Alps Trip Route Advice

Good to hear from you and thanks for the update.

What I think you might have done is made the classic two errors:

A. Not realised how big an area / mileage the route covers, ‘the Alps’ (to use the oft banded about generic term) alone are huge.

B. Listed out the ‘Must do’ places and just lobbed them in, along with the hope of doing the lot (along with nice roads to get there and back) without any clear idea if it is even possible to do it in the time available.

One thing is for certain, you can still have a bloody good time away in nine days, even starting from and returning to Kendal. The other certainty is that the places you have listed won’t vanish in our lifetimes or those of our children’s children’s children.

Me, I’d look at maybe:

Belgium / Luxembourg Ardennes and maybe up into the Harz, not least as they suit an arrival / departure from Holland, which might suit your Kendal location.

Belgium / Luxembourg Ardennes, then the Morvan and then down to the Vosges / Black Forest.

A blat to the Alps to say, Andermatt or into the French alps at Annecy.

The Ride magazine webpage has lots of ideas, which you can mix’n’match with, too: https://www.ride.co.uk/routes

PS Don’t forget to get your three mates to do some of the work, too!

Haha, yes i totally agree that I have made the classic A & B rooky mistakes. Thanks for your suggested routes, I will take a look at them. Whilst doing some 'Googling' this morning I did stumble across the www.ride.co.uk website which is very useful, especially the GPX files.
 
If you get the Eurotunnel on the 1st day and spend your first night in France (for reasons already explained), you can easily be in the Alps after a long 2nd day, or middle of the 3rd day.
Consider that the ride home will be a similar time schedule.
So you can see from that how long you'll have to "play with".

Yes, I know some will say that you can get there in a day, and I've done so, but I think you all want a biking holiday rather than a mini Iron Butt ride. :D

This is definitely still an option. Personally I would be happy to have 2/2.5 long days going to/from the Alps. However, if we do still go for this option, I think we need to moderate what we try to do whilst in the Alps. I want to us to have the time to have coffee stops, soak up the amazing views etc and not be getting to the hotel at 10pm.
 
Haha, yes i totally agree that I have made the classic A & B rooky mistakes. Thanks for your suggested routes, I will take a look at them. Whilst doing some 'Googling' this morning I did stumble across the www.ride.co.uk website which is very useful, especially the GPX files.

No problems.

How about (very crude, just knocked up in 10 seconds) something like this at 750 miles top to bottom:

6300ac676bcea32590bb293c98eda302.png
 
Ok, I’ll guess that you’re going from Saturday morning to Sunday evening so you only use 5 days of your annual leave so if it was me I’d get the Harwich to Hoek ferry Saturday night and head straight to Passau in Bavaria because you can do that comfortably in a day as long as you’re not one of those lightweights that insist on long breaks for food and drinks whenever you need fuel.

That gives you a full 5 days of riding around Austria doing whatever you want or going further east or south if the weather looks better. Don’t get too involved with planning, use Booking.com to sort out your hotel at about 4pm every afternoon and just go where the sun is shining.

The following Saturday ride back up to The Hoek, get on the ferry and have a few beers to celebrate a good week away then Sunday ride home to Kendal.

You’ll get across the NL and Germany much easier at weekends because the traffic is always lighter and you’ll be doing the tourist part with no time pressure. Another option is that if the weather in Austria looks shit then go east to The Baltic states, maybe go a bit south of there and follow The Carpathian Mountains to Romania where you can do the Transalpina and Transfagarasan passes. It’s all doable in the 7 days you’ll have on mainland Europe.

Again, don’t get hooked up on fixed plans and destinations because you could end up being forced into something that just isn’t working for you.
 
