Cycling UK Forum

Hi Jackslad,

We have taken our bikes on German trains several times with no real problems apart from some local trains can have steps to get your bike up but a lot of the newer ones have easy access. Have a look at our 'German Trains' page on our website here.

Cheers
Jon

Would second Hazelbanks motors/Oban Car Hire. We used them for our Hebrides tour. They were good and accommodating and not that far away from the ferry terminal. Certainly in my mind worth the £40 a week for the peace of mind of knowing the car is in a secure place, especially an expensive camper van.

mercalia wrote:

cycletourer wrote:I camped in someone's garden which I found from campinmygarden.com last June. I can highly recommend it as I had my own quiet private spot to camp in. My hosts Chris & Stella were so lovely and helpful, welcoming me with a cup of tea and finding me a camp chair so that I didn't have to sit on the grass. It was so nice to sit and chat with them in their lovely garden. I had my own lovely loo and shower which I didn't have to share with anyone. They let me plug my phone in to charge in their utility room where there was sink where I could wash up my pots and pans from my evening meal. I had a lovely peaceful nights kip. Yes it cost me £10 for the night and it was worth every penny. I have paid the same for sites that have had grotty dirty washrooms and showers or the showers that have been £1 extra and sites where I have been kept awake till 2.30am by noisy partying campers. I will certainly do it again as it was so much nicer and quieter than the large commercial campsites!

where was this - or are you keeping it a secret?

Not a secret mercalia BigodCounty's place, Bungay, Suffolk

I camped in someone's garden which I found from campinmygarden.com last June. I can highly recommend it as I had my own quiet private spot to camp in. My hosts Chris & Stella were so lovely and helpful, welcoming me with a cup of tea and finding me a camp chair so that I didn't have to sit on the grass. It was so nice to sit and chat with them in their lovely garden. I had my own lovely loo and shower which I didn't have to share with anyone. They let me plug my phone in to charge in their utility room where there was sink where I could wash up my pots and pans from my evening meal. I had a lovely peaceful nights kip. Yes it cost me £10 for the night and it was worth every penny. I have paid the same for sites that have had grotty dirty washrooms and showers or the showers that have been £1 extra and sites where I have been kept awake till 2.30am by noisy partying campers. I will certainly do it again as it was so much nicer and quieter than the large commercial campsites!

We have had our Ortlieb panniers for over 12 years and they have been brilliant. We had one fail after 6 years with a side seam splittting. I contacted Lyon Equipment who are the UK distributors and a replacement was sent out within the week with no quibbles with them being 6 years old.

As foxyrider says contact Lyon Equipment and they will interested to hear from you and I am sure they will sort you out.

Their contact details:

Email: outdoor@lyon.co.uk

Lyon EquipmentOffice Hours: Mon - Thu 09.00 to 17.00 : Fri 09.00 to 13.00

Lyon Equipment Limited
Unit 3-7
Tebay Business Park
Old Tebay
Cumbria
CA10 3SS
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)15396 24040
Fax: +44 (0)15396 26330

Norway is a lovely place to tour with some beautiful scenery, we were touring there this last summer doing the 'Mjølkevegen' & 'Numedalsruta'. As hamster mentions there are many tunnels in Norway which are banned to cyclists therefore you need to take this into account when planning your tour. Some have alternative routes usually the old road and some you may need to take a bus. There is an interactive Norwegian Tunnel map on our site which shows all the tunnels in Norway which you might find useful when planning your route. We also have some general information on touring in Norway here. I would concur with hufty that you will need to carry some extra food due to shop opening times. Personally I would keep away from the main roads if you can as some of them can get very busy in the summer with heavy traffic and although the Norwegians are lovely people they don't seem to like getting held up by cyclists and tend to overtake you on blind bends and summits .

syklist wrote:There are two cycle routes to avoid the E16 between Bergen and Voss, one goes north of the E16 the other one goes south. One of them is described somewhere on the Cycletourer.co.uk website (the old Army Road??). There is another website with a travelogue of the other route IIRC but I cannot find it at the moment. These alternative routes add a couple of days to your trip.The E16 between Bergen and Voss is know as the "Road of Death" in Norway and is not fun in a car so not being able to cycle on it has to be seen as a plus.

As 'syklist' mentioned it is the Eksingadalen route and our write up is here. Although a longer route it is a lovely scenic route but there is a fair bit of climbing and it is a good pull up to the top of the Nesheimfjellset but it is certainly a much better alternative to the dreadful E16. Most people do it east to west and there used to be a local farmer who offered a taxi service with his tractor and trailer to take riders and bikes up to the top of the Nesheimfjellset from Tiesdal whether he still does this I don't know but the local tourist board would tell you or ask at the Mestad campsite.

If anyone is interested in going to Shetland for a tour we have just posted our travelogue of our Shetland tour last summer. If you like good quiet relatively traffic free roads, visiting islands, archaeology and watching wildlife then Shetland is a great place to tour. Oh and the natives are very friendly to .

