling in the mountains of Alberta and British Columbia with a quick jaunt to the UK for our son's university graduation in July.
So this year we thought we would try a mix of something old and something new - Eurovelo 6 (http://www.eurovelo.com/en/eurovelos/eurovelo-6) , a roughly 4000 km meander along some of Europe's major rivers from the Atlantic coast in France to the Black Sea in Romania. We've travelled quite a bit through France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria (the first half of the trip) over the years, but once we hit Vienna and head south along the Danube it will be new territory for both of us.
Aside from fixed start and end dates, we have no concrete plans. We're going to take a leisurely approach with lots of time to smell the flowers, visit the Chateau's, and sip some wine (most of the route is basically through classic wine regions!). If there's a side trip or excursion that looks interesting, we'll take it. If conversations with fellow travellers convince us we need to take in alternate destinations, we'll do that too.
Why "Get It While It Lasts"??? ..... we came up with this name a few months ago when it was far from certain that the EU was going to hold together. The fine citizens of France subsequently calmed things down with Monsieur Macron, and the steady-as-she-goes Germans will likely do the same thing in their election in September, so that analogy isn't as applicable as we once thought. However, turning to us, we're now two years older than when we did our cross Canada trip, and although we still think we're in pretty decent shape, you never know how long it's going to last!
I'll be documenting (and ranting about) our journey right here over the next three months. Kirsten has leapfrogged me in technology and is now hooked up on Strava with links to Facebook and Relive so folks can follow along there too (sans rants).
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