cycling it

            Perhaps i should have wrote a whole new blog for this wee adventure because strictly speaking i am hoping not to be doing the journey by road this time, the plan is to take my bike via train to London then on the eurostar to Amsterdam and I had hoped up the Danube to the Romanian Bulgarian border where I would swing into Bulgaria and cycle from there to Velika Tarnovo where my brother Bryan and sister Karen (and Allan)  both own a house,
    

                  The biggest and hardest part of any journey is leaving the front door so I booked the train a while back to set the wheels in motion, Wednesday 21^st of august was the first train that I booked to Edinburgh from Polmont for 11:07 at the very respectable price of £6.90 as I used my over fifty rail card and booked it a month in advance. Next train journey was the Edinburgh to London Euston virgin train which I had to be sure to book my bike on, this was easy enough and free I was given a booking reference number for the bike on my 12:52 train to London, thankfully I planned in having an overnight stay in London as the early morning Eurostar train to Amsterdam was a bit of a hassle for the cycle! First of I had to email them at their dispatch department, then they sent a reply with a telephone number for me to call- it went like this

Hello Kenny,

         Thank you for contacting EuroDespatch. I can confirm that you can take your bike on board if you are travelling between London and Amsterdam.We can take 2 fully assembled bikes and 6 boxed bikes per train.I have checked availability of bike spaces on the dates requested
The cost to pre-book ranges between £30 and £55 depending on how much in advance you make your reservation and whether your bike is fully assembled or boxed/bagged.

  when I made the call I had to give my seat booking reference and was told I would have to book the bike in the night before(lucky i was staying then) the cost would be the £55 of course! This meant the bikes seat cost more than mine which was £42, I then booked a train from Amsterdam to Arnhem £18.12 and apparently i need to get a ticket for the bike you can transport your bike on NS trains. You just need to buy a bike ticket, at a cost of €6, at one of the vending machines. The bike must be placed in the appropriate spaces, indicated by a bicycle symbol, on the side of the cars. with the virgin train costing £56.50 the trains costing total was £178.52 from home to Arnhem not including my London hotel
  

      I would be taking my old touring bike as I had a new one being built this would be a micro`adventure whilst I was still at work, with the intention I would eventually leave this bike in Bulgaria making space in my garage for my new bike, this trip I planned to cycle up the Rhine from Arnhem (not the Rhine`s end which is in Rotterdam) then leave my bike in Mannheim Germany to fly home to go back to work, then later fly back out collect the bike from Cameron`s house near Mannheim on the Rhine, this would have my bike in germany ready take a train to the black forest to the start of the Danube cycle route, the next time out