Since its launch in 1972, Interrail has offered an introduction to foreign travel, granting access to a wide range of European destinations at bargain prices.
For the cyclist cherry-picking rides here and there, an Interrail pass provides a budget-friendly way of whizzing you and your bike around continental Europe flight-free.
The app shows which trains take regular bikes, or you can swan around with just your wheelie case, and hire bikes on the spot (electric bikes are often much cheaper in Europe than in Britain).
City-bike hire schemes are widespread, and cheap, but it can be fiddly setting up numerous apps and new accounts.
With your own bike, your scope is vast. Say, for instance, you want to collect a few French classic cols; to look at some of the Netherlands’ vast, car-free bike-path network; to enjoy a German riverside route; and meet friends in Spain for some social riding.
An Interrail deal enables all of those adventures in one trip for a fraction of the travel budget you'd need without the pass.
I’ve used it a few times now, with a regular bike, with a folding bike, and with no bike of my own. Here are nine of the best cycling experiences I’ve enjoyed around the continent – and you can slot into your own train odyssey.
Utrecht: ride the world’s oldest cycle path
The Netherlands’ fantastic cycling infrastructure hasn’t always been there. Until the 1970s, their city centres were just as post-war car-centric and hostile to bikes as Britain’s.
Only with protests from parents demanding safe routes to schools was the development catalysed of the fabulous (and still improving) network we know today.
That said, the Dutch have always cycled, and the Netherlands’ – possibly the world’s – oldest bike path is in Utrecht. Maliebaan, just east of the central canal ring, was installed in 1885 according to a plaque, and is still going smoothly.
It’s barely 100 yards long, but bike-loving Utrecht has plenty more inviting experiences.
Catharijnesingel was a motorway until they turned it back to a canal (with a bike path, naturally) in 2020 following a referendum on the subject in 2002; the train station has perhaps the world’s biggest cycle parking, with room for a whopping 12,500 bikes; and the university boasts the world’s longest rainbow-painted cycle path (at just shy of 600m long).
Rome: clatter along the ‘Empire’s M1’
What was it like to cycle in Ancient Rome? To get an idea, follow the classic intact Roman road stretch of the Appian Way.
The Empire’s main highway, it ran 365 miles from the capital down to Brindisi.
As the Via Appia Antica, it’s a popular hire-bike jaunt with visitors today, going from the Baths of Caracalla in central Rome a few kilometres along a mix of busy road, quiet road, parkland and track, heading south-east through town, and then back.
It’s lined with countless monuments, relics, buildings and remains that make it an outdoor museum.
The ‘original’ bit of the road is very bouldery and bumpy – most day-hirers get off and push – so it’s no wonder nobody cycled back then (although in Roman times it would have additional surfacing, like a gravel track today).
Rome’s historic centre – the Colosseum, etc – is fun to cycle round, thanks to being largely car-free.
Elsewhere, though, things can be hectic, with fast traffic and lots of double-parking.
Paris: relive the world’s first bike race
Paris is proving itself a ground-breaker in terms of urban segregated bike paths these days, but it also staged the world’s first bike race – on 31 May 1868 in St-Cloud park, just over the Seine, west of the centre.
Britain’s James Moore won it – at least, according to a plaque on the fence just south of Clemenceau Gate.
But not according to cycling historians, who reckon that wasn’t even the first race that day, and that Jim didn’t even come first, as he later unswervingly claimed.
Nobody knows the exact original route of the flat, three-quarter-mile gravel circuit they rode, but you can follow your nose round the tree-lined paths today and commune with the spirits of those first bike racers.
St-Cloud Park can be one stop on a super sightseeing day-ride. Start from the Rue de Rivoli, on the burgeoning network of excellent new bike paths; pass the Arc de Triomphe; go through the Bois de Boulogne with its bike circuit; catch Jim’s ghost at St-Cloud; cross woods to Versailles; and come back on another segregated path all the way to the Eiffel Tower.
Mannheim: the ‘world’s first bike ride’
Here, in Germany, on 12 June 1817, the bicycle was born. Sort of. Inventor Karl Drais made the very first ‘cycle ride’ in the world, on what became known as the draisienne, and what we’d now call a balance bike. It was quite a PR stunt, with local press and a crowd of onlookers.
Setting off from the grand Schloss (castle), which is still there on the town’s utility-bike-path network, he rode to a coach stop five miles away on the edge of town.
Then, the road between them was one of Germany’s, maybe the world’s, best-surfaced and smoothest – hence the choice of route.
You can follow Drais' literal footsteps today from the Schloss, past well-signed industrial estates, car concessions and bathroom retailers, to the Alte Relaishaus.
There, he no doubt enjoyed a coffee and cake before returning home, thus also pioneering the concept of the cafe stop.
You’ll have to search nearby for Kaffee und Kuchen, though. Because, alas, the inn is no longer in business – it caught fire as a developer was trying to demolish it to build flats – but there is a campaign to restore it.
Watch out for posties delivering mail on bikes: just one of the purposes Drais envisaged for his invention.
Mannheim is a functional, industrial place – a certain Karl Benz invented something called the ‘motor car’ here a few decades after Drais’ ride, and look how that turned out.
But it’s a handy Interrail hub, especially for cyclists heading to Switzerland or Austria, and is a friendly, vibrant, inexpensive stop-off.
- Route: Komoot – Drais-Route
Leopoldsburg to Hasselt: two rare cycling novelties
The ‘cycling paradise’ of Limburg, in Belgium’s northeast corner, has two contrived but thoroughly likeable pedalling experiences: Fietsen door de Bomen and the nearby Fietsen door het Water, or ‘Bikes through the Trees’ and ‘Bikes through the Water’.
