So in the first week of May I took a 5-night self-guided trip around
Lake Constance, as organized by a wonderfully efficient little German
company, http://www.bodensee-radweg.com/index_en.html.
Hitherto I have always prefered guided tours, fearing to find myself
alone and abandoned in unfamiliar territory. But my riding skills are so
poor, that even on guided tours I was never with the group, either
because I lagged too far behind or, out of courtesy for the others, left
well ahead so as not to hold them back. Moreover, I'm not happy in a
pack line as it perturbs my balance. So in the end I might as well have
been alone, provided that I had sufficient help and support to hand
should I need it.
The Bodensee package included luggage transfer between hotels and a
hotline. The route, through Germany, Austria and Switzerland, sounded
appealing to me because it is supposedly all traffic-free cycling path,
and so well-frequented that it should not be possible to get lost. Also
the area is well-served by public transport, so should one not wish to
cycle, one can fall back on this in the manner of a support van. And the
advantage of self-guided is that one can go at any dates to suit
oneself, whatever the season, without worrying about cancellations due
to undersubscription. Moreover, self-guided is so much cheaper than
van-supported that one can get in four times as many trips for the same
money. I was able to customize my trip with day-distances of about 30
km, to keep a relaxed pace.
Accomodations and Meals
The company offers two price options depending on whether one wants more
or less luxurious hotels. I chose the cheaper option, the whole package
costing only 424€, including single-supplement, breakfasts and an extra
night's stay, but excluding other meals and air-fare to Zuerich. And I
have to say the hotels were oustanding, extremely luxurious by my
standards. A special mention to the wonderful ABC Hotel in Konstanz. The
room here was the size of a studio appartment. It included a small
kitchen section with a refrigerator well-stocked with drinks (I'm no
boozer but a relaxed Campari soda after a long day's cycling is very
welcome). They thought of things like providing phone-numbers to order
Chinese or pizza take-aways, or including a hair-dryer and umbrella. And
all the bathrooms in these German-speaking lands were almost unnaturally
clean. Design was superbly ergonomic and practical. A special mention
too, for the fabulous German breakfasts - the one in Konstanz would have
been OTT as a lunch buffet in France. Superb breads, croissants, hams,
wuerster, a full range of continental cheeses, smoked salmon, kippered
herrings, eggs in all forms, juices, yoghurts, fress fruit, cereal: no
need at all for lunch.
I suspect the only difference between these "B" category hotels and the
more expensive "A" class is that they were very excentricated from the
towns. The one in Friedrichshafen wasn't even in town, but about 8 km
further out, in a dreary suburb. This meant that I couldn't do much
conventional tourism after my cycling day, and that dining options were
limited.
However, I found tolerable eating all along the way. Not gourmet, but
passable, with decent fresh salads and vegetables and plenty of
vegetarian options (of no interest to me but something you wouldn't find
in France at all). One major objection - these German lands haven't yet
got the message about NO SMOKING in public spaces. Thanks to a
chain-smoking mother with boundary problems, I grew up with chronic
respiratory disease and am very allergic to cigarette smoke. I had
looked foward to a meal at the reputed restaurant of my Friedrichshafen
hotel but couldn't manage the enclosed space. And two observations:
1)Germanics are obsessed with asparagus. Can someone explain? I kept
passing eateries with great posters over the front announcing FRISCHE
SPERGEL! as if it had just been imported from Venus. In Lindauer Zech
the hotel offered two entire menus devoted to asparagus in every course
except dessert. 2) Many restaurants have no dessert menus, but are
situated right next to ice-cream cafés that serve only desserts. I came
to appreciate the charm of these at around 4pm: a sumptuous iced coffee
or Black Forest sundae to reward one's hours on the road, then a light
dinner around 8 before an early lights out (although I did manage Harry
Potter, and the Sego-Sarko debate, both dubbed into German, on the local
telly).
Flight, Paris-Zuerich on Swiss International Airlines
Last year, my flight to Prague with Flyzipper in a Dahon Airporter
suitcase, was a nightmare that I was keen not to repeat. The suitcase
was so heavy it was impossible to move, badly desgned on little wheels
that obliged one to bend right over to push it along, and constantly
falling over. Moreover, it incurred such enormous overweight and
oversize charges that Flyzipper's air-fare was nearly equal to my own.
