Germany (all)

Mit dem Mountainbike zweimal über die Alpen. From the MTB page of Florian Michahelles. The great story of a five-weeks trip from Mittenwald (Germany) over to Alps to Bozen/Bolzano and then to Liguria, Corse (France) and back through Lombardia and Switzerland. Individual sections are linked to under the various countries.

Travelogues, trip reports and travel photography: Crossing the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the Sierra Madre Mountain Range in Mexico, along the Mediterranean coast of Italy, France and Spain, bike tour to ancient Greece and Turkey, Island hopping in Mallorca, Corsica and Crete, Trans Alps Bike Tour

Reiseberichte und Tourenberichte von Fahrrad Reisen durch die Rocky Mountains in Kanada und die Sierra Madre in Mexiko, entlang der Mittelmeer Küste von Italien, Frankreich und Spanien, Veloreise bis Griechenland und die Türkei, klassischer Donau-Radweg und Elbe-Radweg, Radtouren auf den Inseln Mallorca, Korsika und Kreta, Trans Alps Bike Tour.

Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man's metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. [...]

Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man's radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.

The bicycle also uses little space. Eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows people to go from door to door without walking. The cyclist can reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new locations from which he is barred. [...]

The North Sea Cycle Route: 6000 kilometres of fascinating adventure await you. Explore a wealth of cities and villages, beaches and farms, lowlands and uplands, cliff paths and byways - all without fear of getting lost - just keep on for long enough and you'll return to your starting point.

The world's longest signed international cycle route encircles the North Sea, passing through no fewer than 7 countries: the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Scotland and England. From Harwich and Hoek van Holland in the south to Bergen and the Shetland Islands in the north.

What you don't manage this year will wait till next year, or the year after - the North Sea Cycle Route will be there for you whenever you are ready. Choose one convenient section at a time, linked by the many North Sea ferries sailing out of major ports such as Amsterdam, Hamburg, Esbjerg, Göteborg, Bergen and Newcastle.

This online guide will provide you with all the information you need before you start to pack your bags. Naturally, you are also more than welcome to contact the local tourist information offices, which can supply additional details of the attractions, events and accommodation in their area.

Welcome to a fantastic cycle tour around the North Sea - just jump on your bike.