Cycling UK Forum

The bike booking option is a little bit hidden -- it's on the same page (I think) as the part of the process where you can say whether you want to sit facing forwards/backwards/quietly/etc; there's an option there for adding bicycles a little bit further down that page.

I think you probably have to book the Liverpool - London leg separately (the eastcoast.co.uk website is the easiest way to do that: they have an option to make a bike reservation online, and it doesn't matter that it isn't an East Coast service). Then a quick ride from Euston to Liverpool St (tfl.gov.uk journey planner can help you with a route), and start the Dutch Flying from there?

The Night Line train really does take bikes (though there are a limited number of spaces). Have you tried calling the Deutsche Bahn sales office -- they've always been very helpful with cycle bookings when I've tried them (not for that route, admittedly, but certainly for the City Night Line services): 08718 80 80 66.

A no-fly alternative: cargo boat from Immingham to Cuxhaven (with DFDS Tor Line), and local train to Hamburg, EC train to Prague?

There's always the City Night Line (http://www.citynightline.ch/nachtzugreise/view/en/index.shtml), I suppose, if you don't mind a leisurely trip back to Paris: Milan-Verona on a local train; City Night Line Verona-Munich; day in Munich; City Night Line Munich - Paris Est. (Changing in Innsbruck would work too.) Plus side: no bike bags required; enhanced opportunities for restorative beer and sausages en route. Minus side: expensive in time, and probably in money too...

I'd say that at Dover there's no great benefit in waiting (because the ferries arrive so frequently that the flow of lorry traffic is almost constant). But -- as simonhill mentioned above -- there's a cycleway inside the port area (from memory, this is a red (?) line painted onto the tarmac, which takes you through a short-cut from the ferry ramp to the passport control, and avoids having to cycle over the big flyover thing); once you're out of the port area, there's a (segregated) cycle path along the A20 towards the centre of Dover

No experience of the Eurostar, sorry, but Manchester -- Euston on Virgin is easy. You need a reservation (not sure if you'll be able to get that at the same time as your ticket, if you're buying a through fare from Manchester-Lyon; but if you can't, then the booking office at Piccadilly can sort out bike reservations even if you don't buy your ticket from them).

The bike compartment is at the end of the 2nd class section (usually the near end of the platform at Manchester; far end at Euston). You need to find someone on the platform to unlock the door to let you in, but there are usually plenty of platform staff around.

I like it: they don't take foot passengers so the boats are a bit less crowded/quieter than the Dover-Calais services; and getting away from Dunkirk (port -- which is some way away from the city) is relatively easy by bike: you can get onto small roads very quickly.

Not a specific recommendation, but there's a handy list of camp sites on/near the route here: http://www.cheshirecycleway.co.uk/map.h ... aravanning

Perhaps one of those plastic laundry/storage bags would do the trick? Very cheap, but pretty robust (I've certainly seen them being checked in at airports). This sort of thing: http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/ebags4u__ ... Z1QQ_sopZ1

I agree that it's a very good idea to alert the platform staff to your presence: they can sometimes tell you which end the bike van will be at; on one occasion (when I was getting on at York), they've also phoned ahead to the station where I was getting off, so that the station staff there were ready and waiting to unlock the door of the guard's van.

Another positive vote from me: I've used the Amsterdam-Copenhagen service three times now (with bike), and it's always been trouble free (though not always entirely punctual...). I've booked my tickets via the Deutsche Bahn UK sales office (http://www.bahn.co.uk): you can't make bike reservations online, but the people on the phone are very efficient. A slightly frustrating thing is that the ticket systems and the bike booking systems don't align: the very cheap tickets go on sale a long time (6 months?) in advance, but bike reservations can be made only 3 months in advance. But Deutsche Bahn (and probably other ticket agents too?) are willing to work around this: if you let them know when you buy the (normal) ticket that you'll also need a bike reservation to go with it, then they'll keep your original booking on hold until the bike reservations are released, and complete the booking as soon as the bike booking is possible: this means you don't miss out on the cheap advance fares. (My experience has been that not all the DB staff know that this is possible, so they might not offer it as an option without being prompted to do so. But, once they've set it up, it works very smoothly.)

The DFDS cargo ship from Immingham -- Esbjerg takes passengers (and bikes), and saves a bit of a slog down to Harwich. http://www.dfdstorline.com/DfdsTorLine/ ... ingham.htm

Apologies if this has already been discussed. If not, this report (from the New York Times, oddly..) of an initiative by Dorset Police might be of interest - a sidelight on smidsy-causing driver behaviour:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/world ... ref=europe

Slightly off topic, but here's how they do things in Greece -- no petitions, just stage a protest. On the roofs of the cars parked in the cycle lane...
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_ar ... 010_113981
(Couple more pictures here: http://www.podilates-thess.gr/2010/01/1 ... todromous/)

Many thanks for the speedy reply! Encountering a randomly obstructive check-in agent is what I'm most worried about, I suppose: I've never had any problems so far, but one day my luck will run out, I'm sure. (Perhaps I'll end up taking the train home instead...)