Thanks @AndyB_11 that is an interesting suggestion, which I will look into. I wouldn't dare risk not booking the accommodation in advance as there are 4 of us (all blokes) and I don't fancy sharing a double bed with any of them ;-) We are taking the first Friday off work, so we can leave Kendal Friday morning and we plan to get home at some point the following Sunday. I really fancy getting the overnight Rotterdam to Hull ferry on the way home, because it gets into Hull at 8am and we only have a ~3 hour ride home from there.
 
On the majority of Euro tours our group tries to hit the Tunnel around mid-day UK time (typically a Friday), arriving in France with enough time for a decent ride south to a provincial town somewhere for our first nights stop where a few beers and a pizza do the trick (typically 80 to 100 miles from Calais).

This makes the second day a fresh start following "Le Petit Dejeuner" and ablutions, taking the toll routes heading south to try and reach the good stuff as quickly as possible, there being little joy in riding endless open flat lands with nothing but farm fields for scenery and strong cross-winds for company.

Day three is usually where the fun begins, be it the Alps or the South of France or whatever.

A top tip is to refuel all bikes before you hit the hotels each day so you can hit the road next morning with full bellies and a full tank, straight into making progress without searching for a service station that is open or full of locals in a queue (especially on a Sunday).
 
Thanks @AndyB_11 that is an interesting suggestion, which I will look into. I wouldn't dare risk not booking the accommodation in advance as there are 4 of us (all blokes) and I don't fancy sharing a double bed with any of them ;-) We are taking the first Friday off work, so we can leave Kendal Friday morning and we plan to get home at some point the following Sunday. I really fancy getting the overnight Rotterdam to Hull ferry on the way home, because it gets into Hull at 8am and we only have a ~3 hour ride home from there.

Examine your conscience, it’s a P&O ferry and after they did the dirty on their crews I vowed not to use them until major changes to their management were made. It’s closer for me as well but I do like the H-H crossing because the boat is better and it’s also cheaper.

You’re right though, it’s a long drag up from Harwich but you’d still be home soon after lunch if travelling on a Sunday.
 
With a group of bikes, I have never brought into the “Don’t book anything” idea. Last weekend, all the hotels in Vianden were fully booked, my group of four bikes taking the last rooms in the Auberge l’Aa. It would have been a joy to discover this, in the dark, with a bunch of bikes turning around on the steep cobbled street in the rain. As it was, we arrived, parked our bikes and hit the bar.

I’ve never brought into the “Weather looks crap that way, let’s go this way” thing either. I have often wondered how many bods say, “We’ll go north instead of heading west”, then run into rain which, had they gone west might well have been less or none at all. I guess they just ignore their error?
 
second tip: you need more than 9 days.

Home to channel tunnel to Calais to Innsbruck is 1000 miles.
Plus your Alps trip as listed above is 500 plus miles.
Bormio to Rotterdam is just shy of 700 miles.
Plus the bit home from Hull at around 160 miles

4 days that max :blast

2360 =262.2 miles per day!

I can do that before breakfast :D
 
With a group of bikes, I have never brought into the “Don’t book anything” idea. Last weekend, all the hotels in Vianden were fully booked, my group of four bikes taking the last rooms in the Auberge l’Aa. It would have been a joy to discover this, in the dark, with a bunch of bikes turning around on the steep cobbled street in the rain. As it was, we arrived, parked our bikes and hit the bar.

I’ve never brought into the “Weather looks crap that way, let’s go this way” thing either. I have often wondered how many bods say, “We’ll go north instead of heading west”, then run into rain which, had they gone west might well have been less or none at all. I guess they just ignore their error?

My theory on avoiding bad weather nearly let me down once when I sat eating breakfast in a hotel in Frederikshavn trying to decide whether to get the ferry to Oslo or Gothenburg, it looked miserable in Norway so I went to Sweden, rode across the country and caught a ferry to Finland that night with the intention of doing a lap of the old Imatra circuit. A few miles past Helsinki it started to rain heavily so I sat in a cafe feeling a bit despondent, checked the ferry timetable then rode back into Helsinki and caught the ferry to Tallinn where the forecast sun was indeed shining so I spent 2 days exploring the city.

