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Auntie Helen

Recumbent tricycling in England and Germany

Posted in Trikes & Velomobiles

Fitting a Schlumpf Mountain Drive into a Milan Velomobile

The first part of this Blog post was also published in the following post: Six Wheels In Germany – October 2016 but I have added more information below.

When I test-rode Millie the Milan Velomobile she had the following gearing:

2 fach Ritzel vorne (2 chainrings front) 64/38

9 fach Ritzel hinten (9 sprockets rear) 13/14/15/16/18/21/25/27/30

This 64-tooth chainring at the front meant that she had lovely high top gears but her lowest gear was rather high to start off on a slope or indeed to climb a hill. Ludwig the seller seemed to have no problem with it but I was concerned for my knees. There was a second smaller chainring at the front but he said he used that only for emergency hill climbing.

Ludwig suggested that he changed the front chainrings for me to a 53 and 43 so that I had more lower gears that worked better for me overall. He said I would be able to pedal up to 50 km/h no problems. So we went ahead with the swap and then I took possession of Millie.

It became clear to me fairly quickly that my low cadence means that I can’t really pedal over 40km/h without wobbling all over the place. My legs just don’t go that fast, and after 100,000km in recumbent trikes and velomobiles in 9 years it isn’t likely to change. I am comfortable in high gears, cruising with medium power. My knees generally are OK with this plan.

I could of course have changed the front chainring for a larger one but then I would have the same problem with starting in low gears. I had already discovered that my weak arm made it extremely difficult to use the grip shift for the front chainring shifter; changing down to the small ring was OK but changing back up again almost impossible. Ludwig suggested I got someone to fit a trigger shifter or bar-end shifter (although that would mean my indicator button would have to move) but I wasn’t sure.

I had been thinking for a little while about a Schlumpf Mountain Drive and decided to do a bit of research on this.

A Schlumpf Drive is a two-speed planetary gear assembly for use on bicycles. It is distinct from other bicycle planetary gear assemblies in that it is located behind the chainring rather than in the rear hub. A push-button on each side of the axle allows the rider to switch between high and low ratios. These are operated by the rider’s heel.

Schlumpf Drives are primarily used as an alternative to multiple chainrings. Four models are currently produced, with differing ratios from pedal revolutions to chainwheel revolutions.

Speed Drive, this allows a 65% increase in the final drive (ratio 1.65).

High Speed Drive, this allows a 150% increase in the final drive (ratio 2.5).

Mountain Drive, this allows a 60% reduction in the final drive (ratio 0.4).

Reha Drive, this also allows a 60% reduction in the final drive (ratio 0.4). However, it is specifically designed for hand-cranked disability vehicles and requires less pressure for shifting.

Schlumpf drives are currently used in some Pashley[3] and Moulton bicycles.

Schlumpf products were initially designed and manufactured in Switzerland. They are now manufactured in Germany by Haberstock Mobility.

It is effectively like switching chainrings at the front to a very small chainring but doesn’t need any cabling.

The Speed Drive and High Speed Drive have their normal mode in low gears and then you can click up to a higher gear but that is using the innards of the drive so a bit lossy. The Mountain Drive is the other way round, the ‘neutral’ gears with direct drive are the high gears but you can knock it down by 2.5x for lower gears if you need them. This sounded very suitable for me!

My local recumbent shop is Liegeradbau Schumacher in Willich. I had visited them several years before and found them to be knowledgeable and with a large amount of stock. I decided to give them a ring and find out if they fitted the Schlumpf – yes they did, so I said I would pop round the next day and have a chat.

I did pop round and we talked about it. It sounded like a great option – until I heard the price. These things are expensive! Especially as I would need shorter cranks (not much room in the nose of Millie) and the larger chainring. The price was just too high for me to justify for some emergency low gears.

We talked a bit more about anything else I might be able to do (new shifters for my existing gear) and then the chap talking to me had a bit of an idea and went to talk to a colleague. It turned out they had a second hand Mountain Drive in stock and they made me a price offer for that, the cranks and chainring and fitting, which was very good and I decided to take them up on it.

They ordered the chainring and pedals and a couple of weeks later we had an appointment for them to do the fitting, hopefully while I waited.

I arrived and met Mr Schumacher (senior) for the first time. We ended up having a lovely time chatting together – the trike world is small and the velomobile world smaller and we had several acquaintances in common. He’s been in the world of recumbents for 30 years so has a vast amount of experience. It was really interesting talking to him.

First of all they showed me my new chainring – a real pizza plate!

Apparently when it had arrived Mr Schumacher assumed it was for some super-fit young man, and was clearly a bit surprised to see a middle-aged overweight woman who needed it! But the velomobile’s speed makes all the difference.

Christian Schumacher, his son, would do the fitting and the first plan was to get Millie onto a fork lift so that he could work through the foot hole.

Mr Schumacher Senior and I held Millie steady whilst Christian removed the bottom bracket from the boom. Here it is coming out – and was surprisingly heavy. The Schlumpf Mountain Drive with pedals and chainring actually weighed less.

Millie was lowered back down to the floor whilst Christian fitted the mountain drive to the bottom bracket, which involved some work on the aluminium holder. You can see the bits of metalwork that hold the boom in place on the floor in front of Millie’s nose.

And the view inside – a boom leading to… nothing!

Now Christian spent some time removing the old pedals and bottom bracket and fitting the Schlumpf, which involves some metalwork I believe.

They let me see and test it when he had finished, turning the pedals with one finger and then pressing the button and seeing the speed change.

Christian cleaned up my pedals and fitted them to the cranks, then we were ready to fit the new part into Millie.

Here we all are working on Millie – Christian drew the short straw and had to lie on his back with 28kg of carbon fibre balancing inches from his nose!

And here it is fitted!

We removed the cabling for the front gear changer – another minor weight saving (20 grammes?) – which you could see in the photo above.

Then it was time for a short test ride…

Generally it was great, except my toe was now rubbing against the side of Millie. I had occasionally had this before when really pushing hard but it happened the whole time. It seems that the Mountain Drive pedal area (Q-factor) is wider than the previous chainrings arrangement (Theo at Velomobiel.nl had talked to me on the phone about Mountain Drives and said I needed to have the narrow one; I had asked Schumacher if that was what they had and they said yes, but I do slightly wonder now). Anyway, Christian came to the rescue again with a very simple solution – moving the cleats on my cycling shoes so my feet were more inward.

The second test ride and it was fine, only very occasional brushing of my shoe on Millie’s side, certainly to an acceptable level.

The fitting had taken three hours which was longer than expected but they had clearly done an excellent job and it was interesting to see everything in action. I rode home, very quickly getting used to the new drive and finding the gear changing buttons very simple to operate.

I am enjoying riding with the Mountain Drive.

I am definitely benefitting from the larger chainring. I find it more comfortable to ride at speed. I am able to pull away in first gear most of the time without problems, unless it’s on a slight uphill, at which point I use the Mountain Drive to step down from what is a 4.6 metre gear to a 1.5 metre (that means I travel 4.6 metres along the ground per pedal revolution). Also on some steeper hills I switch into Mountain Drive mode.

As was mentioned by many commentators, the Mountain Drive does give a spongy feel when using the stepped down gears. It is noticeable but as I am only riding in this gear arrangement for a short time it is no problem. Also because of the wide range in gearing it’s quite a big jump back into the higher gears but, again, because you know it’s coming you can adjust accordingly. I like the simplicity of the system and find it easy to do with my heels, even wearing cleats.

With regard to the cleat position, after Christian had adjusted one shoe I obviously had to adjust the other. I then thought about moving the cleats even further and tried that – and found I had unusual foot pain. I suppose after 100,000km with my cleats always on one position the ball of my foot didn’t like the change! So I moved the cleats back to a middle position where my foot only brushes the side of the velomobile when really pushing but the cleats are comfortable.

That spongy feeling…

The above was published on my blog in October and I note that two paragraphs previously I mentioned the gearing feeling a bit spongy – when you first push on the pedals there is a bit of give before you start making progress. I had read about this so expected it, but it seemed to be getting a bit worse over time, as if the rear wheel was slipping. Never mind.

