The Trip Blog in Polarsteps

We are using Polarsteps to live blog this trip.  Su is the live blogger - it will be her that adds the content on the trip.

You can follow us live, once we get started and go live on June 16th, either in the embedded map below, or in your bowser by following this link 

https://www.polarsteps.com/SuWhite1/11620354-cycle-to-the-black-sea

Or you can download the Polarsteps app and follow SuWhite  there - which allows you to add comments.

Preparation

Bikes and Practice Rides

Su has used her Stanforth Kibo on previous tours but I had replaced by Dawes Super Galaxy with a Stanforth Kibo (Gates Carbon/Rolhoff Speedhub) at Christmas, so I needed to get some miles on this new bike.  See here for my review of my Stanforth kibo. 

We have been out for a number of rides with groups of friends on our kibos, and in addition we took a two week tour of the Netherlands (See Rotterdam or Anywhere AKA Pedal to Parkrun).  This was in early March, so was a B&B rather than a camping tour, but we got 520kms and a bit of tourism in.  We had to be back in Dover by Marc 15th in order to make sure that this trip did not get included in our 90 days in a rolling 180 in Schengen, (We leave for France on June 16th  - by early September our March trip starts dropping out of our "Rolling 180" days.

It was a cold and wet spring/early summer, so it was late May before we managed to do a camping night out in the New Forest as a rehearsal. Luckily all the equipment seemed to be present and correct and functioning.

Drying out kit on bikes after a wet night

Technology and Route Planning

It would be appropriate at this moment to point out that I have zero sense of direction. Give me a chart or map and a compass and I am a first class navigator (really!) but I do like to have the map in front of me.  I navigate using an iPhone attached by Quadlock and nearly always turned on. I power the iPhone from the USB output driven by my dynamo, which produces approximately 2.5 W which is just about enough to run an iPhone as long as there are not many other apps running,

For maps, for many years I have used either Outdoors Gps (Ordinance Survey Maps) or Open Cycle Map, or French IGN Maps for navigation,  In particular I have used a brilliant French Application called iPhGénie which allows overlay of Open Cycle Map on the French IGN Maps - and now I discover it also overlays the German BKG Maps.  It runs on MacOS and IoS. The issue with using these apps is that they do not have a Route Planning mode - you either need to import a preprepared GPX route or create one yourself - eg by tracing the route with your finger.  This can be fiddly and time-consuming. 

Twelve years ago I had experimented with apps that did route planning but had never been satisfied with them - they were very inclined to crash and rarely produced an optimal route.  However, I am happy to find that things have moved on in twelve years.  I have tried a number of current Apps, and the one that suits me best is Komoot (which has improved enormously since I first used it!). It is really easy to use on a small screen, selects good routes, and does not crash.  But what makes it the best in my mind is the ease with which you can alter the route if you want to optimise the route it has chosen. In addition it has an excellent ability to highlight your chosen points of interest (POIs) - Campsites, cafés, train stations, shops, ATMs etc...

However, much as I appreciate Komoot for planning routes I do not use it, or any other turn-by-turn navigating app when actually travelling. I prefer to see the larger context in a map with North at the top and me at the centre. This makes it much easier to make minor tweaks to the route once you actually understand the terrain, But, more importantly, turn-by-turn navigation seems to use up the battery - certainly Komoot eats the juice much faster than the Dynamo can top it up.

Other applications we have include:

• Cyclemeter (Keeps a record of the route you have taken, time spent moving and height ascended and descended: we have used this for all our trips and it still has all the records)
• BikeDoctor (Good app on how to mend and maintain bikes)
• Archies (List/map of many campsites.  The only information is Geolocation and contact details)
• Pocket Earth and Maps.Me (I have never used these apps in anger, but friends have convinced me that they are useful extra sources of information about the places you are visiting)
• Booking.com.  When it pours with rain, or you discover that the only campsite for miles has been converted into a Motorhome Aire, or you decide want to stay in the centre of a city, then Booking.com is your fiend.

We have a number of other camping apps, but it's not clear they add any extra value to Komoot, Archies or Open Camping Map.

Important websites include:

• https://en.eurovelo.com/ev6 (official EuroVelo description of EV6)
• https://www.seat61.com/bike-by-train.htm#other%20destinations  (The Man in Seat 61 advice on travelling by train with a bike in Europe)
• https://opencampingmap.org/en (More camping)

We also have a number of tourist web site descriptions of parts of the route especially in Austria and Bulgaria.