I also booked my hotel on the ferry between Helsinki and Tallinn and just to confirm my status as a grade 1 chancer until I was drinking coffee as the boat pulled into The Hook I didn’t really know whether I was going north or south but decided that if the weather was in my favour I’d go to the Arctic Circle :blast

As for hotels, fortune favours the brave and I’ve done a few trips where we didn’t book hotels because we didn’t know where we were going and always got away with it though not with us all in the same hotel a couple of times :D
 
as it's your 1st trip ...a couple of things .

Frogland has a blanket speed limit of a max 90 kph , locals watch it around towns/cities but seem to ignore it well out in the country .
speed camera's mainly are forward facing , there are "tanks" at the side of the road randomly , " grey trees " about 5' tall , and on big roads "BIG trees" on massive poles, usually hidden behind a bridge , on the Paris ring road ( not the peripherique ) camera's are forward facing . the camera's are grey not yellow , they hide them. The French are very accommodating cos they all started on mopeds and bikes are expensive things to own/run .

The Swiss are cnuts , all of them , just don't go in their country , everything is illegal , filtering ( they will actively close up to stop you ) , speeding ( fines on the spot , possible impounding of bike and arrest ), noise , i was checked out on my standard 1150 for noise), any money that isn't theirs, ( you can pay in euro's the change you get will be S-Franc's)fun is especially frowned upon . Do not get caught on their m-way without a vignette .

Germany is similar to Switzerland. it is illegal to make hand gestures to other drivers , autobahns , lane discipline is excellent , overtake and get out of the fast lane quickly, cos someone will be right behind you ...and i mean less than 10 foot , if you dawdle .

Austria is between the Swiss and the German's , but fuel is cheaper. there was a tale here somewhere about HID lights being illegal and a E200 fine being imposed , at an ATM.

Italy , expensive in the mountains , think £5 for a hot chocolate , £2.5 for a Coke , overtaking on a single white line is ok , all 2 wheelers seem to do it . they love cyclists ...it is one of their failings. have lots of smallish notes , most of the petrol stations take cash at the pump , going on a Sportster means running it close to the empty point sometimes

apart from the above , it's great.

as you've never been to the Alps , do the French/Italy bit first .

bring back 200 Camels yellow , for me , buy them in Italy.
 
Another thing to look out for is that in the Bavarian Alpin areas they have dropped many rural village speed limits down from 50kmh (30mph) down to 30kmh (20mph) and are actively embracing the static speed camera which have camouflage worthy of a secret ww2 site
 
As you are thinking your original plan is ambitious maybe reconsider your schedule. I have been organising trips away for a group, all experienced riders but with a fairly high average age. We go for the same period as you plan, 2 weekends and the 5 days in between. We have 2 or 3 days as transit days and pick a base for 3-4 nights in the middle. Some take days off the bike, others do circular tours from the base. This is a more relaxed way to tour. Using this model, we have used Grenoble in the French Alps, Landeck in the Austrian Tyrol, Maltatal in Carinthia and Meiringen in Swiss Bernese Alps, plus many other non-Alpine places.
 
first trip away ....everyone says "lets hit the Alps or the Picos!" there is a lot more to see and do closer to you than the Alps in Europe. If I was you I would stay a little more nearer to home for your first euro trip ,as mentioned the Harz is superb, the Ardennes etc. Its a big continent and if you have not been before it can be quite daunting . Loads to see out there, why blast down motorways as fast as you can legally go and miss all that beautiful continent each side of you ?

have a little rethink this weekend with your mate over a beer or two at the Fell Bar
 
With a group of bikes, I have never brought into the “Don’t book anything” idea. Last weekend, all the hotels in Vianden were fully booked, my group of four bikes taking the last rooms in the Auberge l’Aa. It would have been a joy to discover this, in the dark, with a bunch of bikes turning around on the steep cobbled street in the rain. As it was, we arrived, parked our bikes and hit the bar.

