West Germany for a week

[Wakemalcolm]

Hi, I might have an opportunity to tour this coming summer and being limited to a week and wanting to not fly I'm looking at a ferry to Amsterdam and a short train journey to not eat up too much of my holiday.
Having hammered along the autobahns down towards Frankfurt in a previous life I'd always thought the Ruhr Valley area looked nice and there's an established route up to Winterburg but I'm worried that it 'celebrates the area's industrial heritage' a bit too much.
Does anyone have any experiences to share?

[st599_uk]

Hi, I might have an opportunity to tour this coming summer and being limited to a week and wanting to not fly I'm looking at a ferry to Amsterdam and a short train journey to not eat up too much of my holiday.
Having hammered along the autobahns down towards Frankfurt in a previous life I'd always thought the Ruhr Valley area looked nice and there's an established route up to Winterburg but I'm worried that it 'celebrates the area's industrial heritage' a bit too much.
Does anyone have any experiences to share?

Essen, Duisburg, Bochum, Dortmund are all interesting and have some industrial heritage, then further in to the valley it's quite beaultiful. The area around Möhnesee is lovely and there's a great Youth Hostel there https://www.jugendherberge.de/jugendher ... moehnesee/ (plus it has historical interest).

With Germany's ridiculously cheap national train ticket, you can also explore a bit by train.

Ferry to Hook may get you closer though.

[deeferdonk]

Seeing the title of the thread makes me think you might have an atlas printed prior to 1989.

[Wakemalcolm]

Seeing the title of the thread makes me think you might have an atlas printed prior to 1989.

Yes, I'd have quite fancied Berlin if it wasn't for that pesky wall.

[m-gineering]

Hi, I might have an opportunity to tour this coming summer and being limited to a week and wanting to not fly I'm looking at a ferry to Amsterdam and a short train journey to not eat up too much of my holiday.
Having hammered along the autobahns down towards Frankfurt in a previous life I'd always thought the Ruhr Valley area looked nice and there's an established route up to Winterburg but I'm worried that it 'celebrates the area's industrial heritage' a bit too much.
Does anyone have any experiences to share?

train to Maastricht and it's a short hop over the border into the Eifel. On a bike all industry which is so prevalent on the Autobahn dissappears

[Wakemalcolm]

Thanks for the Eifel recommendation. I'm really ignorant of that part of the world but a first look at some pics of the national park suggests that it warrants further investigation.

[Galactic]

The Eifel is lovely and worth a week itself (if you like hills and countryside). If you don't like hills there are some (relatively) easy routes through that are still very enjoyable and take you down to the Rhine or the Mosel, giving you a river route back north.

In fact, if you're not dead set on the ferry, and can be bothered jumping through the hoops Eurostar have set up for cyclists, you can get the Eurostar to Brussels, intercity to Eupen and from there go on the Vennbahn old railway line down to near Luxemburg and thence eastwards into the Eifel, or westwards along more railway routes (Ravel network) into Wallonian Belgium. (From Eupen you can also easily get to Aachen, but then you might as well get ferry and train to Maastricht.)

It's all nice in that corner.

[simonthread]

What if you go a little further? Our favorite region there is Franconia with the multi-day Main River route and the shorter Tauber and Altmühl rivers' route. Last year we spent there an "extended" weekend. Jurassic landscapes, nice little towns and very good cycling routes (partly gravel). I wrote a few words about it here:

https://www.cyclingthread.com/franconia ... an-getaway









S.

[bohrsatom]

... and from there go on the Vennbahn old railway line down to near Luxemburg and thence eastwards into the Eifel ...

I concur that a Vennbahn + Eifel trip would be very enjoyable.

Aachen makes a good start/end point, but maybe there is some train hassle crossing the NL/DE border. Last time I was in that area I cycled from Aachen to Heerlen, then took the train from there to Hook of Holland.