ephemeralskin

im looking at doing a 28-day tour from late july to august. this is my roughest of preliminary sketches for an itinerary (with my very likely inaccurate guesstimates for miles in parentheses). all feedback on the basic route and timeframe ive laid out would be just great!

july 23rd: meet in freiburg
july 24-26: set off nice and early heading towards austria, across southern germany. (200)
july 27-29: make our way across austria, stopping in vienna. (150)
july 30-august 1: now we tour hungary, see budapest. (150)
august 2-4: circle up through slovakia and into the czech republic, stopping in prague. (200)
august 5-7: head back into germany, up to berlin. (150)
august 8-12: then head west back across germany and into the netherlands. (250)
august 13-15: hit up amsterdam, then down to brussels. (150)
august 16-17: ride up through belgium to the coast. take the ferry across into england ('the' ferry being the one i assume and hope exists). (75)
august 18-20: ride across england into wales. end up in cardiff. (150)


does anything stand out as totally wrong? anything you would change? could this be done averaging 50-70 miles a day? i know its rough at this point.. but this is how greatness starts.

xilios

I would get the microsoft autoroute express europe. I start with typing in the stops, the hours of riding/cycling per day, set the speed at 15kph and there you have it, a rough plan. You can now refine it a bit by choosing the type of roads you would like to travel on. Once you have all this you can refine it even further by getting the (michelin) maps of the areas you'll be going to. This is the way we plan all of our tours and it has worked out well for us.
As for the actual places you're planing to visit, they all good, it will be a very nice ride at that time of year.
cheers

ephemeralskin

hey nice tip! i was hoping a techno tour wizard would swoop in. thats a seriously rad idea. do you think the michelin maps will be essential? i was vaguely envisioning printing out local maps from google or somehwere and then highlighting our route.. any suggestions on that?

xilios

We take the michelin maps +/-1:200.000 just in case the roads have no shoulder, are bad or just too much trafic. It's just nice to be able to change the route a bit in the middle of the tour.
cheers