Dear friends,

and now for something different. My friend and former colleague from ROC Midden-Brabant  Ronald Kloeg and myself (Frans) are going to cross the Alps on our mountainbikes. We’ll leave from Füssen, a nice town in the south of Germany on the border with Austria. The place is famous from the two fairy-castles built by the Bayern king Ludwig 2nd: Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. We’ll travel to Füssen by car, which we’ll leave behind there. From Füssen we’ll bike into Austria, cross the Fernpass into the valley of the Inn-rivver. Then we’ll head west and south and cross the Reschenpass into Italy. Through the long valley called Vinschgau we’ll head eastward for Merano, where we’ll turn south again and pass the last mountainranges to reach Riva, the final destination on the shores of the beautiful lake Lago di Garda.
It’s a six stage tour. We have a route book and GPS-track navigation. Route, hotels as well the return trip to Füssen have been booked through BikeAlpin, a German operator specialised in mountainbike tours.
I hope to be able to enter some contributions during the tour.

Route

and profile:

Images of an earlier Alp-tour:

Ronald and myself

Ronald crossing a mountain stream

Hard work

A refuge: Karwendelhaus

My very nice bike: the Cannondale Caffeine F4 with disc-brakes and the adjustable "super fatty ultra DLR" front fork.