This time, my idea was to get the bike to the airport via metro, by
rolling it along with a suitcase of normal size trailing behind it on a
bungee cord attached to the baggage rack, and then fold and wrap it at
the airport and send it as checked baggage, officially declared as a
bike. I did some research on the Web and found what sounded like a
reasonable policy with Swiss International Airlines. Their web site says:
"Il est possible d'enregistrer une bicyclette en plus de votre limite de
bagage régulière. Il convient cependant de réserver ce transport en
avance auprès d'un bureaux de réservations, la place à bord étant
limitée. Le transport d'un vélo est soumis à un surcoût. Pour les vols
en Europe le montant est de 50 FRS (EUR30) et pour les vols
intercontinentaux de 100 FRS (EUR60) (ou l'équivalent en monnaie locale)
par trajet. A l'enregistrement vous recevrez une housse protectrice pour
votre bicyclette."
I spent the better part of a morning trying to contact the Swissair
reservations desk on my mobile. The calls were routed into
I-know-not-what outsourcing lala-land. The people at the other end spoke
barely comprehensible pidgin French and seemed to have no awareness of
their own company's policy. After several tries, I was assured that my
reservation for bike carriage had been noted and added to my electronic
ticket.
On arrival at the check-in desk, I learned not only that there was no
bike reservation on my ticket, but that no cases could be provided by
the airline and that there were no known or established procedures for
handling bikes! So I threw a tizzy fit, rubbed their noses in the
web-site, made the poor ladies feel very guilty, and obtained that the
bike would travel as special checked baggage in a large orange plastic
bag of their providing. Out of contrition, they charged me nothing for
this. I was rather worried about damage to Flyzipper, so scantily
protected. (There was in fact some slight damage on arrival).
On the way back, still with my orange plastic bag, I once again found
ladies who were unaware of Swissair bike policies. But these Swiss
ladies were keen to reflect their newly learned procedures, so this time
I did pay the 30€ fee.
The moral of the story is, airline bike policies, even when written down
in black and white, are arbitrary and mostly unknown to employees.
Respect formalities but don't believe web-sites, allow double check-in
time, and expect irregularities and surprises.
The Cycling
Now for the riding, allowing for the fact that I am a person of
subnormal orientational and cycling skills.
If I chose to take a plane to my cycling destination, it is because I
was hoping to find something that is not available locally: paved, flat,
traffic-free, dedicated cycling paths through uncrowded scenic
locations. I did not want to be bothered with navigation, flapping maps
in the wind or baking in full sun while the GPS takes its sweet time to
find a signal. In these respects, I was a bit disappointed.
Particularly on the German side, the path was often nothing more than a
strip of paint on the edge of a traffic-heavy highway, or a narrow
sidewalk shared with pedestrians. The landscape here was industrialized
and charmless. I had hoped to clean out my system, but the combination
of car-exhaust and pollen caused an important flare-up of asthma and
allergies. Visibility was impaired by tearing eyes and coordination by
hacking coughs.
Between Meersburg and Friedrichshafen, there were so many pedestrians on
the route that I nearly gave up (it was a Sunday). Large sections of the
road had a 7 kph speed limit, even for bikes. There seemed to be no
concept of "keep right", with broad families of toddlers spread like
marmalade across the road. And throughout the trip, oncoming cyclists
were so continuously in my lane that, despite the implausibility of the
case, I suspected them all of being British.
Things improved in Austria and Switzerland. There were some ravishing
wooded paths along the Rhein, and once in Switzerland, the cycling path
conveniently cleaved to the tracks of a bijoux train route, with stops
placed at comfortable 5km intervals, of which I was able to avail myself
twice (a modest 3.80 CHF for the fare).However, these lovely paths were
mainly off-road, on stony dirt or gravel, and caused me concern since
this is not Flyzipper's vocation. On the last stretch, about 50m from a
station called Altnau, I realized I had a broken spoke - it turned out
to be 2 broken spokes when the train got in to Konstanz. In addition to
the train, I now got to test the hotline service at Bodensee Radweg. It
was excellent: the bike shop was just outside the Konstanz station and
the very competent bike-men even had tools to custom-cut the spokes,
something which is no longer done in Paris.