Then in November I did a long ride to Xanten which involved the Mountain Range (small moraine) known as the Sonsbecker Schweiz and as I was trundling my way up there the Mountain Drive was slipping more and more. I had it in the lowest gear but my pedalling was very ineffective – it was as if the back wheel was slipping. Perhaps it was? So I did an experiment and put the parking brake on and tried to pedal. It worked – the pedals went round but the chain didn’t move. Uh oh, something is wrong with the Mountain Drive.

In the short term I had to get up the hill so I switched the Mountain Drive back to its ‘normal’ setting where it’s giving me the high gears and not doing any gearing gadgetry and it worked OK, except that climbing a hill in my lowest gear of the high gears is definitely not fun – it works out at 4.48 metres of travel per revolution. That’s lots! (In my highest gear I get 10.34 metres per pedal revolution, and in my lowest gear with the Mountain Drive active it is 1.79m and in the highest gear but with the Schlumpf 4.14m, so less than the lowest gear without the Schlumpf). In old money my lowest gear without Schlumpf is 56 gear inches, with Schlumpf is 22, highest gear is 129 gear inches and with Schlumpf is 52 gear inches.

In short, riding up a long hill from a stationary start with the lowest gear as 4.48 metres/56 gear inches causes knee pain so I had to be very careful and for the rest of the ride and struggled on a few smaller hills.

I contacted Liegeradbau Schumacher and also asked for some advice from people on the Velomobilforum and it became clear that it was a problem of the Tretlagergehäuse as it is called in German – the bottom bracket in English (I think). This is the tube through which the pedals go. It looks a little bit like this:

The Schlumpf has to be tightened so that a small metal ring with teeth bites into the metal and stops the whole thing rotating under the power of my legs pushing.

Schlumpf cone rings

Unfortunately the Tretlagergehäuse in the Milan is thinner than that of normal bikes (weight saving I guess) and it was deforming when they tried to tighten it up to the suggested 160 Newtons so only managed 120 Newtons. It seems my ladylike thighs are able overpower this – and once it had started spinning within the tube it quickly stripped the teeth from this metal thingy.

Some people on the Velomobile Forum pointed out instantly my problem – I had the ‘wrong’ Mountain Drive. When using a Schlumpf with a Velomobile you need the version with a torque lever that prevents it from twisting.

The Schlumpf website explains:

Mountain-drive – installation with torque lever (anti-twisting bracket)

There is a very simple way to hold a mountain-drive against the reaction torque. The housing with integrated anti-twisting bracket doesn’t need any modification of the frame at all. The clamp is connected to the rear chainstay. That’s it! No chamfering, not even a high tightening torque is required.

I reported back to Schumacher and they said they were considering their options.

The next day they made their suggestion – that they ordered a new Tretlagergehäuse from the Netherlands to replace the one I have on Millie with a thicker one that can take the Schlumpf. So I agreed to this and they ordered it – from Gerrit Tempelman no less! [Edit – from the comments below I see that Allert Jacobs from Velomobiel.nl made the Tretlagergehäuse, not Tempelman, and it was a special one-off).

How to remove an old Schlumpf when it doesn’t want to be removed

What I had not considered, of course, is that the old Schlumpf would be a right pain to get out.

I had a call from Liegeradbau Schumacher after a couple of weeks (during which I had taken my hill-avoidance route planning to new heights of expertise) to say the new Tretlagergehäuse was ready and we scheduled a time for me to visit to have it changed.

So on a Thursday after work I rode to Liegeradbau. The route there isn’t very nice really, on a quite busy road so I rode on the cycle path – a mistake as I later discovered.

Anyway, as I arrived I was given a biscuit!

and was introduced to my new Tretlagergehäuse.

Very shiny and much, much thicker than the existing one. The tube through which the pedal bracket goes was at least 2.5mm thick instead of the 1.5mm (estimated) thickness of the current one.

Mr Schumacher Senior was still rather surprised I was strong enough to strip the teeth from the cone rings – it just goes to show what Frauenpower can achieve!

Millie was put up on the fork lift and Christian was able to remove the Tretlagergehäuse in just a few minutes.

We went into the workshop and they fixed it all to a bit of square pipe they had hanging around, then used the tool to remove the pedals and attempted to undo the lock ring on one side of the Mountain Drive so it can slide out of the bottom bracket.

Oh dear. The lock ring just spun round. Which of course made sense as that was the problem with the Schlumpf.

First of all they tried to clamp the aluminium of the Tretlagergehäuse with some band thing to do with a car. But that didn’t work.

Then Mr Schumacher said “Plan B” – which was a giant wrench with jaws to hold the Tretlagergehäuse in place so that the Schlumpf within didn’t rotate.

“What is plan C?” I asked. “Is it to kill the customer?” He laughed…

Anyway, plan B using the gripper/wrench thingie was also unsuccessful. They found larger jaws and extended the handles with bits of pipe to get better purchase but still no success, the Schlumpf continued to rotate within the tube as they tried to unscrew the lock ring.

The original plan was that I would be able to keep the old Tretlagergehäuse in case I ever put the old chainrings back on but it was now very marked by the teeth of the grippers. There were a few scratches on the Schlumpf chainring holder too.

I tentatively asked if we were now onto Plan C, kill the customer, but Mr Schumacher said it was Plan B part 2 – to cut away at a bit of the Tretlagergehäuse to hopefully allow the Schlumpf to be gripped more strongly.

Christian got out his circular saw and ear defenders and we retreated to a safe distance.

Stage 1 was cutting a ring around the Tretlagergehäuse.

A bit more cutting was needed…

Then he was able to remove some pieces of the aluminium. Here is the view from both sides.

However, this did not solve the problem. The pesky lock ring (next to where they have cut away the metal) still could not be loosened, the entire item inside rotated.

The Tretlagergehäuse was clearly ruined so I suggested Plan B part 3 (in preference to Plan C), cutting away the entire Tretlagergehäuse. This was clearly the only option. So Christian got his circular saw out again.

First section… You can see the marks of the toothed grippers on the part of the Gehäuse that butts against the black disc of the Schlumpf where the chainring is fitted.

And from the other side. You can see how thin the aluminium is – about 1.5mm we thought.

And finally – Schlumpf is removed.

The cone ring from within was interesting – its teeth had be worn away so it was almost smooth. It was clear why it was not able to withstand the torque from my pedalling.

Here is the old Gehäuse next to the new one.

Fitting the Schlumpf to the new Tretlagergehäuse was the work of 5 minutes, and they managed to tighten it to more than 160 Newtons – this one would not be rotating!

Christian fitted it back into Millie fairly quickly and we were ready for a test ride. Except I had a quick look at her tail – flat rear tyre! Fortunately it was in a warm place with an air compressor to pump up the tyre so the rear wheel extraction and tyre change didn’t take long at all (I am getting better at it!) The old tyre had some very bad sidewall damage so was retired there and then. I have since fitted a Schwalbe Marathon on the back – it’s wider and slower but at least has some puncture protection. That’s two rear punctures I’ve had in 2000km, fortunately both times under cover with suitable tools and track pumps. I wouldn’t like to have to change a rear tyre in the dark, rain and cold.

After the new tyre was fitted I did a short test ride and thought initially that it was still not right, but it turns out this is just the normal sponginess of the Schlumpf, plus a lot of slack in the chainline getting taken up when I put a lot of torque through.

I rode off home again with the old Tretlagergehäuse as a bit of modern art, periodically testing the Schlumpf and all seemed well. I have since ridden 300km with it including a significant hill and all is working well. I do notice the sponginess when using the Mountain Drive gearing, but when in the higher gears it is as if nothing was there. The gear change is easy with my heel and it’s great to have this emergency step-down gear.

