Love Spain for biking. Just a bit of a hike from the North of England. Maybe if I could swing two weeks off...
I'm Teesside to ... I was looking at a long weekend in Northern Spain. Plymouth to Santander but the ferry is 2 days worth of travelling and quite expensive. Trouble is Northern France is rubbish to ride thro. The other 4 day'er I looked at was: Calais to Bruges - Arnhem (Via Eindhoven / Nijmegen) - Amsterdam - and then home.
If you want to look at those Dutch and Belgian towns, fine. But the roads around that area are nothing special for riding - flat and busy.
Ferry from Portsmouth to Santandear is 24 hours and depending on time of year & sailings booked even a singleton can have a weeks holiday including b&b for under £500
Another option is to send the bikes and gear to either Geneva or Toulouse with Bike Shuttle depart from Northampton, flight from Luton, and then your in some great biking roads. I used them last year in Septmeber, after the August holidays and everyone was back to work, roads were clear and great. Works liek a euro track day, You drop off the bike and luggage, they load ship to the destination, great set up by the way, BS will taxi you to the airport, no luggage as that's with the bike, fly over, dinner few beers, a good sleep, and the bike is there ready the next morning. I did Geneva, Rhine, Constanze, Davos, Stelvio x10, Dolimties, Near Venice, Lake Como, Piacenza and back to Geneva in 13 days, 2043 miles http://www.bikeshuttle.co.uk/
Always a risk of a baggage handling cock-up and you get there to find a ER6 and a set of pink leathers waiting for you.
No you have your own boxes solely for youself. Especially designed for the helmet gadgets and leathers etc.
We do something similar here in Ireland. Bikes get transported to Memmingen and we fly over early morning , jump on bikes and riding great roads in Bavaria by lunchtime. Fook that ferry and motorway mullarkey
Normandie Express (Brittany Ferries fast ferry) runs from Portsmouth to Cherbourg in 3 hours in the summer. Cherbourg is good for Normandy D-Day beaches, battlefields and scenic Brittany. Just as quick to Portsmouth as to Dover and no M25. You could do this one way and Calais the other, taking in the WW1 battlefields as well, if so inclined. Bruges is worth a visit and is close to the ferryport at Zeebrugge. I'm told there are lots of good roads in East Belgium, but I don't know them.
Interesting thread this, as me and a mate are planning on something similar for next year. We have a friend in silkeborg Denmark, but having read the above this doesn't sound so appealing. Pete's plan to the Black Forrest does sound good and something I'll be looking in to. We've been over to Spain on two occasions so this time would like to explore the area ferrying it over from Newcastle/ Hull, visit the WW1 cemeteries and sample a few 'coffees' in Amsterdam.
We do a similar thing but use eurobiketrans who ship out of Manchester via dsv. We've done Tuscany twice and 2018 we're shipping out to north of Barcelona then having a week in the pyranees (Spain,France and Andorra on the doorstep) Fly out, pick your bike and all gear up at whichever dsv depot you use and away you go.
a couple of peeps have mentioned transporting the bikes across . How much did it cost to have the bikes sent over ? i have looked on the site and they just say ask us for a quote ,but i am just after a general area of costs without having to give all my email details etc to them.
Speak to Tony @ Eurobiketrans - http://www.eurobiketrans.co.uk/contact/ - They are based in Yorkshire and did a fantastic job taking 22 of us to Italy this year. Tell him Terry sent you
