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in Europe in Germany in Switzerland
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Welcome to the Bergstrasse Bike Books web site. We publish cycle touring guides on a small scale about cycling in Germany and Switzerland, with excursions into Austria, France, Italy and the Netherlands. We have also written a book for Cicerone the best known British outdoor publisher: "Cycle Touring in Switzerland". We normally have copies of this book for sale in case anybody wants an autographed copy. To be honest the book is available from booksellers, Amazon and Cicerone themselves often with free postage, so it is probably wiser to buy the book from somewhere else. If you are looking for information on cycling in Europe, we hope that some of our links will help you. If as well you feel that you would like to buy one or more of our seven self-published books we will be overjoyed to send it or them to you. If after looking through the site and/or one or more of the books, you still have a question or two then drop us a line either by snail mail or eMail . We will do our best to answer the question/s as soon as possible, though please bear in mind that we need to roam the highways and byways in summer to research our next book. Although we endeavour to check our eMail frequently, we can’t do it every day when underway. The "Other links" section includes amongst other information the adddresses of some, but not all organisations in Germany where you can hire a bike or a tandem or a trike. We started this operation largely because when Neil came to Germany about 30 years ago, he fell in with a group of cyclists. He started cycling again after a break of about 20 years and enjoyed it. Judith on hearing that he had taken up this activity, decided that he had a death wish, but was persuaded to try touring when they finally got married and she came to Germany. Our first major tour on a fairly new seven-gear touring bike and a three-speed mail order clunker was along the Danube from its source to Vienna. We found it exhilerating in spite of dreadful weather at the start and a stomach disorder at the end. We then started to look farther afield and discovered that there were few books in English about cycling in Germany. We also found that some of the German cycle guides appear to have been written using a car for major portions of the trip. We thought this was a bit off (more than a bit, actually) and that there was room in the world for cycle guides researched on bicycles. At the time both of us were working in scientific publishing and had found out a bit about book publishing. Over a couple of years | we chatted to various souls in the publishing business about a series of cycle touring guides. There was absolutely no interest, so we decided to publish them ourselves. If you want see why we enjoy cycling so much check out our photo gallery. Omnimap.com in Burlington, North Carolina now carries full stocks of all our books. This makes it much easier and cheaper for our North American customers to buy our books. The new stuff: We have just written a new book called 'Cycle Touring in Northern Germany'. It is about Schleswig-Holstein, the most northerly German province with a border to Denmark, although our book does not cross the Danish border. It covers the Elbe between Hamburg and Brunsbüttel, the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal Route (Kiel Canal) to Kiel, the Ostseeküstenradweg (Baltic Sea Coast Cycleway) to Lübeck and the Old Salt Road to Lüneburg. We have changed our approach to the earlier books. We give route instructions in those areas where it is necessary, because the signposting is less than adequate, but in those areas where the signposting is good or better we just give general directions. We still suggest what to look at in the towns, how to get to the area by public transport, list facilities underway, discuss road safety, the weather, landscapes, the maps you’ll need, and food and drink. There is an extensive list of cyclist-friendly accommodation. At the moment the 60+ page paperback book is available as a printed version mainly in black and white with 6 colour pages from ourselves for 12€ and from Guide Gecko (www.guidegecko.com) as a pdf download for $US 10 or $US 15 for the printed version. Postage is not included in either case. The book should shortly be available from Omnimap.com. In addition we have started to write a series of descriptive pamphlets of one day trips in northern Alsace and the South of Rhineland-Palatinate. These too are available from Guide Gecko as pdf downloads. Although we have only written one of these so far, although we have enough information to write one or two more. Once the weather warms up we will return to the area to research and write more.
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The Forsyths Bergstrasse Bike Books Post Box 1331, D 68503 Viernheim, Germany | |||||
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