Having done a few journals and one "live" one and listened to the feedback that it is more preferential for most to enjoy a thread with interaction rather than page clicking, I am going to try the Thrournal, a thread and journal and better sounding than a Jouread which might make me sound a bit antisemetic.
The cunning plan is to update the journal first, I need to do this as I have to upload a photo of each journal entry, but then I can copy and paste it into a thread, so it only takes 20 seconds longer on a computer, but I get to keep a nice clean journal lacking in the banter and log the places on an interactive map of where we have been for prosperity purposes if I make it to old age, or for the kids to locate and see where I spent their inheritance. Hopefully this may encourage others to do journal entries (with or without a thread) as they may be able to see the benefits to MHF and themselves with the map logging facility
We were going to the Baltic but stellplatz costs up there are prohibitive to my tight fisted style of motorhoming, so we then decided Carinthia, which would have cost us in campsites but we were prepared for that hit (and yet still cheaper than the Baltic!) and then we looked at Berlin, the volcano region before settling down to the Danube cycle route. We have already done the start of the route up to Tuttlingen and then I do my map preparation finding all the things we think may be of interest to us on the way.
Helping me with this map is this website https://www.deutsche-donau.com/karte/ and searching further into the Bavarian tourist information readily available by following links within that website are the locations of bike rentals, bike charging points, festivals, markets, POIs, etc but I had to find the stellplatzes from camper contact which is my preferred aire finder when in Germany as numerous more reviews and up to date information than my normal "Go to" aire finder of S4S. I then added swimming spots located en route and aires are marked up simply as P and either grey or burgundyish. Grey means free and burgundyish hurts my wallet. Oher finds are luges, Nepalese temples, beer making monastaries etc.
But whilst finding this information we located several other reasonably looking cycle paths, generally along rivers with similar great info so I have marked up 4 cycle routes so that we can "enjoy" flat cycling next to rivers for 28 days or so.
And zooming in a little further leads me to this so I can click the link and it takes me directly to the google map page of the Weltenberg Abbey (for example) where I can then go anywhere (on the internet such as wiki or the home page of the Weltenberg abbey) to seek further information.
So we are now armed with all the information we think we may need for our tour.
We think we are going to start the tour at Erbach an der Donau because I have successfully changed my chain and sprocket set but the wife's (Paula) looks a little complicated owing to the bloke at the bike shop saying "that looks a bit complicated" so as they didnt have the sprocket, we are making arrangements to have it fitted in Erbach and I will send the Ebike Emotion store a couple of photos and suggest Tuesday 13th June 1000 hrs which will give us plenty of time to get there after we leave on Saturday 10th June in the morning after a night shift on the ferry from Dover.
We think what we will do is cycle to Passau on the Austrian border then head back to somewhere around Ingelstadt and do the other routes in some form, but noting the festival dates and night time markets as we dont want to miss a party. I have seen numerous spas, thermes, weinguts, caves, electric charging points, breweries to not have to make a note of them on our map but are readily available on the map from the website from Bavaria tourism https://bavaria.travel/ and we will just visit these as and when or if we come across them and the weather
Background : we are aged 57 and 56 and in a previous life both of us were active sports people, but the last 2 or 3 decades Paula hasnt done much, and for the past 2-3 years, I havent done much. We are not cyclists. We have Haibike Ebikes which are getting towards 3 years old and 4,000 kms hence the sprocket change and they were bought in Germany in Aachen. They have 400 watts of Bosch power each and we charge them from 270 watts of solar and 200 ah of lithium, however, having seen the amount of apparently free bike charging places there are on this route, a bit of management would see us not needing this self provided electricity. We tend to cycle up to a point then turn round and cycle back, however there appears to be a good train service which we may abuse on a section or 2 where we can take the train with our bikes (no extra charge) and then cycle back (we would prefer it this way but cycling first is also an option). A realistic range on our bikes in a day before our bums get sore would be 80 kms and we would reckon on having a range of about 100 kms on the batteries so we have never run out of electricity.
