Our bikepacking 2025 trip is at an end and we're home, recovering (and needing another holiday) and reflecting on our experience. In a nutshell, this year's trip was pretty wonderful with lots of high points and only one or two less than positive elements. We cycled almost 1600 miles and in particular, while crossing France and Switzerland heading east, did quite a lot of climbing!
Countries
In all, we cycled in seven different countries:
- England
- France
- Switzerland
- Liechtenstein
- Austria
- Germany
- Netherlands
and our final route looked like this:
France, as always, was great. Our outbound journey, heading roughly south-east, mostly followed canals and rivers along dedicated cycle paths. France is hard to beat for a cycling holiday. The Netherlands is also very cycling-friendly, but France has the edge with its world beating, best in class.... bakeries!
In Switzerland, M2 became a fully fledged Alpine cyclist. She'd done a good few big days with more than a thousand metres of climbing in the past, most notably in the Basque country last year. But doing one big, unrelenting climb up a mountain pass in one of Europe's biggest mountain ranges? No, this she had not done. It's fair to say that the idea was a little intimidating to M2 which is exactly how M1 had felt in 2022 when faced with the same climb from the eastern end of Lake Lucerne up to Andermatt. But M2 surpassed her own expectations (but not M1's) and with true grit and determination, completed the four and a half hour climb in style.
We celebrated our joint achievement at the Andermatt sign but in truth, this was M2's moment.
Cycling to Andermatt was apparently not enough climbing though, so the very next day we did another 10 km climb, all the way up to the top of the Oberalp Pass. This was well worth the considerable effort because the descent down Oberalp Pass was spectacular.
But we both agree that neither of the alpine cycling days were the toughest of all the climbs we did. The Schafmatt Pass in the Jura Mountains wins that prize. The climb itself was "only" 4.5 km but it was steep, clocking in at 15% at its steepest but frequently being over 10%. We celebrated completing this climb, too! I think the general theme of that celebration was "Thank *&^! that's over!".
We'd never been to Liechtenstein before and it being right on our route, which was now based almost entirely on Eurovelo route EV15, we made the most of the opportunity to spend a day in Vaduz and have a wander around the place. In truth it wasn't particularly special but we're glad we got to go there.
Austria is on the list of countries because we did cycle in Austria! But we probably did less than 10 km in Austria, passing through a small corner as we turned west and headed for Lake Constance.
Germany was a mixed bag. The middle Rhine valley was pretty but perhaps not quite as pretty as the photos you see from the region. But there were numerous castles.
A lot of Germany consisted of somewhat uninteresting landscapes and unfortunately, especially as we got beyond the middle Rhine valley, was quite industrial. We've never seen so many lorries in one place, either. Luckily the cycling infrastructure is pretty good so we were rarely on roads with those lorries, although it did happen once, a moderately terrifying experience! The very northernmost part of our ride through Germany was much nicer and we liked Koblenz as well.
The Netherlands was a very pleasant surprise. Lovely countryside with more forest than we expected, fabulous wetlands and lots of canals and rivers, often with ferry crossings. And for cycling infrastructure and general bike friendliness, the Netherlands cannot be beaten. It's amazing. Towns are incredibly quiet because journeys undertaken by car are the minority case. People of all ages go everywhere by bike.
And of course there are windmills. Way more than you'd perhaps expect and some of them are still operational.
And that leaves England. England too, is a mixed bag for cyclists but unfortunately a lot of it is plain awful and you often feel unsafe cycling on roads with so many speeding cars driven by apparently angry or distracted drivers. It's such a shame. We've decided that in future we'll do what we did to get home from Harwich and take the train. Cycling to Newhaven on our first day was pretty dreadful. Cycling to and from Portsmouth last year was not great either. And cycling through and past Royal Tonbridge Wells in Kent in 2023 was awful, too! Sorry, England but you are the worst of all the seven countries for cycling.
Cities
We passed through and sometimes stayed in a number of cities this year. Here are the key ones:
1. Lucerne, Switzerland
Lucerne is a truly beautiful city, full of photogenic sights, buildings decorated with art in lovely old squares, wooden bridges across the river, and of course Lake Lucerne itself.
We passed through Basel twice, once on the way to the Alps and again as we cycled west from Lake Constance before turning north and following the Rhine up to France, Germany and the Netherlands. On this occasion we stayed in an apartment and had one of our rest days there. The airbnb host lived upstairs from our apartment and did a great job explaining the city's customs. It's another lovely place but it also has a certain character, with residents taking a cooling dip in the municipal fountains or floating hundreds of metres down the river with their clothes in a dry bag/float, along with dozens of others! Cool place.
3. Koblenz, Germany
Koblenz was our favourite German city. It's a relatively small place with cobbled streets, attractive squares, the meeting of two rivers, and music in the evenings.
We also stayed in Cologne which didn't really have much going for it apart from a large, somewhat mucky cathedral. It had little character, compared with Koblenz, say.
4. Utrecht
We loved Utrecht. It's a wonderful place. The fairly large old town has been really well looked after. We enjoyed walking and even canoeing along its canals. And almost all journeys (when not done by canoe) are by bike in the old town, so it's a very quiet place as well.
5. Rotterdam
Rotterdam was good! It's a "proper city" and much bigger than Utrecht but we still enjoyed wandering around and looking at the cool architecture and street art.
