Tour to France/Spain/Portugal

From Berlin. With bike. Start: October 21th

Stage 1 - Attac Villa, Könnern

cycled 175km in one day, started 7.30, arrived 20.00

Departure: October 29th

Stage 2 - WuppDays Witzenhausen

Cycled to Sülzhayn the Harz forest (100 km), started 10.30, arrived 20.00. Depart October 31st to Witzenhausen. Gear switching broke down in hilly terrain, tried to find bike shop, but all closed or not able to find. Asked at a random house for a Torx T15, which allowed me to switch from 2nd to 8th gear. Much better to cycle. Fixed the bike on the next day in Witzenhausen. Then stayed at the WuppDays for almost two weeks, partly coding and partly with Janina. Amazing lively atmosphere!

Departure: 2016-11-13

Stage 3 - visit my grandma in Langen (Hessen)

Cycled to Saasen (135 km, 1000 hm), in zero-degrees temperature. Made good progress, picked pears on the way, arrived in the afternoon. The Projektwerkstatt was completely empty and cold, went to bed at 6pm. The house is really interesting, but needs people to live there (IMO)! On the next day, I slept long and continued cycling at noon. Direction of Frankfurt is relatively flat, nice sunlight, but still very cold with snow visible. Arrived at my grandma's house after 4.5 hours at sundown (90 km). Nice day!

Went to Darmstadt to visit Lars on 2016-11-20 and stay there one night.

Departure: 2016-11-21

Stage 4 - go south

It's so cold in middle Europe, I should make some distance.

I contacted Foot not bombs in Strasbourg and Besancon, as well as Les Gars'Pilleurs in Lyon on November 18th via mail, but no reply so far.

21: went really far, slept rough before Strasbourg
22: trustroots host in Müllheim
23: short trip to Montbeliard/Bethoncourt, warmshowers host Odile
24: cycle to Dole, warmshowers host Eric
25: cycle to Mâcon, warmshowers host Floriane
26: shorter trip to Lyon/Villeurbanne

Retrospective: Warmshowers works great, even for spontaneous travels. I wanted to plan more in advance, but it was hard due to unknown route choice, weather and general sleepiness. The route planners "cycle.travel" and "openrouteservice.org" are good for finding small roads to cycle along.

Stage 5 - Lyon/Grenoble

Staying with Couchsurfing host Estelle in Villeurbanne

I want to connect with foodsharing and -saving initiatives here. Maybe even start a facebook group. Save food from markets and do dumpster diving.

Future

• Valencia
• Portugal

General

Accommodation: will use yunity.org & foodsharing.de contacts, https://warmshowers.org/, trustroots.org, maybe bewelcome.org and couchsurfing.com

Future destinations

Valencia, Spain (January 2017)

Edinburgh, UK (May 2017)