Reports by Suzanne Gibson

Italy, Italy, why Italy? We live in Munich and Italy is close and yet foreign. It's easy to get there by train with our bikes and its culture will never cease to lure us - its food, language, architecture, flair. We chose this stretch along the Po for its abundance of beautiful towns and cities and May is a perfect time to open the cycling season. On this two-week tour we didn't stick strictly to the Po, but meandered off when a city interested us or we hadn't been there before.

We wanted to take a long door-to-door trip and, hurrah, we made it. Our route went from Munich to Bremen, the Baltic, the Polish border, Prague and back to our front door where we started. Travelling through different parts of Germany and a bit of the Czech Republic, we saw many different landscapes, people, architecture. In relatively densely populated Europe things are close together and there were seldom long stretches with nothing of interest.

The first tour of the season - and it was something special. Janos and I decided to get e-bikes. Read my journal to see how we felt about admitting to the limitations our age is imposing and what touring is like with a little help. We chose the choicest morsel of the Danube for our maiden voyage and were lucky with the weather.

The last tour of the season - that is if the weather cooperates. The plan is as simple as it is elegant. We take the train from Munich to Landeck in Austria. From there it is a short bus ride to Nauders near the top of the Reschen Pass and the border to Italy. That saves riding in unpleasant traffic, not to mention a hefty climb! From Reschen in South Tyrol it's downhill (almost) all the way.

An all-day train ride takes us from Munich to Morlaix in Brittany via Paris. The train from Paris to Morlaix doesn't take bicycles and we are again happy to have folders. Our tour starts with an abundance of rain and hills as we follow Brittany's spectacular southern coast to the Loire. From here we cycle the popular - and flat - Loire Valley Bike Path into Burgundy where the scenery gets more interesting as we ride along the Canal du Centre and Saone River. After having covered approximately 1,500 km we take the train from Dijon back to Munich.

We're back! It's the Main Bike Path once more. We again find time for a few days cycling along the Main, this time from Würzburg to Aschaffenburg. The weather couldn't be better for this scenic ride with picturesque towns between the Spessart and Odenwald mountain ranges.

Beautiful spring weather and we find time for a second mini-tour. Picking up where we left off, we cycle from Bamberg to Karlstadt along the Main River and watch it expand from the original trickle to a river of respectable size. This section of the Main will take us from beer-brewing Franconia to wine-growing Franconia.

It's that time of year again. We are itching to get on our bikes and see nature come to life after the long winter. For our little four-day tour we choose the bike path along the Main River. We have a leisurely ride on perfect bicycle paths and country roads to Bayreuth, Kulmbach and finish in Bamberg. To reach our official starting point, we take the train from Munich to Creussen and from there pedal to the source of the Roter Main.

Janos and I have cycled in Thailand before. The people are friendly, there are a variety of landscapes, the busier roads almost always have a wide shoulder, hotels and guest houses are inexpensive, the food is great. And so to escape the cold winter at home, we embark on our third adventure in Thailand. We get more hot weather than we bargained for ...

The shortest way to France from Munich would be about 300 kilometers. We reached the French border after pedaling 2,300 kilometers. On a round-about route we cycled north to Berlin, west to Hamburg and Groningen in the Netherlands and south as far as Rouen in France. By then we had had enough headwinds and rain. Our Bike Fridays, folding bikes, made it possible to continue by train to southern France and finally back to Munich two months later.

A leisurely tour in Tuscany, just two weeks but time enough for a flirt with its hills without getting too involved. We have fun cycling the streets of Florence, Pisa and Lucca, take our time visiting Medici villas and Renaissance gardens and get lovely views of the Tuscan countryside in the spring.

Our first tour of the season takes us to Franconia. Franconia? Sounds like a place from a Marx Brothers film. Remember ``Duck Soup'' and the land of Freedonia? On the German map it's called Franken and is a wonderful place to cycle in the pre-Easter season, if the weather is right. And it was. The countryside was just turning green and the villages were decorated with beautifully crafted, traditional Easter wreaths. We cycled from Nuremberg to Heidelberg and then followed the Altmühl Bike Path to Kelheim.

Burgundy is a great place for cycling: whether your tour is to be short or long, flat or hilly, with emphasis on nature or architecture - in Burgundy you have your choice. For part of our short visit we followed bike paths following the Canal de Bourgogne and Canal du Nirvenais, otherwise we cycled on small roads with almost no traffic through pleasant, but hilly, countryside. We visited Auxerre, Tonnerre, Avallon, Pontigny, Semur-en-Auxois ...

This was our first tour of the season and we have new bikes. In the Internet we saw a site describing a new bike route connecting Prag and Paris and decided to follow the French section. After cycling from here to the Rhine, we rode through Alsace-Lorraine, the Champagne Region and enter Paris along the Canal de l'Ourcq. We followed river valleys and canals, but still were in for a lot of climbs before we reached our goal.

