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Old 07-12-13 | 08:17 AM
  #12  
tandempower
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Joined: Jul 2013
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Originally Posted by Machka
1. Go read the Touring Forum ...
http://www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php/47-Touring

2. Everything you describe exists. You just have to know where to look.

3. A few examples:

a) I spent 3 months cycling around Australia back in 2004, mostly staying in campgrounds and hostels. In addition, the maps my cycling partner and I used were good. But Australia also has cabins in their campgrounds (you'll find them in Europe too) which are much more convenient than motels ... for one thing, you can bring your bicycles inside. Rowan and I frequently spend long weekends in cabins in various locations, and do hub-and-spoke cycling tours from there.

b) Rowan and I spent a month cycling around England, Belgium, and France in 2007, mostly staying in campgrounds plus a few hostels. Getting around Europe by bicycle is quite easy. There are lots of good maps available, and lots of good cycling routes.

c) Rowan and I just recently returned from 8 months travelling around the world. Our first 4 months (mid-June to mid-October) were spent travelling (by bicycle and public transportation) in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the UK and Europe. We stayed in B&Bs, hotels, cabins (like what you'd find in campgrounds here in Australia), hostels, and campgrounds. All cycling-friendly. We followed the Rhine Route (using a very detailed map book), the Rhone Route (without a map), and the Velodyssey Route (with fairly detailed maps we picked up at Tourist Information Centres along the way).
Have a look at the Velodyssey Route ... it was our favourite: http://www.velodyssey.com/
Glad to hear you've had so many positive cycle-touring experience on different continents. I'm hoping one day the bridge plans between Alaska and Siberia will be carried out with, hopefully, a bike lane along with whatever train tracks and/or other lanes are included. How cool would it be to plan a 1+ year cycle tour from one side of the Atlantic to the other via Asia?

In the meantime, I'm looking primarily at US developments in long-distance bike touring. There are a lot of jobs here that pay @$10/hour or even less, with many people working part time. There is a lot of debate about whether economic growth should be stimulated so that people can work more hours, which many seem to want because they have car payments, rent payments, and plenty of other bills and consumer desires to pay for. Essentially what I've come to realize is that the reason all these people are clamoring for so much money is because the cost of everything has driving costs factored into the salaries of everyone from managers to the lowest paid workers.

So I'm hoping that a growing network of affordable camping facilities along a network of bike highways and roads with camping facilities along them will begin emerging to take some of the pressure off the already stressed CO2/asphalt economy. Hiking trails like the Appalachian Trail have simple camping facilities like lean-tos and larger camping shelters, which I think would be a good model for camping along bicycle routes. The problem is that there are many people in the US who dismiss and/or resent the idea of having lots of affordable facilities to promote bicycle touring because they think it just won't be that lucrative. For some reason, such people never stop to consider that the more lucrative forms of touring amenities are too expensive to expand much beyond the demographic that already enjoys them.

Anyway, if you've seen/used any amenities that stick out in your mind as particularly impressive, please mention/describe them. A few years ago, I saw plans for multi-story camping platforms that would supposedly be built in popular EU cities for urban camping. I think the US could attract a lot of tourist business if it was possible to fly into a city and then tour around a region by bicycle. There are a lot of nice dedicated bike roads/highways emerging and most new road and repaving projects I see include bike lanes. There are also lots of travel-oriented motels, campgrounds, truck-stops with showers, etc. but they are mostly oriented toward automotive travel. If the same or similar facilities were geared toward cycling, e.g. with less pavement/parking and lower cost, I think the combination of increased domestic travel and global tourism would make it a feasible addition to existing travel industries.
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