I am also very happy with Liegeradbau Schumacher’s help with this. It is unfortunate that it was the wrong type of Mountain Drive but none of us knew that and the problem was solved. It took a lot of time for Schumacher (probably they worked on Millie for 6 hours in total) but they were always friendly and helpful. They said I should pop in whenever I’m passing, but preferably not if Millie has a problem…

Riding with the Schlumpf

For Velomobiles I think the Schlumpf Mountain Drive is an excellent option. It allows the rider to have a large chainring which is useful for the high speeds a Velomobile can attain. It’s lightweight and doesn’t add much drag at all to the pedalling (someone said 1-2 watts). No cabling is a bonus as working in the nose of the Velomobile is no fun at all. Being able to change gear when stationery is really useful, and having such a wide range of gears is extremely helpful.

A couple of other friends with Velomobiles are considering the Mountain Drive. I think more would take it up if it wasn’t such an expensive option (it costs at least 600 Euros, with new chainrings and pedals and fitting this amount can get close to 1000 Euros very quickly), but I think for me and my special requirements it was worth it (although I paid about half of that amount because it was second hand). It’s something I can recommend, with the few disadvantages in mind (hard to fit yourself without the right tools, wider than the normal pedals it replaced which means my feet are closer to the sides of the Velomobile, has to have oil injected in once per year which will involve grovelling on the floor under the Velomobile, and the mega faff if like me you fit the wrong one) but these are small in comparison to the advantage of convenient gearing without cables.

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Six Wheels In Germany – November 2016 (Month 32)

A short report for this month (phew, you say!!)

Cycling this month

Cycling Statistics this month

November was not such a good month for cycling for me. This is mostly due to the weather – it was very rainy for several days, and very cold for a couple of weeks, and with my job it means I have to make an effort to ride straight after work if I want to cycle in daylight. Which I sometimes manage, but not always.

Anyway, my total distance for November was 726km so half of what I managed the previous month.

And here is where I rode to:

Metric Century a Month Challenge

After last month’s statement from me that this challenge was really rather easy now, I found I had to eat my words almost straight away as the ride for this month was tricky.

Klaus was able to ride with me so we planned to go to Xanten and see where we fancied going after that. We met in Kempen where there was an ADFC Light Check stand so we put in an appearance there for an hour and talked to the police and the local bike shop chappie with our velomobiles proving a bit of a draw. But it was cold just standing around so we were pleased to get back into the Velomobiles and ride. We set off for Xanten following a route that Klaus had prepared which took us up a bit of a hill on the approach to Xanten. And it was at this point that I discovered I had a bit of an issue with my Schlumpf gearing in my bottom bracket. It seemed to be slipping!

As I was pedalling only a small amount of the pedal stroke transferred to the wheel, the rest of the time it just slipped. So I had to very quickly go down the gears to first gear which was very slippy and when I reached a slightly steeper bit of slope I was pedalling but getting no forward motion. Oh no!!

I changed the Schlumpf up into the high gear (no reduction gear) and it worked OK but my lowest gear in this configuration is very high – I think about 3.8 metres per pedal stroke – so my knees were really complaining. I got to the top of this long slope and said to Klaus that I needed to avoid hills after this until I could work out what was wrong with the Schlumpf.

I very much enjoyed my restorative slice of cake in Xanten and of course my cup of tea. The Christmas Market was taking place in the large square in front of the café so there were people everywhere and the two velomobiles make a very interesting picture too, but I had to bang on the window when one man decided to open up Millie’s flap and look inside. People can look, but not touch!

After the cake and tea it was time to carry on and we decided to ride towards Kalkar along a former railway line to Marienbaum which is now a cycle path. It was suitable for Velomobiles too so we pootled along – pootling because my knee was complaining and I needed to rest it a bit and also let it warm up slowly. It was a cold day for cycling and I still had summer-weight cycling trousers on (normally OK in velomobiles).

We reached Kalkar and decided to carry on to Goch. On our way to Goch we went through what turned out to be a very large village called Pfalzdorf. Klaus comes from the Kurpfalz area of Germany and it turns out that some people from the Kurpfalz region had wanted to emigrate to America but had only got as far as the Dutch border and been turned back, so they settled near Goch in Pfalzdorf. Apparently they still speak the Mannheim dialect there too, although we didn’t see anyone to speak to – just experienced an unexpected hill which was No. Fun. At. All in my high gears.

We rode through Goch where I had hoped to stop for cake but Klaus had to be home so we carried on, but unfortunately I was running out of energy so in the end suggested he rode directly home and I would stop for some food in Straelen. I arrived at Café Krone which I like very much, waved goodbye to Klaus and had this very tasty pumpkin soup in a Kilner jar.

It gave me more energy back and I rode home much more quickly, arriving home with 126km on the clock. Klaus ended up with 142km.

I have spoken to Liegeradbau Schumacher about the Schlumpf and it seems that the boom end on the Milan is of rather thin metal so that they couldn’t tighten the Schlumpf enough and it rotates inside the bottom bracket because of the very high power when in the low gears. They have ordered a new, normal-thickness bottom bracket shell from Tempelman in the Netherlands and will fit it to Millie when it arrives. In the meantime I am riding just with my high gears and doing even more hill-avoidance than normal!

Bike maintenance

The Milan is a pain in the neck if it gets a rear wheel puncture as you have to take out the back wheel to fix it (unlike most Velomobiles). I had practised this when I first got Millie but discovered one day when I was getting Penelope out of the shed that Millie had a puncture. At least this meant I could fix it at a time of my choosing.

Anyway, I did a reasonable job which took just 45 minutes but the tyre had a bad cut so I decided I would buy a new one. I also decided to change to AV tubes (Auto ventil, car valve) rather than the Französische (Presta) valves which I find a bit awkward. So I ordered some tyres and tubes, including a wider Marathon tyre for the rear wheel for winter. It will be slower but much more puncture resistant. A puncture in the dark and the rain is no fun at all!

Klaus had reported that he had a puncture on one of his solo rides and had an AV tube which didn’t fit through his wheel rim. This caused a brief panic for me as I had just bought 4 new AV tubes but I tested one in the front wheel of Millie (without completely removing the old tube – no need for extra effort!) and it worked fine.

I have ridden Millie to work a couple of times recently – she looks amusing in the car park. She is longer than the Smart Car I parked beside!

Starting work at 8am means I cycled through some wonderful sunrises in November.

Velomobiletreff

Rolf once again organised his Velomobile Meet in Schwalmtal, although this time it ended up with just Jochen and I visiting due to illness or busyness from the other velomobile riders.

Here are Millie and Endeavour side by side.

And here is the very tasty soup Rolf made for us, most welcome on such a chilly day!

Non-cycling events!

Messiah Concert

As in the previous two years, I have spent the entire year practising with the Willicher Musikprojekt for a big concert in November. The first year was Beethoven’s Messe in C, last year was Elias by Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and this year was the Messiah by Handel (but in German).

In the previous years we have had just one concert but this year two were planned, one in Krefeld and one in Anrath (where we normally have the concerts). The Krefeld church is a very large Evangelisch church which seats 1000 people and in which the group had not previously sung.

Here was our final dress rehearsal…

We had to work out where we would all sit as to get 100 singers on the staging is challenging!

The rehearsal was on a Friday night and the concert on the Sunday evening. Here is a selfie taken just before…

There were a lot of people out there in the audience!

The concert went well although we noticed a few mistakes and I am not sure how good the acoustics were for those in the audience at the back. But it was lovely to sing after all our hard work together.

The second concert was the following Friday in Anrath, which has excellent acoustics.

As we had already sung the whole thing through once five days before we did a better job with this one I felt, although the audiences seemed very happy with both concerts. I really enjoyed singing it and look forward to starting our new project in January, Paulus by Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

Miscellaneous

Other events this month included the Fahrrad Stammtisch, an ADFC ride where I just met them for lunch, I continued providing Nachhilfe (tutoring) in English to a lad in St Hubert, and I attended three dog training sessions with Poppy. This is because Gudula wants to get Poppy registered as an official Visiting Dog so she can visit old people’s homes or homes for disabled people. This involves first of all a four week course at a dog training centre 10km away but Gudula could only make two of the four sessions as she and Frank were on holiday, so I agreed to go to the other two.

It was interesting to see the dogs and what they do – but I had lots of problems hearing in the large, barn-like hall. It was also very cold! I think all the other dogs had done their initial dog training there so knew specific things that they had to do whereas some of it was entirely new to Poppy but she seemed to really enjoy it and clearly has the temperament for a visiting dog, although she needs to have some more training.

