Originally Posted by
MinnMan
... I was in Bayreuth, so indeed, very close to the Czech border. Terrane looks the same. Lovely in the warm weather, and I was very surprised that there were very few recreational cyclists on the roads.
Here the only bicyclists are those who visit from elsewhere, rent rooms in pensions and bike on tourist trails. I never see them on those small roads meant for car traffic even if there is a whole network of them connecting villages and small towns.
I live just outside foothills of 'Sumava' which borders on Bavaria, generally all roads going West towards Germany are into hills while Eastwards is a pleasant rolling terrain. I never need to return from rides the same way. People here do have bikes, mostly MTBs but they only bike for utility, around towns, they don't even use them to commute btw towns, nobody here bikes for sport. Biking is generally the domain of bigger cities folks.
Even with blinking lights on the bicycle it can sometimes be very hard for a driver to see a cyclist when his/her windshield is nothing but sun glare.
The other day, I abandoned a ride against setting sun and returned back the way I came. It is a few kilometers of gradual uphill road section that is really good for training because it is the sort of hill on which I can maintain speed, at least for the better part of it. But the setting sun was deadly and there is no wide shoulder and even if there was. The traffic there is pretty mild but you can count on tens of cars passing you by even in off peak traffic hours. It was the sort of sun glare in which car drivers need to squint, when even sun visors are not too effective and as driver, you wish you washed your windshield better
Pretty well all of us are car drives too and know what its like.