As with your Belgian frites, take any internet hype with a pinch of salt. Each of these is a 10-minute experience, but as a pleasant, sociable experience in country-park territory, it’s worth it.
‘Trees’ is a circular wooden cycleway that rises and falls gently to convey you mid-air through a forest canopy.
An hour or so of riding away along a good Belgian rail trail, ‘Water’ is a submerged trough that crosses a parkland mere so that your eye level is just above the lake’s surface.
You won’t be alone – these are popular destinations for trundling families and local cycle clubs – but that gives them a gentle, amiable buzz.
Bring a picnic: there are no cafes, gift shops or glitzy monetisation, but it’s better for that.
The most amusing part of ‘Water’ is observing the crossing from a nearby picnic table: cyclists’ heads seem to glide along the water surface like a production line.
The gateway town of Hasselt has your nearby mainline station – along with a great hostel, plus a nice little car-free, cobbled-lane historic centre where you can sip Belgian beer with your moules-frites.
Aachen to St Vith: 50 miles of car-free tarmac path
‘Vennbahn’ means ‘Fens Railway’, but Cambridgeshire this is not. And forget British rail trails: Belgium’s ‘RaVel’ paths do not abruptly turn into a muddy maze round the back of a chemical factory.
This old railway line is a 50-mile delight of wide, smooth, flat tarmac through forests and gentle hills, and there’s plenty of space for zippy road cyclists to enjoy it alongside the joggers and buggy-pushers.
It starts from the rail hub of Aachen station (with easy budget accommodation) and soon forms a bizarre border, detailed by YouTubers.
The path itself is Belgian, but for miles it intrudes, spaghetti-like, inside Germany. Stop off at half-timbered honeypot Monschau and finish in St Vith, from where there’s more excellent riding into the bits of Belgium you’ve seen on the bike races.
Or you can continue for a morning down the Vennbahn into Luxembourg to rejoin the rail network. The website offers accommodation and transport info.
- Route: Discover the Vennbahn
Roubaix: the notorious cobbles
The one-day Paris-Roubaix race each Easter is one of the ‘cobbled classics’. Racers more used to silky tarmac have to clatter over the pavé of rough setts at various points.
If you want to experience the not-so-good-vibrations for yourself, and don’t have time for the 100-mile compendium of cobbles in the link below, the bumpy mile just outside Roubaix, complete with monument, is an easy stretch to access (maybe ride from the station at Baisieux: it’s seven miles to Roubaix).
The first few seconds of pavé aren’t so bad. You think, 'I can cope with this'. By the second minute, you think, 'this is awful'. By the third, you think 'root canal treatment wasn’t so bad after all'.
To the side is a smooth path if you worry about bits falling off your bike, or you. Roubaix is proud of its cycling status: every year, the jolted racers come up here, taking a final short, ceremonial stretch of pavé to finish by one of the town’s velodromes.
By it, there’s another monument – a giant cobble – and a bike cafe (HQ of Roubaix CC) decorated with a list of the event’s winners. Belgium is only a few level kilometres away, along a canal path.
Berlin: ride the wall
Hardly any of the Berlin Wall survived the Fall of the Iron Curtain after 1989 (although parts remain at Mühlenstrasse), but a super, often rural bike route now takes you around its entire former course – 100 miles of it – mostly on smooth tarmac.
Much of the route is tranquil, meandering through forests along the old service road; it feels like a rail trail, but with Z-bends where the old border arbitrarily accommodated East or West.
At Potsdam, it wiggles picturesquely round lakes, with more waterside trundling at Spandau.
Memorials to those shot trying to escape are sobering (and don’t miss central Berlin’s wall museum).
Doing the route over multiple days is easy, thanks to bikes being allowed on Berlin’s suburban trains. You can ride Tempelhof’s old airport runways too.
- Route: Berlin Wall Trail
Friedrichshafen–Bregenz–Rorschach: 170 miles through three countries
Fabulous waterside bike paths in German-speaking countries abound. But the circuit of Lake Constance (aka Bodensee), where Germany, Austria and Switzerland meet, is hard to beat.
The felicitous combination of mountain scenery right next to smooth, flat surfaces along the shore – as well as the vineyards, villages, classy towns, kids’ play areas, parks and swimming spots, ranging over three countries – make this an attractive showcase of Deutschsprachige Europe.
Even reluctant or inexperienced cyclists might be persuaded to join you; 11-year-olds regularly make this trip, alongside octogenarians.
The 170-mile path, all tarmac or sometimes good gravel, purrs along mostly in Germany, a quarter in Switzerland (where the signposting is impeccable) and a bit in Austria (where it isn’t). The network of cycle-friendly boats and trains enable flexibility with the ride, and rental of all types of bike is easy.
Getting your bike there
It’s far trickier than it should be. Taking a bike on a plane means half-dismantling and bagging or boxing it (and paying a hefty supplement).
Eurostar takes regular bikes, but space is limited and they make it cumbersome and expensive.
Le Shuttle takes you and bikes via the Channel Tunnel once a day, but you have to book two weeks in advance. No conventional scheduled coaches (Flixbus, etc) take bikes across the Channel.
However, European Bike Express runs a very bike-friendly but limited-schedule coach service to various bits of France and other countries.
Ferries let foot passengers take a bike: Dover–Calais and Dover–Dunkirk are cheap, regular and flexible (you can use the ferry before or after at no extra charge).
Pricier ferries include Hull–Rotterdam and Portsmouth–Santander.
