Tally Gals European Bike Adventure

February 22, 2019

60 days and counting.  After more than 2 years of planning, and waiting for 2 members to retire, the time has come to pay for tours, finalize our wardrobes and make sure we have the cycling gear we need.  The plan, 6 weeks of cycling mostly on self guided tours, some self supported, and 1 guided tour. We'll start in Amsterdam in time to experience the height of Hollands famous tulips (we hope) and end in Koblenz along the fairy tale castle portion of the Rhine. We’ll cover about 750 miles on our bikes and take some time out to enjoy the towns along the way. 

We are 8 women from 55 to 73 who love to bike and travel. This is our first European adventure together after multiple US bike trips. Four lucky ones are retired and can go for the whole six weeks and the other 4 will join us at different parts of the trip when jobs and lives permit. 

We started getting ready for this trip about 2 years ago when two of our group were looking forward to retirement and wanted to plan a great tour to celebrate. That was the genesis for this adventure. We scoured the internet for semi supported bike tour options in Europe and came up with three tours that capture different parts of the continent but could be woven together to create a cohesive route. 

Our trip planning has gone pretty well. One of the first big decisions we needed to make was deciding what to do about bikes. Would we take our own bikes (and pray they didn’t get stolen in Amsterdam), or should we rent bikes for the whole 6 weeks, or maybe just buy bikes over there. It turned out, that for us, it is more economical to buy used touring bikes. Who knew!?! We will buy the touring bikes from a bike rental company in Amsterdam. The bikes will have 21 speeds, stands, lights, locks, rear racks and panniers. They guarantee them for 3 months. Fingers crossed that won't be an issue.  The bikes will be much heavier than our own. Therefore, we are training using our off road bikes riding dirt roads, hills, and more hills with an occasional 50 mile or more flat ride thrown in for endurance and seat time. Our goal, to focus on enjoying the sites and riding and not our legs or bottoms.

Another part of our trip planning was figuring out how to pack light and still have everything we will need for cold days in Holland and warmer weather further south in the spring/early summer. This is especially important because we will have 6 days where we are completely self supported. We will need to carry everything we have on our bikes. The more we take the harder those hills will be to climb... Sooo... we watched lots of packing videos and are doing things like weighing each piece of clothing and making sure each item can serve double duty as both off the bike wear and riding clothes. We hope to pack no more than 17lbs.

Next entry, our packing list. Wish us luck.