For our two-week tour we choose the little corner of France tucked in between the Pyrenées Orientales and the Mediterranean: wine growing country, rich in history, near the Spanish border. Having just recovered from a knee injury in early summer, I can now put my knee to the test with hills and a loaded bike.

Our new neighbors in the European Union and musings over the history and downfall of the Habsburg Empire led us to plan a trip through the countries involved: Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegowina, Romania, Montenegro, Poland, Ukraine, Italy and Serbia. Here you can read about the trip as planned and how far we got.

This time we cycle from our front door in Munich, our goal is my sister's house in southern France, near Toulouse. We ride to Lake Constance and on through Switzerland, then in France we follow the Valley of the Rhone to the Mediterranean. From here we can ride on parts of the Canal du Midi to where my sister spends her summers in the little town of Durfort. After our visit we have enough time to continue on to the Atlantic. We started out as so-called credit-card cyclists and ended up buying a tent along the way and camping whenever we got the chance.

This was our first go at cycling in Asia. Our route along the Mekong and to Sukhothai was an excellent choice for a short bike trip in Thailand - villages, beautiful scenery, good roads and little traffic. We loved it. We also spent some time in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Ayuthaya.

After the long German winter, we are impatient to get started with the cycling season. Looking for a land of early spring sunshine and mild temperatures, we decide on Apulia, southern Italy, the heel of the boot.

Apulia is more than just sunshine. There are many small roads with little traffic, beautiful beaches and an excellent cuisine. Those interested in history and art won't be disappointed: with Palaeolithic finds, Greek vases, Romanesque churches, Norman fortresses and Baroque cities there is much to see.

We toured two weeks, 750 km and stayed in hotels or pensions.

Unsere Radtour führte uns zu den Städten Verona, Padua, Venedig, Treviso und Vicenza, eine herrliche Fahrt in die Kunstgeschichte Venetiens. Auch zu der Geschichte Venetiens gehören die mehr als 2.000 Villen, die in der Zeit zwischen dem 15. und 18. Jahrhundert im Hinterland Venedigs gebaut wurden,deren Architektur wir heute noch bewundern können. Vor allem stand Andrea Palladio dieser Villenarchitektur Pate. Dafür dass wir immer wieder mal verkehrsreiche Straßen in Kauf nehmen mussten, wurden wir ausgiebig belohnt.

Wir nehmen Abschied vom Sommer mit einer kleinen Tour vom Bayerischen Wald nach München, beginnend in Bayrisch Eisenstein an der tschechischen Grenze. Das Netz der Fahrradwege in Bayern macht es möglich, die gesamte Strecke auf ausgeschilderten, weitgehend autofreien Radwegen zu gestalten. Auch auf dieser relativ kurzen Strecke durch Bayern erlebt man viele Kontraste - unsere Route führte uns durch den bayerischen Wald, im Tal der weißen Regen, neben der Laber, ein Stück in der Donauebene und zum Schluss begleitet sie die Isar bis in die bayerische Hauptstadt.

Diese Strecke von ungefähr 1400 Kilometern bietet reichliche Abwechslung. Der Rheinradweg bleibt keineswegs am Fluss. Wir fuhren mal am Bodenseeufer, mal am Rhein, mal am Rhein-Rhone-Kanal, durch französische Weindörfer, auf den Rheinterassen, wir waren in Strassburg, Düsseldorf, Rotterdam, um nur einige der Städte zu nennen, wir besuchten die Kaiserdome von Speyer, Mainz und Worms, und zum Schluss tauchten wir kurz in das holländische Fahrradambiente ein. Nur am Bodensee waren einigermassen viele Radler unterwegs, sonst sahen wir kaum Touristen auf diesen sehr gut ausgebauten und ausgeschilderten Radwegen.

Der Donauradweg ist einer der beliebtesten Fahrradstrecken in Deutschland. Wir erwarteten die Menschenmassen auf zwei Rädern. Weit gefehlt. Die Strecke Passau - Wien ist bestimmt in der Hochsaison überfüllt, aber wir haben zwischen Ulm und Passau bei bestem Juni-Wetter die Wege beinah für uns allein gehabt. An Übernachtungsmöglichkeiten und Verpflegung mangelt es unterwegs nicht, und die geschichtsträchtige Donau bietet eine Fülle von Kultur- und historischen Denkmälern.

Wir wissen von vorigen Reisen, dass Frankreichs dichtes Netz an Campingplätzen sich für Sternfahrten vom Zeltplatz optimal anbietet. Dazu kommt die einmalige Infrastruktur an kleinen, wenig befahrenen Landstraßen in Frankreich, die Fahrradwege überflüssig macht. Unsere Tour ist kürzer ausgefallen als geplant, aber sie bietet doch einen kleinen Einblick in die Möglichkeiten des Radreisens in Frankreich.