The motorhome is a Rollerteam 685 we have had since new and 18 months old with LPG and all other mod cons with the exception of an awning as we just go and walk to the nearest tree for shade. We didnt have a working fridge on gas last year on holidays but we have one now.
We are going to try the motorbike intercom system on our cycle crash helmets but early indications are that this will make us look like dicks and as we take great pride in what other people think of us, expect some photos of us looking like dicks! I have also blown the budget on a cycle camera which may go on my helmet or the handlebars. That arrives today and we will see what happens. Paula gets a new pedal today as well after 2 years of having half a pedal on one side. We have panniers and a little cold store bag at the rear of my bike where we put an ice block, beer and a bottle opener with emergency peanuts. We have 4 locks which are foldable and combination and we find these fit into the "lock your charger whilst we charge your battery free of charge" points at nearly every one we have used (in France and Belgium)
I have also purchased a Garmin Edge which was absolutely useless on all our previous bike trips so we used Mapy.cz which is great for locating cycle and walking routes but you have to remember to download the map of the area or it uses data, otherwise it works off line. But the Garmin Edge has potential to be more use this time as I have taken the time to read the instructions and updated the cycle map of Europe which may have been the main contributing factors to us finding it useless and maybe, just maybe, it wasnt Garmin's fault.
Other apps we find necessary include Ventusky for weather forecasting, cheap petrol, LPG and Adblue apps. We have others that serve a purpose such as the lightning locater which works in the background and indicates to us a storm is incoming shortly. If only we took notice of it ! So we carry waterproofs and gloves with us. Other items we carry are a small toolkit sufficient enough to change inner tubes and we carry those as well.
We have motorhomed for 14 years and 11 of those abroad and bar covid dont really use this country as based within 90 minutes of numerous ports. We drink wine, beer, pastis and Paula likes a single malt so if we find a distillery, there is likely to be a stop there. We have been to Germany before but mainly Black Forest and in all likelihood we wont be doing any or many aires, we have been to previously though stopping at a particular weingut on the way back has some serious potential to fill up our personal reservoir.
A map will be created from the journal that is being created and I will try to be as accurate as possible for any person following in our wheel tracks for locations. I may put videos up dependant upon data allowance (20 GB each) or they may be added upon return.
Uploaded this map again as I have to upload something !
The cunning plan is to update the journal first, I need to do this as I have to upload a photo of each journal entry, but then I can copy and paste it into a thread, so it only takes 20 seconds longer on a computer, but I get to keep a nice clean journal lacking in the banter and log the places on an interactive map of where we have been for prosperity purposes if I make it to old age, or for the kids to locate and see where I spent their inheritance. Hopefully this may encourage others to do journal entries (with or without a thread) as they may be able to see the benefits to MHF and themselves with the map logging facility
We were going to the Baltic but stellplatz costs up there are prohibitive to my tight fisted style of motorhoming, so we then decided Carinthia, which would have cost us in campsites but we were prepared for that hit (and yet still cheaper than the Baltic!) and then we looked at Berlin, the volcano region before settling down to the Danube cycle route. We have already done the start of the route up to Tuttlingen and then I do my map preparation finding all the things we think may be of interest to us on the way.
Helping me with this map is this website https://www.deutsche-donau.com/karte/ and searching further into the Bavarian tourist information readily available by following links within that website are the locations of bike rentals, bike charging points, festivals, markets, POIs, etc but I had to find the stellplatzes from camper contact which is my preferred aire finder when in Germany as numerous more reviews and up to date information than my normal "Go to" aire finder of S4S. I then added swimming spots located en route and aires are marked up simply as P and either grey or burgundyish. Grey means free and burgundyish hurts my wallet. Oher finds are luges, Nepalese temples, beer making monastaries etc.
But whilst finding this information we located several other reasonably looking cycle paths, generally along rivers with similar great info so I have marked up 4 cycle routes so that we can "enjoy" flat cycling next to rivers for 28 days or so.
And zooming in a little further leads me to this so I can click the link and it takes me directly to the google map page of the Weltenberg Abbey (for example) where I can then go anywhere (on the internet such as wiki or the home page of the Weltenberg abbey) to seek further information.
So we are now armed with all the information we think we may need for our tour.
