Detailed trip planning

As I mentioned previously, I had decided on Munich, Germany being my base and planned to do a loop from there. Initially I thought maybe 2 loops, one to include Graz (Austria) to visit other friends but quickly I realised that time wise and distances it wasn't going to work out, so I decided on just the one.

Looking at the map the most obvious choice was to head south and do something through the Alps. What you may say ... cycle up the Alps/mountains ? .... no .... through ... so in the valleys and bike paths etc. My first plan was to think how long I would ride for and distances, bearing in mind I would need to have EVERYTHING with me to last for the time I was away. I decided on leaving my suitcase and stuff at Colin & Lizelle's flat and then taking what I needed for the time away. I thought that 2 weeks would be a good balance between long enough and not too short to be away. So once I had that more or less thought about I then started to look at flight options.

I contacted Johan Nel, a great travel agent, who I have worked with in for my previous trips, other people have used him as well and you always get what you want in the end. He is always pretty busy but went round to see him on a Saturday morning (he suggested that so no chance of interruptions) and we looked at options. I was pretty flexible with my dates which helped. On the dates side of things I didn't want to leave the trip too late in the year as then the weather would be getting cooler and more variables to think of clothes on the ride wise. In my mind I thought August would be the best choice, still summer in Europe but not super peak (kinda), yes there can be rain but better rain than cold.

Looking at airlines there wasn't too much choice from a (good) cost and destination perspective, some were hellishly expensive. The best was Turkish Airlines. They were who I ended up using. You have to fly via Istanbul but that isn't too bad, if you fly via there if you have a longer layover you can get a free hotel night stay. So we looked at that for the return trip and it all worked out well. We provisionally did a booking to keep the reservation on hold, more just so I could get 100% confirmation of leave from work. I had already told my management the plan and also the fact I hadn't taken much leave since I started helped with the motivation. On the Monday I got confirmation all was good for 4 weeks of leave so then booked and paid for the flights. Now I had the flight dates tied down I could start fitting stuff in between those.

One thing I considered doing was to "wing" it for the cycle part, what I mean is ... have a route in mind, but see how far I got on a day and then look for and stay in a place. Looking at Airbnb and Hotel options this became clear it wasn't going to be a great plan. I decided I didn't want to take the risk and also to have all the stress of having to find a place, and then maybe not a nice and or cost effective place for the night. So I changed back to the plan of prebooking everything in advance.

Route wise I thought of doing an anti-clockwise route from Munich down south into Austria and back to Salzburg then back to Munich. I checked what locations there were 60-80km on a day, I'd do a bit more if I had to but wanted to keep it in that range or less. I also had to think what I wanted to do more in certain places and then plan for the rest days there. Also in some places I'd do a shorter cycle between 2 cities so then I'd have the rest of the day to look and do things at the destination. I quickly learned a load of new locations that I had never heard of before.

Took me weeks of planning in the evenings (OK maybe I did do a little during work time here and there) to get the route planned out. Once I had that I started looking at accommodation. I had used Airbnb in 2014 but that was larger cities and was more options. I found out pretty quickly that there wasn't masses, for what I was after, there so I went more with hotels odd place was more a "pension" (which is more like a B&B type place).

In the end this is what the route ended up looking like.

I had decided that I'd start the cycle near the end of the 1st week in Germany. I also had the idea to visit Edmund in Regensburg who I had met at various TTP conferences in the past, so that filled the gap in the 1st week. After the cycle I didn't have any specific plans but that got padded out with things over time.

I'll elaborate more throughout this blog on details.

I then thought ... let me come up with an acronym for my holiday. After putting down a whole load of words on the page and some adjectives ... I settled on METACA22 ... it had a good sound to it and as I mentioned before it stands for Mike's Epic Tirol Alpine Cycling Adventure 2022.

On my 2014 travels I blogged each day as I went along, but this time would be a bit different. I wouldn't have my laptop with me (to make it easier) nor maybe have the time to do so. I wondered what the best way to share some info was, I decide (good, bad or otherwise?) I'd use WhatsApp as pretty much anyone who needed/wanted to know updates would be a friend on there. I created a Broadcast List and that was all set. If you've not used a list like that before it differs from a group in that messages are sent individually to each member as though you were doing a 1 on 1 chat with that person. I felt this was best as replies would then come back to me from that person vs to a group where other people may not know each other.

I have shared some of the photos with a WhatsApp group that I created so if you were on that you will likely have seen some of them but will add more than that to the blog as well as other videos that I didn't share.