For the last session I went with Gudula as we had to decide what to do in the long term. Rather shockingly, Poppy will need another six months training before she can do the exam (yes, they have an exam!) and I am not 100% sure if we want to do it as Gudula has to work shifts so may not be able to make all the sessions and it isn’t something I particularly want to do at the moment. Plus it’s expensive (500 Euro in total). But we are still considering.

With the change in weather from warm to very cold, and of course the clocks changing at the end of last month, winter is most decidedly on its way.

Decorating houses for Christmas seems to start rather early in Germany. Some people seemed to have already put up lights and baubles etc in mid-November. For me, the first day of Advent is maybe a bit early…

Anyway, one day I came into work and discovered a Christmas decoration on my desk.

I have now been in my job for four months and am getting the hang of it. I speak about 50% German and 50% English, and some of my colleagues now speak to me in English to practise it. I also work closely with a chap from Denmark who speaks Danish, English and German, but my main contact is with a Russian customer so the mutual language is English. It’s very interesting to be dealing with people from many countries although that also has its challenges!

Cakes this month

And here are the cakes that I, or my companions, have eaten this month. Yummy!

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Six Wheels In Germany – October 2016 (Month 31)

October was a mixture of warm, sunny weather and definite autumnal/winter days.

However, this month’s blog is decidedly not a mixture… it is almost entirely bicycle-related (with just my cake collage at the end) so if velomobiles and trikes aren’t your thing I suggest you give it a miss this month.

What can I learn from this? Perhaps I need to diversify in my interests a bit! However November’s blog should contain a bit more variety as the choir I sing in will be performing the Messiah in Anrath and Krefeld.

Cycling this month

Cycling statistics this month

Another good month in terms of distance, just a touch shy of 1500km, but that is due to the speed increase with the Milan. I am probably riding the same amount of time per month, just getting there more quickly!

And here is the ‘wheel’ to show where I have ridden this month. It also shows I managed four metric centuries, and indeed one ride over 200km.

Metric Century per month challenge

Since the advent of Millie the Milan GT Carbon velomobile, distances have been rather easier to come by! When the average speed increases from 22km/h to 30km/h, that means in a four hour ride you can do 120km instead of under 90km. It also means that a 100km ride is only an investment of just over three hours’ riding time.

Anyway, the challenge to cycle 100km at least once per month continues.

For October’s I started rather well.

On the 2nd October I did a 62km cycle ride but decided as the next day was a bank holiday and I had nothing planned I would try for a longer ride.

I decided to have another go at my ride to Kleve and Nijmegen that I did in Penelope a few months back, this time avoiding the two mountains I had to haul myself over. This involved a detour of about 12km but it was definitely worth it to avoid those mega hills.

Klaus was able to ride with me for a short while in the morning so he came to meet me at my house and we headed straight off north on our regular Sunday morning ride into Kreis Kleve.

We set off at a medium pace as my legs weren’t feeling brilliant and it was also a bit chilly and rainy but soon got into the groove and were approaching Geldern. Klaus asked if I wanted to stop here; I had planned to ride a bit further than 18km before my first stop but he didn’t really have time to ride further so I agreed we would stop in Geldern in the café we often visit in the market square.

We parked our velomobiles… of course they caused quite a stir.

AFter some tasty cake I headed off northwards and Klaus went for a detour on his way home via Neukirchen Vluyn.

The cake had given my legs a bit more energy and I enjoyed my speedy ride northwards towards Uedem. However, just before I reached Uedem there was a ‘Road Closed’ sign. Never mind, I thought, as the cycle route was still free – I would ride on the road until the proper closure and then hop on the cycle path.

This worked OK except the cycle path was horribly bumpy when I got onto it and the Milan has much harder suspension than the Versatile. I was zooming along when I saw something ahead and slammed on the brakes. A good thing too, as I was faced with a sudden cessation of Radweg…

Because Millie is so low I couldn’t ride up this bump so had to get out.

Getting in and out is a faff so this was annoying. I then had to push Millie along the road until I could find proper tarmac again. It was a short walk of about 100 metres but annoying nonetheless. When you see road closures in Germany it is not usually clear whether the cycle path is also closed.

However, once I had negotiated this obstacle I continued on, glad to have walked about a bit to warm up my toes.

I had made three different tracks for the day, one which was 178km and went to Nijmegen but two shorter ones which turned back sooner if I wasn’t feeling so energetic. I wasn’t sure which I would do, and in fact was still deciding as I reached Bedburg-Hau where one of my tracks headed west to NL. But in the end I decided to continue on to Kleve.

I didn’t actually go into Kleve this time (that’s one of the evil hills) but instead skirted around to the east, getting nearer to the Rhine. I then followed part of the Rhein flood plain towards Nijmegen (very close to Millingen aan de Rijn) which involved small country lanes which were often quite mucky with tractor mud.

At one point I felt a regular bump-bump-bump in one wheel and thought “oh no! A front puncture!” So I stopped and got out – but both front wheels (and also the back) were fully inflated. I guess it was a bit of mud but it was another chance to move my feet around and drink some water. I was wearing some brand new shoes I had bought from Rose and had done them up a bit tight to start with so my left ankle was complaining; having loosened them off things were improving but I did think such a long ride with new shoes was perhaps a little unwise. But the challenge of the open road and fast Velomobile overcomes such sensible thoughts!

After a five minute break I carried on, and started to recognise the bit of dike I was cycling on… I had been on this route on the trike tour at the beginning of August.

Very soon I was passing the boat where we had spent the night in Nijmegen and riding along the waterfront looking for somewhere to eat some lunch. I found a lot of cafés and parked outside.

This was a tasty burger but I was only able to eat half of it – this can be a problem when riding long distances, your stomach doesn’t really want to have to do too much!

After more water (the day had got warmer and cycling at speed means the wind whips away a lot of moisture) it was time to carry on.

My previous route from Nijmegen involved a ferry crossing at Cuijk and then down the west side of the Maas to Arcen. As I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to ride Millie onto these ferries (very steep!) I decided to stick to the east bank of the Maas and ride via Gennep.

What I didn’t know, and neither did my route planning software, was that the nice fast road around Gennep is not allowed for bicycles, so I had to do some on-the-hoof rerouting and ended up riding through the middle of the town. This was of course slower but more interesting.

The roads weren’t as quiet as the roads the other side of the Maas so I expect I won’t do this sector again, although once I was a fair way south of Gennep it improved a lot.

I had a waypoint on my Garmin counting down to Bergen which is somewhere I seem to regularly cycle through and feels like it is quite close to home (although it is 45km away), and soon enough I arrived… except the road was blocked with a circus. Of course there wasn’t room to turn around in the velomobile so I had to get out again… very irritating. The circus people were chatting to me in a mixture of Dutch, German and English, asking about Millie.

Once I had turned round I rode off again, arriving in Bergen a few minutes later after the small detour and going to the bakery for some nice rice cake and a cuppa.

I was feeling pretty good still and wondered about going for a double century. Another 22km over my plan would be eminently doable. So I headed off, feeling that I still had plenty of energy, back on roads I know very well which are fast and have almost no traffic. Although there was in fact more than I was expecting as this was not a public holiday in the Netherlands.

Anyway, I zoomed back to Arcen, to Straelen and then decided to do a detour up to Geldern to get my extra kilometres. Once in Geldern I realised I needed a few more… and knowing that Klaus had been to Neukirken Vluyn today I decided to also go there. So I did, via Kamp Lintfort.

My plan was to avoid the annoying hill by the spoil heap at Eyller Berg but of course I miscalculated my route and ended up riding up there. Oh well, it’s much less hard work in a Milan than a Versatile. Coming down the other side was nice!

The 200km was in sight, but I then thought about my longest ever ride. 201km, back from Dronten. Yes, I could beat that… but what was the next challenge after that? What was Klaus’s longest ride? Fortunately with the marvels of Strava I could see that his longest ride was 213km. Hmmmmmm, only another 12km after my personal record….

