This page consists of what we have learned from our journey. It is not meant to be anything more than that. Our trip had
unique weather and only covered a small fraction of Europe. Hopefully this information may be
of help to others but is not meant to be a guide for any and all situations.
Finding Hotels. 1
Finding Food. 1
Clothing, Weather 2
Cycling Equipment 2
Languages. 3
Traffic Signs, Rules of the Road. 3
Finding Routes, Maps. 4
Internet Connections. 4
This varied considerably in the different areas we cycled. In the Netherlands
we generally would travel to a target town and then use the GPS to find at least one nearby hotel. The GPS database was not complete, so we then tried to find local information to supplement our list.
In Belgium and northern France, when we were not ending the day in a large
city we’d begin the hotel search about 20km before we were ready to end the day – as it often took that long to
find one.
From Paris on, and especially in the Loire Valley, we had
to call in advance and make reservations. Otherwise we found that many hotels
were booked. As we were leaving the Loire we were to spend our last night in
the larger city of Angers, and did not make reservations. As a result we ended up traveling an additional 30km and only with help from the Office
of Tourism were we able to find the last room available in the entire city.
In our trip from Angers to Normandy we had to plan our route around the existence of hotels, and there were vast areas
(in cycling distances) where no hotels existed. We had to make sure that we not
only ended where there were hotels, but had a prior reservation as well.
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In the Netherlands
food was almost no problem. Most little towns we traveled through had at least
a sandwich shop if not a full restaurant. In fact our #1 meal was found mid-day
on a Monday in Aalst at a wonderful restaurant – only
found by asking some locals.
Northern France was a shock. We rode through town after town where no businesses existed or were open.
It didn’t seem to matter whether it was 10:00 am or 3:30 pm, most of the shops were closed. Restaurants, Patisseries, and Grocery stores were almost unheard of.
Even going south of Paris, the Loire Valley, and Normandy
were problematic. The one cultural difference we had a lot a trouble with (as
hungry cyclists) were that if you couldn’t find a restaurant by 1:00 pm, you’d be out of luck – and then
they don’t reopen until at least 7:30 or 8:00 pm for dinner. Many times
we would show up at a restaurant at 8:00 pm or later and still be the first ones there.
On our ride to Normandy
we finally got smart and began buying a bag lunch in the morning. But it was
still difficult to find more than bread and sugary foods. Protein is not a part
of the French morning diet. It was amazing to pay as much as $15 USD per person
for nothing more than some bread and tea or coffee!
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The clothing we took was absolutely perfect!
All of our clothing was on the high-tech side, consisting of lightweight insulating and quick drying fabrics. We went for weeks washing only in the sinks at night.
We actually took warmer clothing than was needed – but we’d not
recommend changing that. We were, frankly, very lucky. The Netherlands was
experiencing a heatwave in the 90’s for our first couple of weeks. We almost
never needed our rain gear. It was not until our final week in England – after we had ended the cycling – that
it turned cold enough to have needed some of the warmer things we had brought.
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At the risk of entering the Panniers vs. Trailers war – here goes. We had the standard Bike Friday trailer. This
consists of the packing suitcase for the bicycle with a two-wheeled trailer attached.
The really good part was that it is hard-sided and lockable. That meant
we could ride up to a Chateau and lock everything in the parking lot, not worrying about our possessions as we toured.
The hard-sided case also meant that our things stayed drying and cleaner –
no dust and no needed for additional inner plastic bags or an outer rain cover.
But there is the down side of the trailer.
It’s too wide! Particularly with its two wheels design, it was frankly
too wide for a number of the bike paths and lanes we had to take. There were
a couple of bridges we had to walk because the path was too narrow, and some corners and posts where we had to pick up the
trailer to lift over obstacles.
Our longer length with the combination of the Trailer and Tandem also proved
to be problematic on many of the Dutch and French bike paths. They have too sharp
of turns and France likes to put up a lot of double gates which a single bike can ride through but we had to stop and negotiate
with lifting and shifting the bike and trailer.
We should also mention our accident in Amsterdam. We kept a tall yellow flag attached to the rear of the trailer, but that was not enough
for a car to see and it hit the rear trailer wheel trying to squeeze past us. From
then on, whenever we were in a tight bind, Mary Carol would walk behind the trailer to keep cars at a distance.