Yet More Stats
This year's route had a particular profile. It was uphill pretty much all the way across France and Switzerland during the first two and a half weeks. After that, the general trend was downhill all the way to the coast of the Netherlands. Not that it actually was all downhill. Oh no, we almost fell for that one ourselves. Nature doesn't do straight lines, you see. But certainly there was considerably less climbing done once we'd descended the Oberalp Pass in Switzerland and even less once we'd turned North at Basel.
Not surprisingly, it was in the Alps we had our biggest daily ascents and the toughest sequences of days.
Our longest ride was 73 miles but we had several up in the seventies. No mean feat given how hot it often was.
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| Statistical Highlights (mile and feet) |
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| Distance and Ascent Daily Stats (miles, feet) |
Technology
As always, technology played a part in this trip, some of it new.
1. Wearables
M1 has a new Suunto 9 Peak Pro watch which he has a kind of love/hate relationship with. The watch is fine although most of its features will probably never be used. Charging it can be a nightmare though. It's a very temperamental system.
M2 has a Fitbit. It likes to comment on her activities in what it presumably believes to be a helpful way. On this trip though, it was freaking out and imploring her to slow down, take it easy and warning her that she might be over-doing it! Silly Fitbit. It may know M1's weight and age but it certainly does not know her. M2 is not not typical and yes, she can do Alpine climbs Mr/Mrs Fitbit. So there!
2. Battery Power
A couple of 20,000 mAh Belkin power banks were used on this trip. They have a few foibles. You can't leave something plugged in and charging from the power bank overnight. If you do, the power bank can start to drain even after the device being charged is full. You can work around this by charging devices to full in the evening and then unplugging them.
But every now and again (it happened three times on this trip), the Belkin will lose a considerable amount of charge (50% one time), for no apparent reason. What triggers this is not understood and it's a bit of a liability.
3. Solar Energy
The star of the technology show though was M1's Alpkit solar panel.
It supplied energy to his Belkin power bank every day and not once did the Belkin get charged from domestic electricity. M1 charged his phone from the Belkin every day and as such, his phone was powered by solar energy for the whole 44 days of the trip which is quite amazing. We did have good weather but we had a few days when the panel could not be used (pouring rain) and a few when it was heavily overcast or where we spent a lot of the day cycling in the shadow of trees or hills. On the very last day though, the Belkin dumped 50% of its charge and that nearly scuppered the whole solar energy experiment! Luckily, it was the final day and M1's phone was charged enough to get us home.
4. Blogging
Almost all blogging this year was done entirely from M1's smartphone. This was so that for future trips, it will not be necessary to carry a laptop. It went badly initially, relying on a mobile blogging app which has the advantage of letting you prepare your post offline with no internet connection, syncing later. But the app was poor and unreliable. In the end, blogging whenever we had internet connectivity just using the web browser and other tools (some developed by M1), worked fine. It just means that for those occasions where the internet is not available, blog content has to be prepared offline in a text file or Word document or something. The key thing is, it can be done.
The Bikes
Both bikes did well on the whole and miraculously, we got zero punctures. But this is typical and so shouldn't really be surprising. And yet it is. All those miles/km over asphalt, gravel and stones, in the countryside, in cities (with their usual patches of broken glass), by major roads, with trucks dropping bits and pieces and so on. Miraculous. The explanation is simply that on the one hand, we watch out for puncture hazards as we cycle and warn each other if we see something ("glass!!"). The best way to avoid getting punctures is to avoid the things that cause punctures, right? On the other hand, there are some excellent tyres around these days. We use 42 mm Continental Contact Plus tyres and they haven't let us down yet.
A bit of luck helps as well.
M2's left side crank completely fell of as we cycled into Selestat in France.
We were lucky it fell off where it did, with us a short walk from our campsite and in a town with an excellent bike repair shop. It was unlucky the crank lost its retaining screw (unheard of in fact) but the incident could have been so much worse. M1's immediate thought was "is this my fault?", of course, as he services the bikes. But on examining his bike maintenance journal, it turned out that the only time that crank has ever been removed was over two years ago before our 2023 trip when our local bike shop changed M2's chainrings so she had lower gears. Checking cranks is now part of the annual service routine!
And The Mule. Faithful old yellow Mule :-) It did the job once again.
The Mule is a £700 mountain bike, which in bike circles is "cheap as chips" and it does a great, no frills job. That said, luck once again played a part. There was some noise from the drive train that became noticeable a couple of weeks ago. M1 put it down to chain wear. But in fact the freewheel hub in the back wheel has become somewhat wobbly and no attempts to resolve this have succeeded. It's time The Mule had new wheels. Its current wheels are cheap, brandless and were supplied by our local shop after cracks were found in the original wheels supplied by Specialized. They've done very well, having featured in four European bikepacking trips now, and that's 7500 miles or thereabouts, heavily loaded. So, no complaints here and we're just happy it didn't fall apart completely during our trip!
Wildlife
We always enjoy spotting wildlife as we cycle. Birds are particular favourites. We didn't see anything like the number of different species that we saw last year, but it was still pretty special.
We saw lots of Grey Herons, often quite close up. But we were most thrilled to see a Purple Heron, a species we hadn't known existed until this trip.
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| Purple Heron |
However, the winner of the coveted Bird of Bikepacking 2025 goes to [drum roll].... The White Stork!
We saw dozens and dozens of these special birds, often grazing in fields rather than perched high in amazing nests atop church steeples and telegraph poles like those we've seen on other trips. We even saw a remarkably confident stork wandering around one of the campsites gently pestering people for food!
That's it. What an awesome trip.
Plans are already afoot for an even more amazing trip in 2026. Watch this space!