So I continued stretching out my route, doing a detour around Siebenhäuser (a lovely bit of road!), then going past St Hubert and heading south to Kempen. I decided I didn’t fancy the mountain over the railway bridge on the way to St Tönis so turned off just before that which involved a rather bumpy road and also a brief moment of sheltering under a tree because of unexpected hail! It was at this point that I had a message from Klaus who realised I was not yet home and therefore must be extending my ride (I had sent him a message when I was near Straelen). “Are you going for the 200km?” he asked. Oh no, old bean, I am going for your record!! (I didn’t actually send this).

I rode back through the outskirts of Kempen, watching the kilometres tick over on my Garmin. Because sometimes there are discrepancies between the Garmin track and what Strava gives me I knew I had to do a bit extra – it would be gutting to be 100 metres short! So when I finally rolled up outside my house I had done 215.1 kilometres. Moving time was 8 hours 4 minutes so the average speed was 26.7 km/h. Not bad at all!

Klaus soon saw on Strava that I had exceeded his longest ride so undoubtedly he will be overtaking me again soon. But a bit of a challenge is good for us, it encourages longer rides and exploring new places. But it is a great feeling to have done such a long ride, and such a huge contrast to the 201km I did in Penelope which nearly finished me off (and took 11 hours 43 minutes).

The route apart from the Gennep bit was good so I will try it again sometime, probably in the Spring/Summer, as now the nights are drawing in the long rides aren’t quite as appealing. But I am pleased with myself, with how well Millie rolled, and that I burned enough calories for both slices of cake (officially I burned 4,212 calories, average heart rate 147, maximum 185).

7 Schlösser und eine Burg

or, in English, 7 castles and a castle.

A week after my 215km ride it was time for another longer ride and this time Klaus had a bit of a brainwave that we could visit Düsseldorf and take in some castles on the way.

We ended up passing 7 castles and I also passed the castle in Kempen. I was talking today to friend Babs about the difference in meaning between Schloss and Burg but we couldn’t really work out the specific variation except that Burg is more of a stronghold/fortress and Schloss, although also a castle, is also a bit like a palace or a giant country house. Maybe.

Anyway, the ride took in the following castles: Schloss Neersen; Schloss Myllendonk; Schloss Rheydt; Schloss Dyck; Schloss Hülchrath; Schloss Benrath; Schloss Mickeln; Burg Kempen.

And here was my route:

It was a fairly chilly day and I set off with buffs and hat on. The plan was to meet Klaus somewhere near Neersen and we ended up meeting in Anrath. I was a bit slower than I had expected to get there as it was cold and I tend to be slower in the morning.

From Anrath we headed south towards Mönchengladbach, passing Schloss Neersen of course, and also fairly quickly Schloss Myllendonk. Shortly after Mönchengladbach we passed Schloss Rheydt where I have occasionally partaken of a pizza!

As we headed towards Schloss Dyck we had a brief section riding straight towards Garzweiler, one of the huge holes in the ground where Brown coal is extracted. Klaus was whizzing far ahead here, as you can see from the photo – with the chimneys spouting smoke from the power stations that feed on the coal.

We arrived at Schloss Dyck and stopped briefly. I said to Klaus I was feeling a bit pooped – I decided I was rather hungry (hadn’t had much breakfast). He said he thought about riding to Schloss Benrath – perhaps we could eat there. We weren’t sure how far away it was, perhaps an hour, so I thought it would be OK to carry on.

Klaus had sent me the track but it arrived after I had switched off my computer so I didn’t have a chance to load it on my Garmin and was just following him without really knowing where we were going, but it was a great and varied route, passing through towns I had never even heard of.

Klaus is good at route planning but no ride is complete without a spot of off-road!

I was now beginning to feel a bit rubbish, definitely low on food. My heart rate was also very low which is unusual for me. I kept a beady eye out for bakeries but saw nothing. There was a café next to Schloss Hülchrath but they were closed for a holiday.

On we went, I was going slower and slower. Memories of the long ride back from Dronten where I just lost all energy! And then hallelujah, in Nievenheim we found a very nice café! They had cakes but no warm food, so a cake and filled roll were just the thing. A hot cup of tea helped to restore some of my energy. It had come just in time as I was definitely heading into what is called the cyclist’s bonk.

I felt lots better after my food and we headed off again, with me feeling that I had much more power. Interestingly my heart rate was now way higher as my body worked to digest the food.

It was a short distance from Nievenheim to Zons, and then it was the Zons ferry. We did this ferry on the SPEZI tour last year with Simon and Joyce; it was good to be in Zons again!

From Zons it was a short ride up past Schloss Benrath and then past Schloss Mickeln to Düsseldorf. I asked Klaus if we could detour to the Medienhafen to photograph Millie in the mirrored building… so we did.

Then it was heading through the Altstadt north and further to a crossing of the Rhein. We took the Helter Skelter Bridge, as I call it, but on the way down the other side there was a steep curb so Klaus pushed me back up the slope a bit – hard work for him! But Millie’s very wide turning circle means it takes forever to turn round in a narrow area.

As we were cycling north along the Deich we saw another velomobile, a cream or white DF, going over a bridge. We wondered if he had seen us (it turned out he hadn’t!)

We rode back through Meerbusch and went our separate ways near St Tönis. I ensured I cycled past Burg Kempen on the way home so I definitely bagged that one too!

It was a very enjoyable ride although my lack of food in the morning had shown me that I do really need to prepare properly for longer rides! 140km for me at an average speed of 24.8 km/h.

Liegeradtreff Düsseldorf und Umland

The Velomobileforum has various groups for local cyclists and I had seen that there was going to be a meeting for the Düsseldorf people and also the Duisburg people in Kaiserswerth. As Kaiserswerth (north of Düsseldorf) isn’t so far away from me, I thought I would go along. It was the day after my 7 Schlösser Tour but I felt energetic enough for another 100km ride.

The plan was to meet in Büttgen where one of the forum members lives, have a cuppa there and then ride together to Kaiserswerth. Sounded good!

The meeting time was 11am which was eminently easy. I told Klaus I was planning to go to that and he said he would like to ride a bit with me in the morning (he had to be back at midday) so we decided to ride together to Uerdingen for cake and then I would go on to Büttgen which is near Kaarst, so the Neuss area (left hand side of the Rhein).

Here is my track for the day:

So Klaus came to my house and we set off together on familiar roads, except were almost immediately caught out by the closure of the B9 road – we wanted to go to Siebenhäuser but the road was closed. There was nothing for it, we had to cycle up the mega hill to Tönisberg.

We got to the top and then took the nice road down that leads to Siebenhäuser but this time we headed to Niep and from there towards Uerdingen. These are roads we have ridden several times and it’s a good route.

Once we got to Uerdingen I assumed we would ride onward but Klaus was happy to stop for cake, although our usual café wasn’t yet open. We found another though and enjoyed some tea and cake.

He said he would ride with me to Kaarst and then go home from there, so after our cake we zoomed off on empty roads and great speeds. I hadn’t realised how fast we were going but for a 10km section our average speed was 33 km/h. This in Millie is fairly easy as long as you don’t have to keep stopping but for Celeste it was harder work – she presents a larger area to the wind and probably has a little more rolling resistance too with her tyres. Klaus was working quite hard to keep up (this is a real role reversal as it’s always previously been the other way round!).

We were making excellent time so he said he would come with me to Büttgen to say hello to the others, it was only a detour of 3km. Unfortunately my planning for this section was sub-optimal and we had a kilometre off road. This provoked a barrage of complaints from my riding partner, but I pointed out we had been off-road yesterday on his track. But apparently that was less off-roady or something.

Anyway, we arrived in Büttgen without punctures or anything falling off the Velomobiles and all our teeth still in place… and after a brief hiatus when I missed the road and couldn’t find where we were supposed to be, followed by me being nearly crashed into by a car who decided to ignore my left-signalling indicator… we arrived. And Celeste met her new cousin the DF belonging to Podbiker (Stefan).

I had cycled with Stefan and his DF before to Kevelaer but that was in Penelope. It will be fun to ride with him when I am in Millie – it won’t be so slow!