We think we are going to start the tour at Erbach an der Donau because I have successfully changed my chain and sprocket set but the wife's (Paula) looks a little complicated owing to the bloke at the bike shop saying "that looks a bit complicated" so as they didnt have the sprocket, we are making arrangements to have it fitted in Erbach and I will send the Ebike Emotion store a couple of photos and suggest Tuesday 13th June 1000 hrs which will give us plenty of time to get there after we leave on Saturday 10th June in the morning after a night shift on the ferry from Dover.
We think what we will do is cycle to Passau on the Austrian border then head back to somewhere around Ingelstadt and do the other routes in some form, but noting the festival dates and night time markets as we dont want to miss a party. I have seen numerous spas, thermes, weinguts, caves, electric charging points, breweries to not have to make a note of them on our map but are readily available on the map from the website from Bavaria tourism https://bavaria.travel/ and we will just visit these as and when or if we come across them and the weather
Background : we are aged 57 and 56 and in a previous life both of us were active sports people, but the last 2 or 3 decades Paula hasnt done much, and for the past 2-3 years, I havent done much. We are not cyclists. We have Haibike Ebikes which are getting towards 3 years old and 4,000 kms hence the sprocket change and they were bought in Germany in Aachen. They have 400 watts of Bosch power each and we charge them from 270 watts of solar and 200 ah of lithium, however, having seen the amount of apparently free bike charging places there are on this route, a bit of management would see us not needing this self provided electricity. We tend to cycle up to a point then turn round and cycle back, however there appears to be a good train service which we may abuse on a section or 2 where we can take the train with our bikes (no extra charge) and then cycle back (we would prefer it this way but cycling first is also an option). A realistic range on our bikes in a day before our bums get sore would be 80 kms and we would reckon on having a range of about 100 kms on the batteries so we have never run out of electricity.
The motorhome is a Rollerteam 685 we have had since new and 18 months old with LPG and all other mod cons with the exception of an awning as we just go and walk to the nearest tree for shade. We didnt have a working fridge on gas last year on holidays but we have one now.
We are going to try the motorbike intercom system on our cycle crash helmets but early indications are that this will make us look like dicks and as we take great pride in what other people think of us, expect some photos of us looking like dicks! I have also blown the budget on a cycle camera which may go on my helmet or the handlebars. That arrives today and we will see what happens. Paula gets a new pedal today as well after 2 years of having half a pedal on one side. We have panniers and a little cold store bag at the rear of my bike where we put an ice block, beer and a bottle opener with emergency peanuts. We have 4 locks which are foldable and combination and we find these fit into the "lock your charger whilst we charge your battery free of charge" points at nearly every one we have used (in France and Belgium)
I have also purchased a Garmin Edge which was absolutely useless on all our previous bike trips so we used Mapy.cz which is great for locating cycle and walking routes but you have to remember to download the map of the area or it uses data, otherwise it works off line. But the Garmin Edge has potential to be more use this time as I have taken the time to read the instructions and updated the cycle map of Europe which may have been the main contributing factors to us finding it useless and maybe, just maybe, it wasnt Garmin's fault.
Other apps we find necessary include Ventusky for weather forecasting, cheap petrol, LPG and Adblue apps. We have others that serve a purpose such as the lightning locater which works in the background and indicates to us a storm is incoming shortly. If only we took notice of it ! So we carry waterproofs and gloves with us. Other items we carry are a small toolkit sufficient enough to change inner tubes and we carry those as well.
We have motorhomed for 14 years and 11 of those abroad and bar covid dont really use this country as based within 90 minutes of numerous ports. We drink wine, beer, pastis and Paula likes a single malt so if we find a distillery, there is likely to be a stop there. We have been to Germany before but mainly Black Forest and in all likelihood we wont be doing any or many aires, we have been to previously though stopping at a particular weingut on the way back has some serious potential to fill up our personal reservoir.
A map will be created from the journal that is being created and I will try to be as accurate as possible for any person following in our wheel tracks for locations. I may put videos up dependant upon data allowance (20 GB each) or they may be added upon return.
Uploaded this map again as I have to upload something !