I’ve never brought into the “Weather looks crap that way, let’s go this way” thing either. I have often wondered how many bods say, “We’ll go north instead of heading west”, then run into rain which, had they gone west might well have been less or none at all. I guess they just ignore their error?

With a group more organisation helps. Travelling alone it's easy to play it by ear if you prefer that flexibility, whether that be where to sleep or weather. Each to their own. On a bike I prefer to go it alone and, within an overall plan of rough route, make the days up as I go, depending on what I find and feel.

Different ways, all good.
 
As a few have said ,I think you’re trying to achieve too much on your first trip away .
I’d keep it shorter.
Something like a blast down to Cochem on the Mosel. Couple of nights there ,giving you the opportunity to ride out and enjoy the views along the river and the stunning roads nearby that surround the Nurburgring.(area ringed in red on map)
Infact , if it was me I’d stay in Adenau at the Hotel Blaue Ecke which is alongside the ‘Ring.
Cochem etc is a short ride away.
Then head up to the Ardennes for a few nights.
Bouillon is always a good base .Stay somewhere like the Hotel de la Poste. (Area ringed in blue)
Then home.

62b9d49be42983410ccfec9747e93ab8.png




Obviously your options are infinite but something like this came in to my head and having done the areas many times , I know how cracking it is but not too far away to get stressed about on first euro tour.
 
On the majority of Euro tours our group tries to hit the Tunnel around mid-day UK time (typically a Friday), arriving in France with enough time for a decent ride south to a provincial town somewhere for our first nights stop where a few beers and a pizza do the trick (typically 80 to 100 miles from Calais).

This makes the second day a fresh start following "Le Petit Dejeuner" and ablutions, taking the toll routes heading south to try and reach the good stuff as quickly as possible, there being little joy in riding endless open flat lands with nothing but farm fields for scenery and strong cross-winds for company.

Day three is usually where the fun begins, be it the Alps or the South of France or whatever.

A top tip is to refuel all bikes before you hit the hotels each day so you can hit the road next morning with full bellies and a full tank, straight into making progress without searching for a service station that is open or full of locals in a queue (especially on a Sunday).

That makes sense thanks Pukmeister.
 
first trip away ....everyone says "lets hit the Alps or the Picos!" there is a lot more to see and do closer to you than the Alps in Europe. If I was you I would stay a little more nearer to home for your first euro trip ,as mentioned the Harz is superb, the Ardennes etc. Its a big continent and if you have not been before it can be quite daunting . Loads to see out there, why blast down motorways as fast as you can legally go and miss all that beautiful continent each side of you ?

have a little rethink this weekend with your mate over a beer or two at the Fell Bar

Are you a Kendalian DC?
 
As a few have said ,I think you’re trying to achieve too much on your first trip away .
I’d keep it shorter.
Something like a blast down to Cochem on the Mosel. Couple of nights there ,giving you the opportunity to ride out and enjoy the views along the river and the stunning roads nearby that surround the Nurburgring.(area ringed in red on map)
Infact , if it was me I’d stay in Adenau at the Hotel Blaue Ecke which is alongside the ‘Ring.
Cochem etc is a short ride away.
Then head up to the Ardennes for a few nights.
Bouillon is always a good base .Stay somewhere like the Hotel de la Poste. (Area ringed in blue)
Then home.

62b9d49be42983410ccfec9747e93ab8.png




Obviously your options are infinite but something like this came in to my head and having done the areas many times , I know how cracking it is but not too far away to get stressed about on first euro tour.

Thanks @Arsey, much appreciated.:okay
 
The Harz Mountains have been recommended and I can thoroughly agree with that. But steer clear of the area at weekends: the sports bike ‘gods’ from Berlin and Hannover descend on the area at weekends and all seem to have a deathwish. And, as a result, the police and speed cameras come out in force
 


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