As you can see from this photo, there was a real colour scheme going on – Celeste or white-and-red.

More velomobiles arrived, including Düssel (who we often see) in his Mango this time (he also has a WAW) and he had a quick go in Millie. There were also a few trikes. The wife of Norbert had made us some snacks to keep us going.

Klaus had headed off home at this point and it was then that I discovered an ingenious seat raising device a fellow rider used for his Mango…

Not only is his seat the right height, if he has an urgent need for an English word it is at his fingertips!!

After eating the food, drinking tea and coffee and peering at each others’ velomobiles, it was time to head off in our group of 11, following Norbert on his trike. The pace was very relaxed as Norbert has an electric trike due to disability but we certainly provided great entertainment for those we passed. So many weird bikes!

Some of the riders zoomed ahead and then took some photos. Here am I wafting past…

Here we are riding over a motorway bridge

And enjoying the scenery as we head for the Rhine.

Crossing the Rhine bridge.

We arrived in Kaiserswerth and the group from Duisburg were already there.

I saw someone with a white DF – indeed he had been the chap Klaus and I saw yesterday, although he hadn’t seen us.

There were also lots of trikes.

We were providing great entertainment for all the people at Kaiserswerth and lots of people were asking us questions. It looked as though it would take a long time to get served food so Düssel suggested we decamped to a place he knew with a large garden area for the trikes. So we followed him for a few kilometres and reached the café. Their garden was indeed full of bikes!

And we almost all managed to squeeze on one table!

After some tea and cake we decided to head back. I thought I would use the Kaiserswerth Ferry back to my side of the Rhein, although I wasn’t sure how well it would work with the low ground clearance of Millie. In the end it was fine, and a group of four of us in velomobiles made the crossing before heading off in different directions on the other side.

I then rode home alone, ending up with 104km on the clock at an average speed of 22.5 km/h. It was a really enjoyable day and great to meet so many other velomobile riders.

It also meant that this week I ride 641.7 kilometres which is pretty good going! Three rides over 100km and one over 200km. I love riding my velomobile!

A speedy trip to Xanten

One Sunday morning when I had nothing to do I decided to try for a speedy ride and see if I could maintain a reasonable speed for a longer time.

This was the track I rode, going via Geldern on the way (so the western side) and then returning via Alpen and Kamp-Lintfort.

My ride to Xanten was completed with an average speed of 31 km/h so I was very happy with that. I made my way to the nice café in the central market place and had a cake.

Millie was definitely an item of interest for the passers-by.

My route back was initially great, going via the Bisslicher Insel which is a nature reserve. I zoomed along decent asphalted surfaces with very little motor traffic. I then turned away from the Rhine and towards Alpen, having forgotten about the big hill I would have to go over. Not fun but I managed it!

However, the downhill the other side was wonderful! I could only pedal up to 40 km/h (I have a very slow cadence and cannot spin the pedals fast) but Millie keeps on and on and on accelerating, even when you are no longer pedalling. It was a long, straight downhill on a smooth bit of road and saw 61.9 km/h on my Garmin’s speedo. This was great fun!

There was a further hill at Rheurdt but soon I was home, although annoyingly under 100km. However, I checked my emails and saw a message from Hartmut; he was on his way to Wachtendonk, having called in at my house fifteen minutes before to deliver a velomobile bag he had picked up for me from Dronten. So I rang him and we agreed to meet in Wachtendonk. I whizzed over there, found him at the Ice Cream Café and we swapped bags and money, and of course had an ice cream. I returned home and then ended up with 106.73km for the day, at an average speed of 30.6 km/h.

This metric century lark is easy with a fast velomobile!

Fit Durch Den Winter

Last year Hartmut instigated a new bike tour series, ‘Fit Durch Den Winter’ (fit through the winter) which was a 40-45km ride once per month from Kempen. I participated in several of these.

On the last Sunday in October he had scheduled the first of this season’s rides and sent an email to some of us asking for recommendations of where to go. I suggested Straelen and got the response “great, you are the ride leader”.

So at 11am on Sunday morning (having had an extra hour in bed due to the clocks changing) various people gathered in Buttermarkt in Kempen by the fountain. There were lots of people I didn’t recognise, who I think had read about it in the Rad am Niederhein magazine which is widely distributed.

Jochen arrived in Endeavour, sporting some new scratches; the velomobile was caught by the wind when parked at his workplace and blown across the car park into a van! Fortunately the marks weren’t that obvious.

Here is the track for the day.

We eventually set off at about 11:10 after some last-minute faffing.

We rode the route clockwise, heading towards Vinkrath and were met by Uli at Abtei Mariendonk. We continued westwards and I had a couple of messages from Klaus who was riding on his own and had been at Straelen for cake; he decided to try and intercept us on his way back and indeed we saw him whizzing towards us as we headed towards the Blaue Lagune. He and Jochen rode together for a short way before Klaus peeled off for home (he ended up having ridden 104km and had planned to just pop out for a short ride first thing…)

Part of the route had been planned by me without knowing whether I had ever actually ridden the roads. It became clear, when there was an off-road section, that I hadn’t – and this section was not suitable for Velomobiles. Jochen and I agreed to meet the rest of the group at the other side of a road crossing (they were going over a small bridge). We would go the long way round on the main road.

As I was winching myself up a hill with Jochen behind he announced to me that my back tyre looked flat. Oh no. So when I got to the top of the hill I stopped and had a look – it was indeed very spongy although not completely flat.

To fix a puncture in the rear tyre on Millie takes about half an hour so I thought it was best to pump it up and maybe do the repair when we got to Straelen, only about 6km away. So Jochen produced his lightweight track pump and added some air – perhaps not to the 8 bar (120psi) that my tyre needs, but a real improvement.

We rode on and the tyre stayed up. This got me thinking… I had pumped all three tyres up four days before (they were down to 5.5 bar), and perhaps I hadn’t done the valve up properly. I had also noticed over the last two days that the steering felt a bit imprecise at speed, that I had to continually make small corrections. Perhaps this was due to the soft rear tyre? And perhaps this explains why my ride the day before to choir seemed such hard work. Once the tyre was pumped up again then the squirmy steering feel went away.

I made it to Straelen with the tyre still up and we stopped at Café Krone for some food – I had Kaiserschmarrn which is excellent cyclist food.

After we had all enjoyed cake and hot drinks we headed off back again to Kempen, this time via Wachtendonk. My tyre was still inflated which was good, but as we were nearing Wachtendonk there was a loud bang and Frank’s rear tyre definitely wasn’t!

Frank, Hartmut, Jochen and a few others fettled his bike. There was a very impressive tear in the inner tube!

Fortuitously the puncture had occurred near a bench overlooking a field so the rest of us stood around enjoying the warm autumn sunshine.

We carried on and where the track diverts to Kempen Frank and I headed off home and the rest continued on.

The ride was 45.1km for me and with an average speed of 16.6km/h which has rather affected my statistics for Millie!

Later that day several of us met in a restaurant to celebrate Hartmut’s birthday. And at this point we also shared my icing velomobile which had been in my deep freeze since my birthday. This was a velomobile model which was on my birthday cake – I had saved it for when I received my QuattroVelo. Seeing as I now had Millie and would not be having a QuattroVelo, and that everyone who had bought me the cake was at Hartmut’s do, I borrowed a knife from the restaurant and divvied up the mini QuattroVelo.

Here it is in two pieces – we now know it is entirely fondant icing.

We shared it around and there were just these small pieces left… which soon disappeared.

So this was kind of a christening for Millie!

Thanks to Uli, Hartmut, Jochen, Herbert etc for the birthday cake and the Velomobile 🙂

Millie the Milan GT Carbon

As mentioned once or twice already, Millie is fast!

Bear in mind that she has the same engine as Penelope and Alfie, i.e. me. But the speeds are very much quicker. It just goes to prove, it is about the bike!

You can see a small example here from a Strava Segment Comparator. I rode this segment in Penelope and then more recently in Millie. The speed difference is rather noticeable!