Getting Home by Train

After years of long haul flying for work, we are keen not to add any more than essential airmiles. Also we are not keen to have to collapse and pack our bikes.  We have chosen to attempt to get home using local trains that we can roll our fully laden bikes onto.  This might mean taking a train to one side of an international border then cycling across the border to the first station in the next country.  It may well be that it will take us around 10 days to get home.  We have bought Eurorail passes which allow us seven days travel within a month of first use, and we may need to pay bike supplements on top,

Insurance?

We have a bank provided travel insurance which covers us adequately for short holidays. We have never previously insured our bikes.

Getting travel insurance was non-trivial!  The majority of insurances seem to be limited to 90 days, and we expect to be away a bit longer than that. We are just a few months short of 70 years old, which seems to be an age at which premiums increase exponentially. In addition, I have had some minor medical issues in the past, all of which are now dealt with, but they seemed to unreasonably excite insurance companies when I asked for quotes.  The majority of things that travel insurance covers are of no interest to us.  We would be very happy to take a very large excess (~£1000?) on any medical or theft claims.  All we really want is cover against seriously expensive medical treatment, e.g. following an accident, But no-one would quote us for such a large excess.

In the end the best offer was from SportsCoverDirect.com, who provided a basic travel insurance with good medical cover, and, unusually, they did not want to hear about previous medical conditions unless they were ongoing; I was able to honestly sign on. The cost was about £450 for two people for 4 months cycle touring.

Covering the bikes with most insurance companies seemed to require a premium of about 20% of teh value of the bikes.  We had decided not to insure them and to make them as "unstealable" as possible - so they have our twitter handles on them, they have hidden trackers, and they have a range of non-standard decals. We decided to also register them on BikeRegister.com and to use their kit to "burn" the registration into the paintwork.  When we went to add our bikes to the database we got offered cycle insurance by Bikmo.com.  This insurance requires you to keep your bike inside locked premises, or locked to an immovable object using a Sold Secure Gold lock. We were quite happy with these conditions, and found the cost of the insurance much more reasonable than other offers. We are now insuring all the bikes in our house  for 365 days a year, worldwide for £37 per month.

The Plan

Su and I have always wanted to do a longer and more adventurous trip. Until recently our trips have been limited to the 3 weeks we were allowed for a summer vacation.  We had heard of Euro Velo route 6 (EV6) which goes from the Atlantic, at Nantes, to the Black Sea at Constanta; we promised ourselves we would have a go at this when we retired.  We reached retirement age in 2020, but Covid got in the way and then some final post retirement "tours of duty" took out a lot of subsequent years,  So now, here we are in 2024 - finally fully retired and ready to have a go at this ride.

The route looks ideal for us - up the Loire, cross to the Saône, then up the Doubs tributry joining the Canal du Rhone au Rhin, then up the Rhine to Konstanz, then a short strike North to pick up the Danube for the rest of the route.  The route passes through France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, optionally a bit of Croatia, then Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania,

Our Proposed route in Red

However there is a new issue: since Brexit a Brit can only spend 90 days in the Schengen countries of Europe (strictly 90 days in any rolling 180 days). And on Dec 31st 2023 Bulgaria and Romania were admitted into Schengen. (But we will still have to do passports at the land border - the worst of both worlds.)

We have decided to avoid flying and to avoid packing out bikes, and intend to return by local trains so we need to allow 10 days in Schengen to get home.  So we are allowed 80 days in Schengen to do the trip. (Serbia will give us a few days of respite as it's not yet in the EU at all).

The total route starting at Nantes and ending by following the loop of the Danube delta to the North, then back down the coast to Constanta is around 4,700km.   We travel around 50-60 km a day and have regular rest days.  Simple Maths says we can't do this.  Our revised version says we start at Blois (just West of Orleans, and 240km along the route).  The logic here is that we have already done Nantes to Blois as part of a previous tour in 2019.  At the other end we can cut out the loop round the Delta and head straight to Constanta.  This will cut off an another few hundred kms, at the cost of hills and travelling on main roads.  (perhaps we mighty just catch a train for that bit?)

This revised route, as shown above is about 3,900km.  That is 60 km a day for 65 cycling days - allowing us 15 rest days (approx every 5th day) and 10 days to get home.   That's within our capabilities.  And the time in Serbia is a "bonus".  That's our approximate plan.

We are going to leave home on the 16th June, ride to Portsmouth, cross the channel that night and train from Caen to Blois on the 17th June.