Navigation was a low point. I spent most of my time on the road
searching for the continuance of the path. Markings were tiny and easily
missed. Getting out of towns generally wasted 45 mins or more in
broiling suburban sunlight. On my third day, a missed turning on the
Rhein delta took me onto some 5 kms of an ankle-cracking path of bleak,
glaring white stone, almost as impossible to walk as it was to ride,
under a blistering sun. This was a "nature preserve" that I would have
been grateful to miss. I spent between 5 and 7 hours on the road per
day, just to cover 30-40 km. At least 60% of the time, I was on foot. I
had with me, on my Smartphone, a TomTom Navigator GPS, but this only
seemed to know one instruction, "Turn back where possible". I discovered
at the end of the trip (as one does), that a GPS system specially
designed for the Bodensee cycle route, could have been rented in the
tourist offices of any of the towns I passed through! Oh well, another
time. Local people were angelically kind and helpful, and unlike the
French in my experience, took no special pleasure in deliberately
sending tourists the wrong way. Alas though, my understanding of
Schwyzerdütsch is impressionistic at best.
I was blessed with decent weather. It was on the warm side for the
thermophobe that I am. I got sun blisters on my nose and lower lip, and
great white "angel-wing" sweat-marks on the back of my tee-shirts, but
there were neither the deluges nor the Sahara-like droughts that I
experienced last year. I realize in retrospect that I didn't pace myself
well. On last year's trip through the Eastern Loire, I developed such a
horror of the skanky, stand-up toilets, that I was determined to finish
the entire day's cycling in one stint, with no breaks, either to drink
or pee. The result was both dehydration and bladder discomfort. The one
day that I did stop, at a cafe in Rohrspitz, it made a world of
difference. I should have recalled that in _German_ lands, bathrooms are
glittering modern perfection, and it's unlikely that Fly will get stolen
if I tie him up for 45 mins in front of an Eiskafe.
My final day included no cycling. This was my only opportunity for some
bona fide tourism and I decided to take the ferry across the water to
visit the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, birthtown of
lighter-than-air flight. I'm not that into Zeppelins myself, but they
are a passion with my father, and to my surprise, the Museum was
fascinating. It included, among other things, a period-perfect
reconstruction of the Art Deco lounge, writing room and some of the
cabins of the ill-fated air-ship Hindenberg. The trip to New York took
about two and a half days, and the cabins were very like those on a
wagon-lit, except that they had rather ingenious fold-into-the-wall
washbasins. One of the most surprising objects was a piece of the
aluminium strutting that formed the internal structure of the ship.
Visitors were invited to pick it up. It was about the length of a park
bench and certainly had more metal in it than a bike, yet it came up on
one finger, like styrofoam! Zeppelin designers were as phobic of gravity
as anorexic supermodels, because every ounce that went into the ship was
an ounce less for the payload (passengers and mail) that made the
air-trips financially viable. So they came up with giddy technologies to
lighten the ships. Why can't we have bikes in that stuff? But one job
you don't want is to be crew on a Zeppelin! Not only the noise of the
motors in the gondola was deafening (they had to wear special
ear-muffs), but there was no built-in passage between the ship and the
gondola. That's right, they dropped out of the ship at I don't know how
many feet above sea-level, and climbed and hung on ropes to get into the
control section, suspended like spiders over the abyss. I hope they were
well paid.
So to sum up, great company, good hotels, excellent organisation and
support. The bike shop outside the station in Konstanz is first rate.
With respect to the cycling, I would just skip the section between
Meersburg and Friedrichshafen (go by ferry), rent the bespoke GPS, and
take a proper break every 15 km.
Photos
Most of these are lousy, as to save on weight I used the Smartphone
rather than the digital camera. But as travel-notes:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/efroselli/album?.dir=a583scd&.src=ph
EFR
Ile de France