When I bought Millie from Ludwig in Ostfriesland I decided I didn’t want the Haube (complete head covering) that he had which was very narrow (it was a racing one), so instead he got me the red Lukendeckel (flap thingie) and gave me a price reduction.

Of course, after two weeks I realised that I would also want to ride Millie in the rain and that a Haube would probably be a good idea.

Räderwerk sell a Haube you can add to the existing Lukendeckel which is a bit more roomy inside than the racing one that Ludwig had. They occasionally come up for sale second hand so I decided to put a request out on the Velomobilforum to see if anyone had one for sale – and I struck lucky immediately. Friend Tim who lives near Bodensee had one that he never used and was happy to sell it to me at a very decent price. Not only that, it was red!

In due course it arrived and I fitted it, after first having to reassemble it.

Unfortunately the red isn’t quite the same shade as the Lukendeckel red, but if I cycle fast enough no-one should notice!

When riding with the Haube on I have about an extra 2.5km/h average. So more speed. In fact, on my first test ride with the Haube I did a 31.93km round trip and up until the last 3km when I had several red traffic lights and a traffic jam I was averaging over 35km/h. In the end my average was 34.3 which is still rather good!

Millie attracts attention just like Penelope, and various velomobile friends have had a go. Here’s a Mango owner who lives south of Kempen and invited me for some home-made Pufferkes…

My reward was to enjoy a couple of these very tasty pufferkes. Yum!

Millie gets a Schlumpf Mountain Drive

When I test-rode Millie she had a 65 tooth chainring at the front. This meant that she had lovely high top gears but her lowest gear was rather high to start off on a slope or indeed to climb a hill. Ludwig seemed to have no problem with it but I was concerned. There was a second smaller chainring at the front but he said he used that only for emergency hill climbing.

Ludwig suggested that he changed the chainrings for me to a 53 and 43 so that I had more lower gears that worked better for me overall. He said I would be able to pedal up to 50 km/h no problems. So we went ahead with the swap.

It became clear to me fairly quickly that my low cadence means that I can’t really pedal over 40km/h without wobbling all over the place. My legs just don’t go that fast, and after 100,000km in recumbent trikes and velomobiles (yes, I passed that milestone this month!) it isn’t likely to change. I am comfortable in high gears, cruising with medium power. My knees generally are OK with this plan.

I could of course have changed the front chainring for a larger one but then I would have the same problem with starting in low gears. I had already discovered that my weak arm made it extremely difficult to use the grip shift for the front chainring; changing down to the small ring was OK but changing back up again almost impossible. Ludwig suggested I got someone to fit a trigger shifter or bar-end shifter (although that would mean my indicator button would have to move) but I wasn’t sure.

I had been thinking for a little while about a Schlumpf Mountain Drive and decided to do a bit of research on this. The Schlumpf range have several drives (speed, high speed, mountain) and it is a small internal gearing system that lives in the bottom bracket (pedals/cranks). It is effectively like switching chainrings at the front, and involves no cabling (you hit a button with your heel and that changes the gear).

The Speed Drive and High Speed Drive have their normal mode in low gears and then you can click up to a higher gear but that is using the innards of the drive so a bit lossy. The Mountain Drive is the other way round, the ‘neutral’ gears with direct drive are the high gears but you can knock it down by 2.5x for lower gears if you need them. This sounded very suitable for me!

My local recumbent shop is Liegeradbau Schumacher in Willich. I had visited them several years before and found them to be knowledgeable and with a large amount of stock. I decided to give them a ring and find out if they fitted the Schlumpf – yes they did, so I said I would pop round the next day and have a chat.

I did pop round and we talked about it. It sounded like a great option – until I heard the price. These things are expensive! Especially as I would need shorter cranks (not much room in the nose of Millie) and the larger chainring. The price was just too high for me to justify for some emergency low gears.

We talked a bit more about anything else I might be able to do (new shifters for my existing gear) and then the chap talking to me had a bit of an idea and went to talk to a colleague. It turned out they had a second hand Mountain Drive in stock and they made me a price offer for that, the cranks and chainring and fitting, which was very good and I decided to take them up on it.

They ordered the chainring and pedals and a couple of weeks later we had an appointment for them to do the fitting, hopefully while I waited.

I arrived and met Mr Schumacher (senior) for the first time. We ended up having a lovely time chatting together – the trike world is small and the velomobile world smaller and we had several acquaintances in common. He’s been in the world of recumbents for 30 years so has a vast amount of experience. It was really interesting talking to him.

First of all they showed me my new chainring – a real pizza plate!

Apparently when it had arrived Mr Schumacher assumed it was for some super-fit young man, and was clearly a bit surprised to see a middle-aged overweight woman who needed it! But the velomobile’s speed makes all the difference.

Christian Schumacher, his son, would do the fitting and the first plan was to get Millie onto a fork lift so that he could work through the foot hole.

Mr Schumacher Senior and I held Millie steady whilst Christian removed the bottom bracket from the boom. Here it is coming out – and was surprisingly heavy. The Schlumpf Mountain Drive with pedals and chainring actually weighed less.

Millie was lowered back down to the floor whilst Christian fitted the mountain drive to the bottom bracket, which involved some work on the aluminium holder. You can see the bits of metalwork that hold the boom in place on the floor in front of Millie’s nose.

And the view inside – a boom leading to… nothing!

Now Christian spent some time removing the old pedals and bottom bracket and fitting the Schlumpf, which involves some metalwork I believe.

They let me see and test it when he had finished, turning the pedals with one finger and then pressing the button and seeing the speed change.

Christian cleaned up my pedals and fitted them to the cranks, then we were ready to fit the new part into Millie.

Here we all are working on Millie – Christian drew the short straw and had to lie on his back with 28kg of carbon fibre balancing inches from his nose!

And here it is fitted!

We removed the cabling for the front gear changer – another minor weight saving (20 grammes?) – which you could see in the photo above.

Then it was time for a short test ride…

Generally it was great, except my toe was now rubbing against the side of Millie. I had occasionally had this before when really pushing hard but it happened the whole time. It seems that the Mountain Drive pedal area is wider than the previous chainrings arrangement (Theo at Velomobiel.nl had talked to me on the phone about Mountain Drives and said I needed to have the narrow one; I had asked Schumacher if that was what they had and they said yes, but I do slightly wonder now). Anyway, Christian came to the rescue again with a very simple solution – moving the cleats on my cycling shoes so my feet were more inward.

The second test ride and it was fine, only very occasional brushing of my shoe on Millie’s side, certainly to an acceptable level.

The fitting had taken three hours which was longer than expected but they had clearly done an excellent job and it was interesting to see everything in action. I rode home, very quickly getting used to the new drive and finding the gear changing buttons very simple to operate.

I am enjoying riding with the Mountain Drive.

I am definitely benefitting from the larger chainring. I find it more comfortable to ride at speed. I am able to pull away in first gear most of the time without problems, unless it’s on a slight uphill, at which point I use the Mountain Drive to step down from what is a 4.6 metre gear to a 1.5 metre (that means I travel 4.6 metres along the ground per pedal revolution). Also on some steeper hills I switch into Mountain Drive mode.

As was mentioned by many commentators, the Mountain Drive does give a spongy feel when using the stepped down gears. It is noticeable but as I am only riding in this gear arrangement for a short time it is no problem. Also because of the wide range in gearing it’s quite a big jump back into the higher gears but, again, because you know it’s coming you can adjust accordingly. I like the simplicity of the system and find it easy to do with my heels, even wearing cleats.

With regard to the cleat position, after Christian had adjusted one shoe I obviously had to adjust the other. I then thought about moving the cleats even further and tried that – and found I had unusual foot pain. I suppose after 100,000km with my cleats always on one position the ball of my foot didn’t like the change! So I moved the cleats back to a middle position where my foot only brushes the side of the velomobile when really pushing but the cleats are comfortable.

I have now done 1,900km in Millie since I bought her in mid-September and am really happy with my choice. There are a few drawbacks with the Milan (such as the turning circle, low freeboard so you can scrape when going up kerbs) but they also confer advantages (more speed, more speed) so it’s a choice. I still use Penelope for my commuting but Millie for all social rides.

