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We have done two alpine crossings, one at through the Grossglockner alpine road and the other through the Via Claudia Augusta. By far the most popular crossing is the Via Claudia Augusta. We did not encounter any cycling tourists on the Grossglockner alpine road. We encountered many cycling tourists on the Via Claudia Augusta but none were crossing from Italy towards Austria. So the cycle touring traffic was all from the North to the South.

The Via Claudia Reschen pass is in the Tyrol area and the pass summit is at a height of 1,504 meters and the pass road very seldom has ice.
The Grossglockner pass between Carinthia and Tyrol reaches 2,576 meters and is often iced over, and is therefore only passable by cyclists in summer.

The Via Claudia Augusta pass gradient on the Austrian side is more gradual than the gradient on the Italian side. Cyclist only share the pass road with normal traffic on the Austrian side. There are some trucks on the Reschen pass. On the Austrian side there are a number of well-designed overhang tunnels and short tunnels. When we were going down we quickly went through the tunnels, putting our lights on first. As we were not in the tunnels for long we did not encounter much traffic. Going up would be less pleasant, as sharing a tunnel with a truck is not pleasant. As such there are bus shuttles that take bicycles and cyclists over the Reschen Pass on the Austrian side (which defeats the “crossing the Alps” experience).

Cyclists share the Grossglockner road with normal traffic. The gradients on both sides of the Grossglockner are long and steep. There are two short tunnels at the top of the Grossglockner that are ok to pedal through. I think the only trucks on Grossglockner would be road service trucks.

Both passes are beautiful. I found Grossglockner more exhilarating.

The excellent German cycling infrastructure is encouraging more and more people to become cyclists. Many older Germans are taking up cycle touring in their retirement.
The combination of new and established cyclists can be seen in the choice of bicycles.
We often see older cyclists, well past their retirement, at supermarkets with bicycles that may be as old as their children. Some of these older cyclists seem to have trouble walking but have no trouble making a smooth exit on their bicycles.

Some newbie tour cyclists buy expensive bicycles. For example, an elderly pair was touring on mountain bicycles with double suspension systems that are battery powered and have custom made batteries. Their bicycles required specially made attachments to mount luggage.

German electric cycles are well designed for short term usage, but not for long term maintenance. Most German electric bicycles have the motor and battery integrated with the pedal system. The propulsion is all on the chain, so this causes more wear on the drive chain and rear cassette. In my opinion the best electric bicycle design have the electric motor on the front wheel. This separates the maintenance of the mechanical drive system to the rear wheel and the maintenance of the electric drive to the front wheel (making the bicycle simpler to maintain and also causing less wear). It also provides a bicycle with drive traction on both wheels.

We are traveling on very cheap Decathlon Hoprider 300 cycles that are cheap to maintain.
Sometimes people ask us – Are those good bicycles? The correct answer is “Yes, top of the range”. They are top of the range at Decathlon.

And all this diversity can only be good for the evolution of the next generation of bicycles.

We spent some time in Eastern Europe (Poland etc) on our previous cycle tour and I wonder if Eastern Europe has a Russian sub-culture. This time we went through Croatia. The cost for accommodation is normally cheap in East European countries, and a lot of Croatians do not value life very highly as we experienced by driving on the roads, particularly in relation to cyclists. Some Croatians seem less friendly than Western Europeans. All in all this makes Eastern European countries a cheaper, but unpleasant tourist experience. As per usual I was dreaming a lot as cycle touring provides intense days. After a while in Croatia I was battling a lot of demons in my dreams.

Instead of following the Croatian coast into Italy, we decided to head through Slovenia towards the Alps. We found a marked difference when we crossed over into Slovenia. Slovenians generally tend to give cyclists room and do not take chances with the lives of cyclists.

We are not going past the Declathons that we planned as we are now planning to bypass some big centers. I’m hoping we can nurse our cheap bicycles over the Alps without doing a maintenance stop. (it is no use doing maintenance checks if you can’t buy spare parts).
Our crossing route over the Alps is not that much different, as we approach our target entry point (Bovec, Slovenia) from Slovenia instead of Italy.

Italian and Croatian roads have been constructed without thought about cyclists (similar to New Zealand and the UK).
There are differences between Italy and Croatia though – generally Croatian roads are maintained and Italian roads are not maintained. Both Italy and Croatia control traffic speeds in designated urban areas. Croatia have ribs across the road that are noisy when you drive across them or alternatively chatter the teeth of cyclists. Italy uses the cost efficient method of potholes to slow traffic. The cost-effective Italian method would, of course, gain top marks under the New Zealand number eight wire methodology. The other difference is that Italian drivers are more used to cyclists than the drivers in Croatia. So there are normalised behavior patterns around cyclists in Italy. In Croatia drivers would either give you a very wide berth, or they would hoot at you and try to nick you with their side mirrors.

So it is no surprise that everybody in Croatia tells you how wonderful the road ahead will be for cyclists. Of course the Croatian roads have good views and the road surfaces are well maintained. The trouble is the roads are designed for at most two trucks traveling in opposing directions. Always when there are two cars on the road with us, the car behind us pushes between us and the oncoming driver, forcing the oncoming driver to the edge of his side of the road. So if there is one or more trucks involved it becomes Russian roulette on who is doing what.
Cyclists are forced on these roads for large sections along the Croatian coast road.
So don’t take any cycling tips from the Croatian public.

So we have decided to do some island hopping to avoid these roads. It will slow our progress a bit, some days will have less cycling, but it may be more interesting.

We have decided to enter Pag via Zadar, ferrying off Pag onto the road of death for a couple of hours, then using the ferryman for passage onto Rab, from where we obtain passage to Krk.

The above paragraph is a short extraction from the the Star Wars prequel.