Isn't it nice to just get on your bike and ride off somewhere new, cycle all day and stop somewhere you've never been before and will most likely never see again. After last year's successful Loire trip I thought maybe we could try a stretch of the Rhine this year. We could take the Eurostar to Strasbourg, cycle downriver to the North Sea at Hook of Holland and then get the ferry home. But then an even finer idea struck me - why not start further up? In fact why not start as far up as you can go and ride the whole length of the river! That sounded good to me and somewhat to my surprise when I put it to Andrew he responded positively. So the Rhine it would be. There's an established Euro Cycle Route, the Eurovelo 15, so I bought the guide book and then sweated blood arranging train passage for Andrew, myself and two fully assembled bikes all the way to Andermatt in Switzerland, the start of the route. I also booked the ferry back from Hook of Holland to Harwich.
It was going to take us two days of travel to get to Andermatt so Andrew booked hotel rooms for those nights in Basel and Andermatt plus one for our first night on the road, in Chur. After that it only left the usual things to do - arrange money and insurance, get the bikes serviced and cobble together a checklist similar to last year’s. This time I think my panniers weighed in at 10.8 kg on the day so I pruned things a tad and got it down to 10.4 - still seemed heavier than Andrew's though. And this is how it went:
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