North sea cycle route (well a bit of it!)

gert_lush

Hi there

In late summer me and a mate are going on a quick europe ride for 2 weeks, and have decided to get the ferry over to Esjberg in Denmark and then try and follow the North sea cycle route roughly down into Germany across into the Netherlands and into Belgium where we will then head inland 100miles and spend a weekend at the Belgium GP in Spa before a blast back to Calais. We are going to try and to as much of the planned route as possible but also know we will have to take some shortcuts as we only have about 9 days to get to the Belgium GP and its about 1000 miles if you follow all the NSCR. We will be camping along the way and it looks pretty flat so hopefully try and get 100 miles a day in, as we just about managed that doing JoGLE a few years ago and that was definitely hillier! although looks like we may get a nice headwind!

Has anyone done any of that route, or similar and give me any hints, tips, nice places to stay etc?

I have maps for the NSCR in Germany, Netherlands and Belgium and also found another map that has all the cycle routes in Belgium to get us to Spa so that should make things easier.

cheers

peter_andrew

Try this.
http://www.northsea-cycle.com/
Guy called Bernie Friend has written a book on his adventure "Cycling back to Happiness"
has various info in it and a reasonable read.
Hope to do some of this as my first tour!
Peter

gert_lush

Cheers for that peter,
I have come across that site before, has some useful links on it.
doing all of it would be a great 1st tour, in fact would be a great anytime tour, what a way to sample many beers from many countries! .......and culture of course

Tim Farr

How do you get from Bergen to Shetlands?

JHcp

We did Esblerg to the Hook back in 2003. There is a travelogue on our website here http://www.cycletourer.co.uk/cycletouri ... ur03.shtml and some further information on the NSCR here : http://www.cycletourer.co.uk/cycletouri ... info.shtml

It certainly is all very flat so you should be able to keep up a good mileage. The only problem we found is that in parts of Germany and Holland a lot of the signed route is on quiet roads behind the sea wall so you don't get great views of the North sea. And they tend to keep sheep on the pastures close to the sea wall and therefore there are quite a lot of gates to negotiate.

Therefore in certain places you may wish to come inland from the signed route if you are short of time as the route isn't always the most direct.

Also you can use some of the ferries to miss out certain sections if you are short of time e.g you can cross the Elbe at Gluckstadt and miss out the leg in to Hamburg and back out or catch the ferry across from Eckwarder to Wilhelmshaven.

Watch out for the wind, prevailing winds are generally from the south, although when we did it we had light or tail winds most of the way apart from a horrid headwind on the section down from Den helder.

Have fun and enjoy the trip!

peter_andrew

Tim Farr Posted: 02 Feb 2010 15:56 Post subject:

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How do you get from Bergen to Shetlands

You fly
Flybe i think it is

Peter