Danube - And We’re Off!

 Home to West End

Doing one big tandem tour a year has been part of the annual plan for a while now and Steve is always hunting for (and finding!) good routes. This year’s trip is following the Danube River from the Black Forest to Budapest, which will take us through Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary.  Theoretically it’s downhill, but there’s 12,000 feet of climbing over the 750-800 miles.

All the hotels have been booked, 17 in total. Each one has been carefully selected according to the criteria developed on the LEJOG trip - price, quality, a location close to the trail, close to the Old Town (and dinner), not at the top of a hill and having parking / storage for the tandem.

Finding the gpx route was a challenge.  The gpx files were a godsend on LEJOG so I wanted them to be all loaded on Komoot and ready to go.  We have the Cicerone book, Cycling the Danube Part 1, but the route in the book is so complex to follow, I would spend all my time staring at the book to find the hundreds of turns each day.  I have no idea how a solo cyclist could even use it without continually stopping to look at the next few turns.  After looking at a variety of routes, I checked the book website and found matching downloadable gpx files!  Neither Steve nor I noticed any mention of them in the book, but very happy to have found them.  We have them now and they are all uploaded to Komoot. However, I do suspect that, given the route runs through Germany and Austria, it will be well sign-posted.  

We’ve been packing for days!  The complexity on this is the new elements of bringing the tandem, in its box, all of the tandem gear that doesn’t fit in the box (top box, bottle cages, pannier racks, panniers, pedals, chains), plus pedalling / nighttime clothes for all the days of the trip, travel to Jess’s clothes, travel to Germany clothes, travel from Budapest clothes, horn / lights, wet / cold weather gear, credit cards / passports and the all important document pack with every single reservation - travel and hotels. Steve boxed up the tandem and we put all of the bike gear in which filled most of the suitcase and we still had all of the clothing / wash kit / shoes, etc., to fit it.  We crammed in as much as we could into the suitcase around the bike gear and stuffed the rest into two backpacks and, voila, it all fit and was under the weight limit!

For this trip we had to travel to Germany and come back from Budapest, as mentioned 800 miles.  Normally we would take a car and do a circular loop, not possible for this one.  Also not really feasible (or comfortable) to take a two-day train ride back from Budapest, even if they would allow the tandem on the train, which they won’t.  So we’re going out by train to Germany and flying back from Budapest.  

Next challenge, what to do with the box?  Steve managed to find a company that would pick up from our first hotel and ship it to a bike shop in Budapest who would store it until we get there 🤞🤞🤞

So, looking forward to a nice visit with Jess and Matt and the kiddos!  Then off to St. Pancras and the Eurostar in the morning!