bikes

The beauty of the bike path is two-fold. It keeps we cyclists away from cars and trucks and allows us the opportunity to go where motorised vehicles can't hope to explore. The perfect example of this is on the border of the Alsace and Lorraine regions of France. A ride I'll call the 'day of the ghost canal.' After a day spent cycling along the Canal du la Marne au Rhin from Strasbourg to Saverne, we began our second morning on the canal cycling in the direction of Nancy. For fourteen kilometres, the path followed the waterway, through a narrow valley of orange-leafed autumn trees and dotted with quiet villages.  After Lutzelbourg, we came upon the Plan d'incline Saint-Louis-Arzviller - a marvellous feat of engineering that allows canal traffic and incredibly a section of the canal to be lifted nearly fifty metres in elevation through a system of counterweights. I'm not much on scientific explanation - perhaps a photo will do the trick?  It achieves in forty minu...

I�m currently cycling from St Malo in France to Budapest, Hungary. Over the last seven weeks, I�ve gotten lost at least once a day. I take a wrong turn or miss an important sign and end up scratching my head and trying to convince a local to tell me how to get out of their town. And then, at the end of a long day in the saddle, I pedal slowly along the streets of a town looking for my hotel. I�ve got the address and a screenshot of the location on my iPad, but it often takes an eternity to find the cheap lodging located down a narrow back alley. My last resort is usually to ask a local, except my Czech language skills aren�t the best. Or to open Google Maps to pinpoint where I am, so I can navigate the hell out of there.  Except that takes data. Expensive data involving roaming charges and all manner of bullshit clauses that phone companies add to mobile plans. Frankly, I�d rather stay lost. Last week, I met a fellow long distance cyclist in the Czech Republic who had navigated al...

�Cycling to Bohemia� certainly has a romantic ring to it. Two thousand five hundred kilometres from the ancient Brittany port of St Malo along the Normandy coast, past the battlegrounds of World War 2, through Belgium and across the south of The Netherlands before linking with the Rhine River in the German city of Dusseldorf and cruising along its banks until a sharp left turn in Mainz to follow the Main River to its headwaters in the Ficktelgebirge Mountains near the German-Czech border. From this high vantage point, it�s an up and down route across the Czech Republic to the Bohemian capital of Prague, surely one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Here�s five reasons to consider cycling the Euro Velo 4. 1: The terrain It�s mostly flat, with only two serious climbs - the short and windy ascent over the cliff tops west of the French port of Calais and the aforementioned Ficktelgebirge Mountains in Upper Bavaria. Neither pass is too difficult and can be done in a morning of heavy br...