Sure, this is a quite early announcement for
2016 But, as people "not-yet-retired" and "not-still-students" have to consider more constraints for long-term travelling and as biking couples (f/m, m/m, f/f) are difficult enough to find, we start our first call today already:
We will start in may 2016 (starting 7 sabbatical months from work) and intend to travel on the first days in may to the North Cape. Our travel there will probably be by flight to Tromso and then by ship on the Hurtigruten to Honningsvag. Our tandem bike (Hase Pino) might be shipped in advance because we are not sure whether this can be handled in the airplane properly.
We are aware, that starting at North Cape in May might still be a problem with snow, but as we are planning a total of
6-7 months, we don't see a problem in resting up there for a few days.
To our actual plan, we will take a route along the norvegian coast to the Lofoten, then we may jump eastwards to the east coast of Sweden. From south Sweden, we plan to take a ferry to eastern Germany where we already learned the beautiful areas with lots of green nature. Rivertrails may take us to southern Germany, hitting Lake Constance and then, following the Rhine over northern France, Bretagny, Bilbao to Spain. With spain, we have a bit experience from our previous (camping car) travels and we intend to travel through Navarra, follow the Way of St. James [Camino de Santiago trail] for some parts, Via verde (former railway tracks converted to bike roads)... and then North/South, maybe also visiting Portugal.Note: This is the first idea for travel and we are still in may discussions, which places we should meet as well.
As we are having one or two private constraints during the travel, we will have to return home (by plane) once or twice... This, together with our intention to enjoy a LOOOOONG travel, explains the 6-7 months duration.
After having spent three winter-holidays in the sun of southern spain, it is a dream for us to start in the cold, hard norvegian spring and then following the sun down to beginning of winter in Spain.
We are a couple around the 50s, married since ages and will travel with Hase Pino. The daily trips will be between 50 and 120km, but as said, we have the tendency to add resting days in places where nature or culture is so breathtaking that we need to stay another day
For accomodation, we will have a mix between low-budget (tent, youth hostel, B&B), but will will also be in a boarding house or hotel in case that we need to dry ourselves over longer rain periods.Maybe, there are opportunities for travelling partial areas together only: We will have our first "home-stop" from Stockholm. Somebody starting at North Cape end of may will definitivly catch up
We are looking forward for somebody contacting us... also for planning sessions
Tina and Udo