The main highlights of Shetland for us were:
1.The RSPB bird reserve on Noss. It has an amazing bird life, Bonxies, Puffins, Arctic terns, Arctic skuas, Black guillemots with their wonderful red feet and an enormous gannetry with nearly 12,000 gannets.

2. Sitting on a bench at 2 o‛clock in the afternoon in Mid Yell overlooking the harbour where we watched an otter stroll across the road right in front of us by the post office, run across the beach, have a nose around the harbour jetty before swimming off across the bay. Absolutely amazing!

3. The Keen of Hammar nature reserve, which has some very rare alpine flowers growing in amongst some Serpentine and Harzburgite debris at the extreme height of 45m above sea level and we were delighted to find flowering the very rare Edmondstons Chickweed which is found nowhere else in the world.

4. The Unst Bus shelter, we had seen pictures of this in someone else's cycling blog and we just had to see it for ourselves.

5. Mousa Broch, the most complete broch in Scotland.

Oh and lastly we got involved in a helicopter rescue .

rannochraider wrote:Hey Cycletourer, Love your website. Lots of great info in there and like you style and photos. Thanks for taking the time to share. I'm inspired!

Hi rannochraider, Glad you liked the website. We've enjoyed our cycletours so much and it's our way of giving something back. It's obviously done its job if it has inspired you . Currently just trying to finish our travelogue of our Shetland tour, hope to have that up soon .

There is also wild camping at Arinagour on the hill behind the church. There are no facilities and camping is free although they would welcome any donations to one of the charity boxes on the bar of the Coll Hotel which is below, they also would like to know you are there so pop in to the hotel before you pitch up. We used it for a night on our Hebrides tour in 2013, nice little spot with some great views.

Vorpal wrote:

cycletourer wrote:

Vorpal wrote:
As cycletourer said, main roads in Norway often use tunnels where cyclists are not allowed. In addition to the site linked above, it may be worth checking this one http://www.vegdata.no/2014/06/17/cyclin ... n-tunnels/ This one is off the highways department database, so it doesn't depend on people updating it; information about new tunnels is always good here, but information about older ones is not always available, so check both the site that cycletourer linked, and this one.

I concur with Vorpal that is good to check both the vegkart and our tunnel map as the Statens vegvesen (the Norwegian road authority) do occasionally change whether tunnels are banned to cyclists. We have to rely on cyclists and local Norwegians keeping us informed of any changes. Unfortunately the Vegkart isn't that intuitive to use. To find the tunnel information type 'tunnel' in the search box in the top right and then click tunnel in the search list. This will then bring up the tunnels on the map. By zooming in to the area that you will be travelling through you will see that the tunnels are marked as a green dot on the road. If you click on the dot it will give you a list of the information on the tunnel. In the list look for 'Sykkelforbud:' if it says 'Ja' it is forbidden to cycle through. The advantage to our map is that for planning purposes it is visually easier to see the banned sites as they are marked in red.

The vegvesen map is easier to use if you scroll down the page I linked to 'vegkart-query' and click that. I've tried linking the actual query, it doesn't seem to work. But if you click 'vegkart-query' on the vegvesen page, you get a similar map of Norway that allows you to zoom in and out, and has all tunnels marked with colour codes. If the little circle in the middle of the tunnel is red, it is closed to cyclists. You can also click on the little circle and get all of the information about the tunnel (as described in cycletourer's post).

Thanks vorpal for that information . I have always wondered why the tunnels didn't come out with their colours. It is a shame that when you go direct into the 'vegkart' there isn't a link to the 'vegkart-query' or perhaps I'm I missing something.

Vorpal wrote:
As cycletourer said, main roads in Norway often use tunnels where cyclists are not allowed. In addition to the site linked above, it may be worth checking this one http://www.vegdata.no/2014/06/17/cyclin ... n-tunnels/ This one is off the highways department database, so it doesn't depend on people updating it; information about new tunnels is always good here, but information about older ones is not always available, so check both the site that cycletourer linked, and this one.

I concur with Vorpal that is good to check both the vegkart and our tunnel map as the Statens vegvesen (the Norwegian road authority) do occasionally change whether tunnels are banned to cyclists. We have to rely on cyclists and local Norwegians keeping us informed of any changes. Unfortunately the Vegkart isn't that intuitive to use. To find the tunnel information type 'tunnel' in the search box in the top right and then click tunnel in the search list. This will then bring up the tunnels on the map. By zooming in to the area that you will be travelling through you will see that the tunnels are marked as a green dot on the road. If you click on the dot it will give you a list of the information on the tunnel. In the list look for 'Sykkelforbud:' if it says 'Ja' it is forbidden to cycle through. The advantage to our map is that for planning purposes it is visually easier to see the banned sites as they are marked in red.

beardy wrote:Asking from the viewpoint of somebody who has never flown with a bike, do the luggage weight limits allow you to carry enough kit (including the bike) for four weeks of wild camping?

