Taking a train, with bikes, from Germany to Spain is not a pleasant prospect. First off, "international" trains like for Germany to France, do not accept bikes. Last time we faced a journey something like that, we got off near the German border, at Aachen, and pedaled into Belgium. And quite aside from that, there are not real direct train lines into Spain. It would be a matter of several zig zags and transfers, no doubt through some bike unfriendly stations, without lifts. We put the question to "Trainline", and it basically said take (several) busses. "Rail Europe" had a partial route, with about 4 changes. Both agreed it would not be cheap, or fast.

That's where I said I would rather just pedal my darn bike down there, rather than go through all the hassle. So that was the idea of going to Leipzig, grabbing the bikes, and "repositioning" them, by rapidly pedalling down to Valencia. Working with this idea, I asked the route planning algorithms for the most direct (but reasonable) way to get to Spain. 

The answer was about 1500 km - out to the Rhine, down past Strasbourg, through Burgundy, down the Rhone, over to Sete, and take the ferries to and from Mallorca, over to Valencia.

I presented this to our "management committee" and the reaction was "Whaa! You want to spend all that airfare time and money - crossing a continent, an ocean, and another continent to reach Leipzig, only to blast down a couple of rivers and fly out again?" "Well, ya", was my articulate reply. "I mean, Repositioning Ride, eh!"

As you can guess, the route was not approved. But actually neither was it thrown out. The reality is that unless you wander off somewhere, or somehow spin in circles, the trip is sort of a few river routes, some ferries, and you're done. (Ok sure, it's not quite that simple. For example, Leipzig is a good 400 km from the Rhine, and if you are not careful you will bang right into the Harz mountains on the way!)

In the days (weeks?) that followed, the route was elaborated. Now we would spin around Burgundy (the Tour de Bourgogne), around Provence (Radregion Provence), and follow EV8 (the Mediterranean Route) partly, out to Toulon, before boarding some kind of ferry. In short, Fibonacci was in play, and we were mostly doing the Fall cycle trip that we started out thinking to avoid. But one thing did stick, the title Repositioning Ride. Check the next six pages to see what this is really going to be.