Advice Please: Rhine Cycle Way Outward Travel

philkeeble

The wife and I are planning to cycle the Rhine in 2016. The ride is the easy part! We live close to Aberdeen and are looking at flying with bikes to Zurich, then getting train(s) to Oberalppass. Any advice on best flights would be appreciated (or even alternative travel options). Best airlines to fly with (with bikes), or worst?; bearing in mind that there are no direct flights from Aberdeen.
BA, for example, states that bikes should be packed in a protective case or bag. A full rigged Hewitt Cheviot SE with mudguards won't fit either, but would slip into the translucent CTC heavy duty plastic bag. Does anyone know if this is OK, for either BA or the bikes? Especially as there will be baggage handling at Heathrow. A cardboard bike box would be better, to be ditched at Zurich as we would be getting the Hull ferry and train back to Aberdeen.
Any tips gratefully received.

andymiller

You mentioned alternative travel options (and as no one has replied about flying). An option would be to take the ferry to Amsterdam and then the city Night Line sleeper to Basel and from there to Oberalppass. Leave Amsterdam at 20:31 and arrive in Oberalppass at 10:46.

DeutscheBahn have a call centre in London and the easiest option would be to get them to organise the tickets and bike reservations/tickets.

Screenshot from the bahn.com website (I had to reduce the size to meet the bikeradar requirements).

term1te

It can be quite expensive to take bikes onto trains in Switzerland. The trick is to take the front wheel off, and have some sort of covering bag for the rest of the bike. It is then luggage and doesn't incur any extra cost. I use one of these http://www.sbb.ch/en/station-services/car-bike/on-the-move-by-bike/bring-your-bike-along-for-the-trip/tranzbag.html

I'm actually sitting a couple of hundred meters from the Rhine cycle path at the moment, as my work is right on the Rhine. I only have experience of the Swiss part of the river, but it is a beautify route. If you can build some spare time in to take some detours, it would be a shame to miss the Black Forrest for example. I'll be cycling the route into Basel later today, it's a bit built up and industrial in places, but you are never too far from a good view, even around the "Rhine knee".

A friend of mine cycled from Oberalppass to Basel last year with his teenage son. They took three days of comfortable cycling, nearly all down hill.

robbo2011

I think it's quite cheap to take bikes on the train in CH. The maximum you need to pay is CHF18 for a one day bike travel card to any destination in CH.

Not really worth bothering about taking wheels off and bagging the bike, especially if you are doing point to point riding. IMO, anyway.

tourdriving

Take a train to Glasgow and fly direct to Zurich se link http://www.edreams.co.uk/flights/zurich-glasgow/ZRH/GLA/

philkeeble

Thanks folks, we like the idea of the ferry to Amsterdam/train to Basel-Zurich-Oberalppass and will investigate that further (especially as we have friends from Kendal who were planning on joining us for a stretch at Basel.

Phil