To add to this. A lot of airlines do charge per item of baggage, for us that would be 4 panniers and a racpac each. We get around this by putting the panniers in a couple of large tote bags which are light enough that we could carry them but we tend to do circular tours so we tend to leave these at an hotel or campsite for pick up on our return.

jakobpoffley wrote:Thank you cycletourer for your reply,

I'd actually already found your website and it has been very helpful. The lofoten isles do look amazing but i'm not sure how i would combine them into the trip. I'd like to think that i'm good at reading maps and i prefer to stick to proper roads than tracks and cycle routes because they always take so much longer. I'm glad the touring can be quite tough becuase i want it to be challenging. Thanks for showing me your tunnel map. I'm sure it will be extremely useful in choosing a more specific route when the time comes. What i'm thinking of maybe doing is starting in oslo then cycling west to Bergen maybe go a bit south. Then cycle up to Tronheim which when looking at flights it seems you can get direct flights to england to get home. Please let me know what you think. Also is it worth trying to visit pulpit rock?

Thanks once again

Oslo through to Bergen and then on to Trondheim is approximately 750 miles. Remember on the mountainous roads in Norway you may not be able to do the same speeds or distance that you may normally do. You may have to use the old roads that go around the banned tunnels these are often a longer distance than the tunnel or they may go over the mountain passes that the tunnels now avoid. There is also the good old Norwegian weather to consider, which is akin to Scottish weather. Therefore have some contingencies planned where you could shorten your route or the potential to get on a bus, train or ferry (the hurtigruten ferry runs the length of the west coast of Norway) to complete your route or else assist you along the way if you look like running out of time.

As far as going along the Ralarvegen you may have to do that or take a southern route as RV7 is currently effectively closed to cyclists due to the Måbøtunnelen being closed to cyclists and the alternative route for cyclists closed due to rockfall. When I recently contacted the Statens Vegvesen they were unclear as to when the rockfall would get cleared and the alternative route opened to cyclists.

The Rallarvegen is certainly OK to do on most touring bikes including a Dawes Galaxy, but there are a couple of sections after Finse where you might have to get off and walk for a short way, but it is certainly worth that for the scenery.

As far as Pulpit Rock is concerned, personally I haven't been there but from all accounts if the weather is good the views are spectacular.

Hi There,

You will certainly enjoy Norway it is a great place to tour with some amazing scenery. As far as routes there are so many possibilities, a good place to start is http://www.cyclingnorway.no/en/ you will find there several way-marked routes which a mainly traffic free routes. We can certainly recommend the Lofoten isles and the Rallarvegen routes. Due to the mountainous terrain the touring can be quite tough and one thing you will need to consider is the tunnels in Norway. Quite a few of them are banned to cyclists and you will need to take alternative routes. There is a map to all the tunnels on our website here and you will also find more information on cycling in Norway on our site here. You might might find that food prices are a bit more expensive than the UK. As far as airports there are some direct flights to Bergen and Stavanger but if you wish to fly to places like Tronheim, Bodø, Tromso etc. you may have to fly to Oslo and then take an internal flight.

Hope you have good weather .

Jon

heatonrider wrote:Grunavik is Grindavík I think - really good campsite there with good cooking facilities - we used it as a base to cycle to the Blue Lagoon - hopeless commercial and expensive but figured it was a once in a lifetime ... managed a whole day there and took own lunch ...

Thanks heatonrider for spotting my spelling mistake it was Grindavík that I meant.

We have done three tours in Iceland, an absolutely amazing place to tour. Can concur with heatonrider that the ring road is best avoided particularly in the south and south west as it is very busy in the summer.
The cycling in the interior is amazing for the scenery but can be hard work on some of the gravel roads due to the washboard surface that can be created by the 4x4's.

To help you here is perhaps our top places that we enjoyed and worth visiting in no particular order.

Myvatn - lovely lake in the north with hot springs, the Krafla eruption lava fields, Dimmuborqir, psuedocraters at Skútusaðir and the Hverfjall volcanic crater.

Jökulsárion - Glacial lake with icebergs floating in it.

Látraburg - sea cliff with Puffins & Kittiwakes.

þingvellir - a rift valley and Iceland's parliament.

Geysir and Gulfoss

Western fjords

Langmannalaugar - hot spring area and wonderful scenery

Kerlingarfjöll - hot spring area and wonderful mountain scenery.

Snaefellnes peninsular - south side beautiful and serene area with wonderful bird life.

Some of these are in the interior and would require going on the gravel roads. You can see more details and information on Iceland here and from our travelogues.

Remember you can use buses to get you to places as they will all take bikes. There is even a bus that goes up and down the 35 on the Kjölur route and in to Langmannalaugar.

There are some routes that you can take to avoid parts of the ring road. To avoid the Keflavik to Reykjavik and Hveragerði you can go via Grunavik. It was gravel road when we did it 2008 but it is now tarmac.

The Reykjavik to Baula bit can be busy and you can't go under the tunnel at the Hvalfjordur fjord so you have to go all the way around the fjord so you could instead go up to þingvellir and then take the 550 over the Kaldidalur route to Husafell and then on to Baula. It is a rough gravel road but there are no rivers to fjord and it is very scenic.

Hope that helps.