Other than that, everything held up wonderfully, including a surprising record
of having no flat tires the entire trip! (And can you believe it? On our first ride after returning home – forgetting to take the pump with us – we had a flat!)
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We had concentrated on our French travels for so long we forgot to even learn
the basic “hello” and “thank you” in Dutch. The good
news is that most Dutch people speak English so we did just fine, but next time we intend to get a little better vocabulary.
Jon’s French got him to the point where he was comfortable ordering in
most restaurants, but it took Mary Carol’s years of French to do all the hotel reservations.
Those who say that most French people speak English and will switch to it after
the first “bonjour”, we think have not been to the countryside. We
went for weeks without anyone but each other to talk to. Our most difficult conversation
was when we were trying to buy tickets on the TGV for Paris,
and needed to figure out how to take the Tandem on the train. No one at the ticket
counter spoke English.
England
actually proved to be a little more difficult than expected. It’s really
true what they say about the US and UK being two great nations only divided by a common language! One day Jon thought the Tube official had said that he had shouted at her, when she had said he should
show his ticket to her.
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This was our biggest mistake/oversight.
We did not spend the time needed to properly understand what the Rules of the Road and what different Road Signs meant
in each country. This was exacerbated by the fact that we traveled through 4
different countries in our first two weeks.
As an example of how important this is – our first day, right off the
ferry, Jon made a wrong turn and we had to get help to find our way to Delft. The reason was that we did not understand a road sign.
It was a blue sign with a white bicycle and a red line through it. A sign
like that in the U.S. would mean –
“no bicycles allowed”. All it means in Europe
is “End of Bike Path”, so we have to move to the road and share it with cars.
The “Bicycle’s not allowed” is a white sign, black bicycle, and a red outer circle.
We also took a 15 km detour one day which was not necessary. We were on a bike path in France and it suddenly ended
at what looked like a freeway (in the US). We later saw that the “A” roads in France do not allow bicycles, and there will always be one of those white black
and red signs indicating it. The road we detoured around was a “D”
road, on which bicycles are allowed.
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This was a frustrating challenge for most of the trip. Prior to leaving we tried book stores and online shops for any maps we could find – and finally gave
up. We ended up using our GPS as our primary means of choosing routes and navigating
through the day. But this is not enough in many situations. We would loose satellite connections often, and it was difficult to zoom in and out to see where towns
were in the vicinity, etc.
In Holland,
we found that the road signs only refer to which direction to get to local towns, not the names of the roads. And you can’t rely on thinking that you are going to Rotterdam or
Haarlem. The
signs will only give you the next small town down the road. We resorted to creating
routes on the GPS, and then making a list of every little town we were to pass through on the route.
When we got to Paris,
we finally found the maps we needed all along. They are based on the Michelin
Maps, but have additional information on what kind of road surface each road has, and how wide the lanes are. These were absolutely what we needed to choose good routes.
The maps we found were created by the Institut Geographique National, for Velo and Pied (Bicycle and Hiking). They appear to be based on the same
data used in the Michelin maps. If you can’t find the IGN maps, Michelin
is the next best choice.
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We took with us all the telephone converters for Britain,
Holland, Belgium, and France. We were
never able to get the British one to work, but the home we stayed at most of the time had another which did work. We never had to use the Holland or Belgium
ones – only because all the places we stayed had the US
type of plug already. But I would still take them in the future, as I think we
were just lucky. The French phone connector, however, was needed almost everywhere
we went.
We used Earthlink as the ISP. They
charged $.15 a minute for connections, but they had local phone numbers for everywhere we went, and we were always able to
make reasonable connections.
The only place we ended using an Internet Café was in Amsterdam, but only because we stayed in a cheaper hotel which did not have an analog phone
line in the room. I was able to maintain all my needed connections from the Café
except uploading using FTP.
Wireless connections were available in a number of hotels we stayed in. However every time I compared prices, the Earthlink via a modem was still less expensive. The biggest problem was that most of the providers would only sell blocks of 2 hours
at a time. This did not mean that you could use up to 2 hours over the next day
or so. It meant that once you logged on, you could only have a connection for
the next two hours.
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