Eurovelo 15 - Andermatt

[Cyril Haearn]

Night jet run by the Austrian railway OeBB runs most sleeping trains on the mainland, not sure if you can get to Basel direct
You could stay in a B&B and get a day train instead, lovely scenery along the Rhein

I should get the overnight ferry, then a day train, simples (?!)

[Jdsk]

Welcome.

We rode Oberalppass to Hook of Holland this summer. Two adults on tourers with camping gear. Starting and ending in Oxfordshire. We'd have done all the connections by train by choice. But after much research:

Outward
Rode to Oxford station.
Two trains to Portsmouth.
Overnight ferry to Le Havre.
Picked up a rented Espace and drove to Mulhouse and dropped it off. NB not crossing a border for the one-way route!
Slept in Mulhouse.
Rode to Basel.
Three trains up to Andermatt.
Slept in Andermatt.
Train to Oberalppass... and off.

Return
Rode to Hook of Holland ferry.
Overnight ferry to Harwich.
Picked up by Thrifty, driven to their office in Colchester, picked up Discovery and drove home and dropped it off in Oxford. (This was not a good experience but there don't seem to be any decent options, see recent discussion linked below.)
https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=134831&p=1433112&hilit=harwich#p1433112

NB TTBOMK you can't now take bikes on the TGV from Paris to Basel.

Jonathan

[nirakaro]

If you go to the German railway website - https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de//bin/query.exe/e - you can restrict your search to trains that will carry bikes. It doesn't cover just Germany, and is thorough and easy to use.
You'll generally find that the fast, long-distance trains exclude bikes, but the slower regional trains are fine – so you're sure to need a few changes. One of the benefits of going by train rather than flying is that you can actually enjoy the journey – worth relaxing and taking a couple of days over it if you can.
Getting the ferry (or tunnel) to Calais, then heading to Paris (regional – TER – trains, couple of changes IIRC), may be a better option; then you can get from there to Basel with just one change.
If you were camping overnight somewhere, don't choose Paris – you'll be miles and miles from the station. Choose a town a stop or two before or after, and the campsite's likely much closer.

[Jdsk]

Bikes on German trains etc from the Man in Seat 61:
https://www.seat61.com/bike-by-train.htm#Germany

Jonathan

[Will]

If you are getting the Hull-Rotterdam ferry then you are probably looking at getting your first train around 11:00 at the earliest. I think it would be difficult to get all the way to Andermatt in a single day, and you would need to break the journey up over two days. This would also give you some flexibility in what trains you get (and remove a lot of the stress).

You could get trains to Düsseldorf on the first day, and then travel to Andermatt from there on the second. You can get dutch inter-city trains to Venlo (via Eindhoven), and then get the eurobahn train from there to Düsseldorf. The eurobahn trains have plenty of space for bikes, the dutch trains can be a bit hit or miss when trying to get on with bikes (but it is usually OK). It takes a minimum of 4 hours to get from Rotterdam Centraal to Düsseldorf Hbf.

From Düsseldorf, you have several choices for getting to Basel or Zürich with bikes:

You can get Intercity express (ICE) trains to Zürich (changing at Mannheim) - takes about 6.5 hours (runs every 2 hours)

You can get a direct Eurocity (EC) train to Zürich - takes about 6.5 hours (only 1 a day leaving at 10:27).

You can get Intercity express (ICE) trains to Basel (changing at Mannheim) - takes about 5.5 hours (runs every 2 hours)

You can get a direct Eurocity (EC) train to Basel - takes about 5 hours (only 1 a day leaving at 10:27).

The ICE trains above are the new ICE4s (that have a compartment for 8 bikes).

The Eurocity trains above have two bike spaces in each coach.

One useful site for getting information on train layouts (and bike carrying capacity) is: https://www.vagonweb.cz/razeni/index.php?rok=2020
You can use the train numbers from the DB Bahn website and look then up on Vagonweb.

If you are travelling with bikes, then you can only book bike reservations for a single train online. You also cannot make bike reservations that require an international bike ticket online. You can phone DB Bahn in Germany to make the reservations (and buy the bike ticket), but you just end up sitting on the phone listening to Iggy Pop singing 'Passenger' on an endless loop. There is a UK based DB Bahn sales number you can phone (0871 880 8066) - I have called them before at 09:00 (when they open) and it was answered straight away.

