Maps

Road Maps and other Signs on our Way

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Road maps and other signs on our way when we travel with a horse drawn caravan. Best size to work with is 1:100.000 roadmaps. That way we can use a atlas for a whole month. Smaller size cards are fine but then we need each week another one. Austria we traveled with a bikeroadmap designed for the famous Rhine-Main-Danube road. Detailed maps with heights on it are almost a must to navigate the horses as best possible.

Sometimes we wish it is a journey without maps. Sure thing is we want to have the freedom to choose our own path. However the Haflingers are dictating something else. Important to them is to find a way with as less hills as possible. According to that we travel besides rivers.

Following the map you can see we travel from North to East following the big European rivers.

Waal and MeuseIn the Netherlands the Waal and Meuse, the Ruhr which ends into the Ahr and Rhine. Easy as maps can be!

The Rhine

We follow till the junction with Mainz-Wiesbaden. There we start with the most amazing river in our opinion in Europe; the river Main.

The Main is along river but we are heading up to Bamberg. This is where we can join the Rhine-Main-Danube-Canal. This canal connects the North Sea with the Black sea by using the Danube for a big part.

Kelheim is the place where we leave the canal behind us and finally follow the Danube. The mother river of all European rivers.

How we use roadmaps or not!

In the Netherlands, it is easy to find an roadmap on a decent scale. 1:50.000. almost every corner, street, crossing and bridge is on it. Difficulty starts in Germany where we can’t find any roadmap in the right scale. We need one to avoid busy areas and steep hills. It sounds simple just follow the river but we also have to find out the right bridge to cross. Near Frankfurt, we nearly fail to pass one.

Halfway Germany we find a bike road-map. For large parts, we can follow that one through road maps but also on unwanted moments, we can’t go further because of these dam….little iron poles in the middle.

Rhine-Main-Danube-Canal

At Bamberg we leave the gorgeous Main behind us and follow the canal.

A broad path besides it formerly used by horses pulling riverboats. It’s not for carriages but we decide to take the risk of sending us away through the police when they spot us. Everything goes well till we have to cross an aqueduct we didn’t foresee on the roadmap.

Scary enough we can’t leave the bike road and before we know we traveling near the canal on the left and a steep valley on the other side 80 yards down.

Danube

At Kelheim we finally see the Danube, something we look forward to be happening. It’s not as spectacular as we thought. However, it’s another milestone we have taken and we celebrate with beer and whine.

From then on, we don’t see much from the Danube. The river is enclosed by dikes and roads far away from it. The bike road besides it is very popular in the holiday season and crowd with bikers. Some of this path we can use and we do with not always easily experiences!

The Danube is a big river with lots of ships and boats steaming up and down. Meandering through Vienna, we surely want to see that. We already know we can’t do that with our horse drawn caravan, the traffic jam we would make… We don’t want to think about that!Vienna is beautiful but gives us an estrangement feeling too. So many people, houses, traffic and so much to see, its overwhelming.

Bratislava

The Danube from Vienna till the Hungarian border is dull. We never have the chance to see the river because all the roads are far away from it. The last time we see her is 10 miles before the Hungarian border. We know we can’t follow her for a while because it’s streaming through Bratislava.

Later on we pick her up, is our plan, when we heading up to Budapest.

Till that time, we follow the Little Danube, a meandering little stream from the Hungarian border till Györ. Before we can pick up the Danube again we arrive at Lázi where we decide to stay for a couple of months.

This is where we are now

End of road-maps. Back to homepage.

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