Hi riders!
Im looking for route recommendations in central Europe, preferably circular, multi day (up to 10 days).
What Im worried about the routes that I see on bikepacking.com is: I never rode more than 500 km per month in training, and never did more than 1000 m of elevation in a day.
Ive done traditional bike touring – the Donauradweg up to Budapest (1000 km), Drauradweg from source to Maribor (400 km), but the elevation is much less compared to bikepacking routes. I usually did 70-150 km per day with about 15-20 kg of equipment.
Im considering west slovenia loop and loops in Dolomiti, but am not sure whether that would be an overkill in terms of elevation and difficulty?
p.s. If it bears any meaning, I did multi day hikes with a lot of elevation, 11-12 hrs of walking per day, max 40 kms in a single day
by Brilliant-Horse6315
6 Comments
Go max 70km a day. Book your next room/campground on the evening before. So you can adapt.
If you don’t manage the entire loop, find the next train station.
Don’t overthink and enjoy.
Eurovelo can be a starting point. Routes are rated and if you find a certain route interesting, you will find quite a lot of info online
Considered making your own route, based on your interests?
That way you can make it suit your pace & timeframe so you find it enjoyable.
For example, if you are interested in, lets say history, a tour in England could be based on some of the sites of the war of the roses.
Probably difficult with that much luggage.
Two routes come to mind that fit the criteria: loops and around 700k /10 days.
One is combining river ways in Germany. Nürnberg to Regensburg loosely on the Fiver rivers path, then Donauwörth on the Donauradweg, then to Würzburg on the Romantic Road, on to Bamberg on the Mainradweg and back to Nürnberg. About 750k.
Another one is a loop in Western Hungary. From Győr to Győr, visiting Lake Neusiedl and its castles, the abbeys in the Bakony mountains, Őrség and the vineyards along the Austrian border. It’s packed with sights and I can send you a GPX.
slovenia west loop is nothing like the rides you mentioned- very pretty but much much more arduous. In fact many of the [Bikepacking.com](http://Bikepacking.com) routes appear to have sections added just to make things harder.
In general, when you ride a loop and the elevation gain is more than 100ft/mile or say 20 meters per km the nature of the ride becomes much more about climbing and descending. At 20 meters per mile you are effectively climbing an average of 4 percent and descending an average of 4 % if the route is always climbing or descending. Throw in a flat section and the climbs and descents rapidly get steeper
I wasn’t able to train much before I did the Slovenian west loop. It’s a beautiful route so just go for it if you’ve
got a capable bike. There’s an easier version called the soca variant