Trip Planning 24th May 2014

We only booked our flights for this trip a couple of days ago, but have discussed it over the last year.  We always thought we would go.

 We are slightly daunted after the weather last year, so procrastinated somewhat.  Last year was the only one of our trips so far with consistently poor weather.

 Again, a usual, we will drive to Sydney by hire car, around 3 hours.  We will then travel to Frankfurt by Malaysian Airlines.  We chose them because the price is good, and we can do a one-day stopover on the way home in Kuala Lumpar, a city we have not visited.

 We had intended to ride the Jura cycle route last year, but the weather did not permit this, so it is on the list for this year.

 As usual, we do not have a detailed plan, and will change things as we gain local knowledge and as the weather permits.  However, I have put a bit more time looking that the possibilities for this trip for two reasons.  We have now ridden through a lot of Europe, and have no interest in going over old ground.  A good deal of the trip south of Basel is through the mountains, and it pays to check out sensible routes, ones that avoid humongous passes and tunnels.  Lastly, the trip has a number of sections that have intrigued us over the years.

 We will fly into Frankfurt and ride the only section of the Rhine River route we have not done, between Frankfurt and Basel.  From Basel we will ride through the Jura, a hilly section that runs between Lake Geneva and the French border, and then to Geneva.

From Geneva, the intention is to ride to Innsbruck, and then follow the Inn River route towards Passau.  From Passau we intend to ride to the east, into Poland, and then swing back to Dresden.

Our current intention is to ride from Dresden to the beginning of the Main River cycle route, and follow it back to Frankfurt.

We won’t do all of this unless there is a howling tailwind, as the distance is a bit more than we can handle.  So we will work with the weather and cut out a few bits here and there.

In all, we will be away for 6 weeks, with around 38 days of riding.

We have not really done any preparation.  Our gear is pretty well sorted after all of these trips, and for those who are interested it is described here.

So, all we have to do is to drag it all out, make sure the bikes are serviced and off we go.