Rent a Bicycle in Germany

Here are two great resources for renting bicycles in Germany and for general information about bike touring in Germany.

Before you start looking around, however, note the two photos. Very few companies in Germany offer lightweight touring bicycles. Most are fully equipped city or hybrid bikes complete with fenders, lights, racks, and more. They are pretty substantial bikes. So keep that in mind as you explore your options. Bike Rentals Plus has actually shipped lightweight touring bikes from Italy to customers in Austria for rides down the Danube to Budapest. (One fellow bought one of our used bikes in perfectly good shape. We shipped it to him in Vienna and he sold it in Budapest for 60% of what he paid for it. Everyone was happy!

Bicycle Germany is a web site by Tim and Maxa Burleigh, avid touring cyclists. There may be more information than you want, here, but at least they've done a lot of research for you. If you looking to rent a bike in Germany, start on this page.

Here's another blog with fairly recent bike rental options in major German cities.

For more photos of Germans and Austrians cycling the Danube Bikeway visit our Flickr site.

How to Pack for your Self-Supported Bicycle Tour

A picture is worth a thousand words. So have a look at some of the photos here of the annual Winter Ralleye Bike Tour out of Fort Collins, Colorado into the Rocky Mountains. Normally (what's normal any more?) the weather is pretty cold with snow on the ground. But this year the 30 or so thirty-somethings had fifty plus degree weather for the winter overnight bike tour to Ansel Watrous campground on the scenic Cache La Poudre River twenty-five miles out of Fort Collins.

We publish this note here so those of you who are dreaming of a self-supported, loaded bicycle tour can see several examples of B.O.B. trailers, panniers, and combinations thereof. Have fun looking at these photographs!

Loaded or Self-Supported Bicycle Tour #2

Before you head off on a loaded bike tour with you and your family or with you and your new bride, neighbors, kids, or friends take a look at Darren Alff's blog. If you can imagine yourself in Darren's shoes and out on the open road "winging" it on your own, then go for it!

The Best Thing About Self-Supported Touring

The best thing about self-supported touring is that you're on your own, free to go where the road takes you, sleep where you want, when you want, and to ride as long or short as you want every day. There is nothing better than that feeling of freedom when you hit the road on a new tour in a new place. But. . .

The Problem with Self-Supported Touring

You're on your own. And if you like being on your own, enjoy the freedom! But the minute you take the family with you or the minute you decide to "organize" the trip for friends and relatives, you're in charge! Or at least someone's in charge.

I'll never forget when my 14 year-old asked, after four straight 80 mile days, "What happened to those 50 mile days we were going to do on this trip?" That was in north central Norway over fifteen years ago. We had the family there and we were developing a new tour. Well, to cover the territory we really needed to knock off a few longer days that I had expected. My credibility went down the tube.

When you are organizing a ride and you have one or ten other people, you need answers to questions like:
1) How long is today's ride?
2) How high is that mountain pass (or, from the engineer, "what's the total vertical today?"
3) Where are we sleeping tonight?
4) Where's the best lunch stop today?
. . . and on and on and on.

Resources for Planning a Self-Supported Bicycle Tour

(These are really better thought of as primers on whether I want to do this myself or not but have a look, that's part of the planning!)
Darren Alf's Blog: Bicycle Touring Pro
Adventure Cycling Association has a Bike Touring 101 also
REI has a Bike Touring Basics page (though it is pretty minimal)

Loaded or Self-Supported Bicycle Tour

Among the tours you can take, a self-supported or loaded tour is certainly the most traditional. Among the decisions you'll have to make is how to carry your gear. That, of course, is impacted also by whether you camp and cook for yourself or if you sleep in local accommodations and eat in restaurants. This couple is cycling the panhandle in northern Corsica, France. They are camping most nights but are traveling very lightly with small, low-rider front panniers, one handlebar bag, rear panniers, and a BOB trailer pulled by their tandem.

Getting your tandem and your BOB and panniers to Corsica from outside of Europe is not an easy task. At Bike Rentals Plus we rent tandems, panniers and BOBs to make the logistics easier.