Will

[Cyril Haearn]

The ICE goes very fast on the new line, I found it disturbing, one could not relax and enjoy the landscape
Much better to go via Koblenz, wonderful landscape, cheaper too

[Andrew-l]

Summer 2019 I came back from Basel to London with a non-folding bike. I removed the front wheel, turned the handlebars and put it in a cut-down CTC plastic bike bag for the TGV LYRIA from Basel to Paris. There was no problem doing this, other than v limited space on the train!

[Demelza]

WOW - thank you all for your excellent comments and advice!!

There's loads for me to research now and a few websites I'd not yet discovered.

Will get on the case when I have time and let you know how it goes!

[glucas]

Hi All,

In the process of planning Eurovelo 15 for next July which starts at Andermatt. I will probably start at Andermatt and do a 14 day tour up to Koblenz on the way back up the Rhine before heading home.

The problem is getting the bike to Andermatt!

Because I live in the East of England the best option seems to be to get the ferry to the Hook of Holland and then taking various inter city trains, starting in Rotterdam or Arnham down to Switzerland - either Bern or Basel, and then getting a local train to Andermatt. This makes me slightly nervous as the bike on every train will need to be reserved and standing on platforms in the right place in either Holland or Germany to mount the bike in the correct carriage, strikes me as something that could go wrong. There are 3 to 4 changes on average doing it this way.

The other option is going via France - but the same applies, several changes from Calais.

The other option is to fly to Zurich or Geneva. But this involves packing the bike in a box and then negotiating the airline policies on bikes - worrying about weight limits, reserving the bike etc.

Money is not really the issue to be honest. I would happily pay up to £400 return to get me and the bike there and back, but I was wondering what the most convenient way of getting the bike there would be.

Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Probably a topic that's been broached before!

Thanks for any replies.

Graham

[Jdsk]

We did this a couple of years ago. And there is some discussion in the archives... ! : - )

Two of us, two upright tourers. Cycle and trains to Portsmouth. Overnight boat. Hire car from Le Havre to Mulhouse. Cycle to Basel. Trains to Andermatt. (One way car hire didn't add much cost, but we dropped it in Mulhouse because it would have been much more expensive if that had been anywhere in Switzerland.)

Then cycled to Hook of Holland, overnight ferry, and fiasco from Harwich.

Jonathan

[Jdsk]

"Getting to Andermatt for the Rhine Cycle Route":
[topics merged by moderator]

Jonathan

[glucas]

That's brilliant Jonathan - thank you! Great idea re: one way hire car. If I could get an estate/hatchback/suv that would be a brilliant option.

[Jdsk]

We asked for and got a Galaxy to take our Galaxies.. But with only one bike and willingness to remove a wheel it should go in just about anything.

Jonathan

PS: Part of the Harwich fiasco was related to suitable vehicles... and the company thinking that they knew better!

[glucas]

Jonathan,

There seems to be plenty of options with car hire from Calais. Estates and hatchbacks etc.

Underestimated the distance though - Calais to Mulhouse is over 400 miles! Probably a 7 hour drive.!

[st599_uk]

Beware of the problems of entering Switzerland in a car.
Switzerland is in Schengen but not in the Customs Union - the car will be classed as a temporary import which requires paperwork and there's a strict rule on who can import it, who can export it and how long it can stay.
You may be better off handing it over at an airport like Geneva which has a number of EU tourists booking cars there (an EU citizen can't drive a non-EU registered car in the EU, so there's a ready uptake of EU vehicles at the hire desks).

The route we were planning on taking (until Covid prevented us) was Eurostar to Brussels, Brussels to Cologne, Cologne to Basel.

https://www.seat61.com/Switzerland.htm# ... a-brussels

One new option to look at is Lufthansa - many domestic "flights" in Germany to Lufthansa's hub in Frankfurt have been replaced by point-to-point non-stop train journeys. By next year, you should be able to buy a direct non-stop ticket from Cologne to Frankfurt Airport and Frankfurt Airport to Basel: https://www.railjournal.com/news/db-and ... ress-rail/