Two couch potatoes and a 66-year old cardiac patient cross the Alps

Last week my father, brother and I finished our bicycle tour from the Rhineland, across the Alps, to northern Italy, where we visited family.

The post title is overly dramatic: we're actually in decent shape. Sorry.

Even so, we are mostly untrained and live in the Netherlands, so the concept of a "mountain" is foreign to us. The prospect of cycling the Alps was daunting.

But we made it!

The mountains were tough, but doable, and very very beautiful. And the company was great, one of the benefits of touring with close family, I guess.

In fact, the most difficult part of the tour by far was the train travel to our starting point and back. Man, trains… I want to love them, but they sometimes make it very difficult.

Some practical details:

• We started in Mannheim in Germany, because I have previously cycled from the Netherlands to Mannheim and didn't want to do it again. From Mannheim we followed the Eurovelo 15 south until Basel. It's a good route, very convenient, pleasantly easy. The exciting part of the route is definitely north of Mannheim. To the south, it's a bit monotonous.
• From Basel we followed the Eurovelo 5 through Switzerland, over the Gotthard pass. Also a good route, easy navigation, very pretty. Can definitely recommend. The Gotthard pass is a classic, and with good reason, because it's amazing. The only downside is that it's also a classic for motorists.
• The Eurovelo 5 supposedly continues into Italy, but from the Swiss border to Milan I'm not sure it actually exists. Italy in general is a cycling free-for-all melee; sometimes the roads are lovely, but often they're full of holes, non-existent, and Italian car drivers don't understand personal space. We went through Milan to Pavia and then turned southwest to our family in the Piemonte.
• In total we did ~1050 kilometer distance and a few thousand meters of elevation.
• I used Komoot for most of the navigation, with my brother as a back-up looking at the physical sign posts.
• We slept on campings with our tents every night, because we're sticklers for the rules and don't want to wild camp. Campings were of wildly varying quality (and prices that have no relation to the quality), but usually easy enough to find.
• Being western Europe, getting food and water is of course no issue. Prices in Switzerland might be an issue.

I kept a long-winded travel diary on Polarsteps. It's a lot of words. Probably too many words. But if that's your thing (or you just want to look at more pictures), feel free.