I have ordered some Union Jack decals to go on her tail. They are on their way from the UK and once they arrive I will have to find the best place to fit them. This might be a challenge but it should be a deterrent to thieves if she is British Flagged!

Cakes this month

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Six Wheels In Germany – September 2016 (Month 30)

cycling this month

Cycling statistics this month

Last month I increased my year’s cycling target from 10,000km to 12,000km which means I need to do 1000km per month (plus a bit more to make up my slight deficit). I’m glad to say that by the end of October I had made up the deficit so I am now on 9000km ridden, as you can see from the screenshot from my software Ascent that tracks my riding.

And here are the tracks of where I have ridden (except for the test rides of my new Milan in Ostfriesland)

Metric Century a Month Challenge

As you can see from the Wheel above, I did three Metric Centuries this month. I think for next year I might try for the Imperial Century Per Month challenge (162km or 100 miles) but I will think a bit more about it. With a faster velomobile it’s much less of an investment in time to do these longer rides.

A ride to meet the Fridays

When I was in the UK I did a couple of the ‘Friday Night Ride to the Coast’ rides organised through the cycling forum CycleChat. I made some friends there, including Olaf who brought me a potato peeler when I first moved over to Germany.

Anyway, the Fridays had organised a holiday where they would all ride to Cologne from the Hook of Holland and from there into Belgium. I had met Olaf when he did the recce ride a couple of months ago, and now it was time for the real ride.

Because I am now working I realised I wouldn’t be able to ride with them, but it turned out they would be riding from Tilburg to Venlo on a Sunday in September so I thought I could meet them in Venlo, or perhaps a bit earlier. I contacted Olaf and he sent me the track they were planning to ride from Tilburg and I said I would ride along the track towards them until we bumped into each other.

Here is my actual track for the day (142.6 kilometres):

Jochen said he would come with me, and Klaus also wanted to ride a little way with us before going home. So we set off, three velomobiles, but in the usual arrangement (me struggling to keep up with the two chaps in their Stradas…)

Klaus had forgotten to put fresh batteries in his walkie talkie so communication wasn’t always that easy but we managed to cycle together without any issues to Arcen, where we stopped for tea and cake.

We’d only done 30km (well, Klaus had done 50) but they both look like they are striding very purposefully towards cake!

I not only had a slice of cake but also poffertjes. I needed fuelling for what might be quite a long ride.

Although Klaus had originally planned to turn back at Arcen it was such a nice day for cycling he decided to continue on with us. He thought I was expecting to meet the Brits at America, but I hadn’t explained this clearly enough – America was where our track would intercept with theirs, so I had to be sure we would get to America before them. But we didn’t find this misunderstand out until we got to America.

But first, a ferry across the Maas.

Then a wonderful speedy ride on roads we had used on the way to Ysselsteyn a few weeks before, and soon enough we arrived at America (sorry for the fuzzy photo, we were cycling too fast!)

No Brits were evident, and as I had been exchanging messages with Olaf I knew that they were expecting to stop at Helmond for lunch at about 12:30. So clearly they were a long way west of us – but now we could cycle along their track until we all met up.

Because we velomobiles were fast, we actually got to Helmond just 15 minutes after the Brits had arrived there and stopped for lunch in various eateries. As we rolled into the centre of town I noticed lots of bikes lying around with panniers and various vaguely-familiar faces. We had found some of them!

We parked up and had some food as various Brits came over to say hello. It turned out there were 26 of them!

And here are the three of us awaiting our food, photo taken by Ian.

The velomobiles excited lots of interest of course, so we chatted to a lot of people about them, but we were also pretty interested in eating and drinking as it was a hot day and we’d done 70km (or 90 in Klaus’s case).

The Brits (well, two of them were German!) started to head off so we joined the back of the group. This was riding in a group proper-style with waymarkers etc. This is actually quite hard for velomobiles as the braking and acceleration profiles are so different. We started off at the front but kept going too fast. At one point we were off the front and there was a problem (puncture or something) behind so we realised they had stopped. Jochen was playing his music through a loudspeaker in the velomobile and Klaus used the opportunity for a quick nap.

In the end it was better for us to stay at the back. The group spread out a bit but always came together after 10 or so minutes.

At one of these gathering points we stopped for several minutes and chum Kim (a fellow recumbent-rider, although usually two-wheelers) had a go in Penelope.

We rode on and Jason got some photos of Jochen, Klaus and me whizzing along. Except that we look stationary. In reality we were going about 25 km/h.

Just before we reached Venlo we lost Klaus when he turned the wrong way and didn’t see which way we’d gone. When I realised he wasn’t behind us I turned round, as did Jochen, and we found him after a minute. Unfortunately the Brits had all gone out of sight and as we were only 3km from Venlo at that point we weren’t able to catch them up. But it had been a great ride and it was lovely to see lots of different people and reconnect with some old friends.

Klaus and Jochen dropped me off at home and then decided to continue riding so they could do over 200km. Klaus ended up with 213km I believe, which is rather a change from the original plan to ride 50-60km and be home for lunch. But it was a great day and lovely to share the road with some other Brits!

Another visit to Rolf’s

Rolf in Schwalmtal seems to have developed a little Velomobile Stammtisch with Gabi (and sometimes her husband Achim) riding up from Bonn, me visiting from Kempen, and Klaus and Jochen also invited. I received another invitation to come along and cycled over in Penelope. Unfortunately neither Jochen nor Klaus were able to attend this time, but HaJo (well known from the Velomobilforum) was there. Here is the selection of velomobiles, excluding Rolf’s Quest which was stored safely in his garage.

We enjoyed some lovely cake made by Rolf’s wife.

After a good natter it was time to head for home before the rain really hit, so we said our goodbyes and I rode home via Waldniel. I had a 30km ride, Gabi and Hajo had near enough 100km to go. But they are much faster than me!

Trikes and Velomobiles

The heading of this section of the blog is ‘six wheels in Germany’ which is clearly inaccurate as from the 18th September I had two velomobiles and two trikes. This is because I bought myself a Milan GT Carbon. That’s 12 wheels in total!!

So something needed to be done, especially as the garage will only fit two bikes/velomobiles. The first stage was to store Alfie in my lounge for the time being whilst I decide what to do.

The second stage was to sell my Trice Q which Claudia no longer wanted to ride. So I mentioned that I was selling it to Dirk from the ADFC in Mönchengladbach (he had talked to me about trikes at SPEZI) and lo and behold he was very interested. We arranged for him to try it out and after a short test ride the deal was done!

What was rather lovely was that when Dirk came to collect the trike, and Klaus and I decided to accompany him home to Mönchengladbach as it was his first proper recumbent ride, I realised that during the course of the ride (which was 101km for me) I would reach 100,000km cycled with recumbents. This was riding my newest, Millie, but being accompanied by the first recumbent I owned, the Trice Q. So that was a big milestone and it was lovely to share it with the Trice Q.

Dirk rode the Trice Q to the Critical Mass in Mönchengladbach five days later (which I also attended) so he’s already getting the hang of it. I know it has found a very good home – but I predict that he will be on the lookout for a velomobile within two years!

And as for my new Milan, I have received lots of great advice from Ludwig who sold it to me, and also TimB in Konstanz who has been very helpful through the internet. I decided I needed to practise changing the rear wheel as it is known to be tricky, so on a warm Saturday morning I laid Millie on the grass and experimented.

It wasn’t as bad as I had thought getting the rear wheel out but I did have a few moments with the derailleur system when putting the wheel back in. I have a bit of a thing about derailleurs, I really don’t get on with them, but I managed. I don’t fancy doing it in the dark and rain and cold but hopefully that won’t happen too often – rear-wheel punctures are very rare.

The front wheels are not as easy as Penelope either as there’s not much room to work. I didn’t take the tyres off but did pump them up – I will have a go at tyre removal one day when I am very bored. What is nice about the Milan is that you can prop it up partly on its side.

The space inside Millie is very different and so I have bought a couple of soft bags to hold my things; anything with metal (such as clip or buckle) has the potential to rattle against the carbon shell so I have chosen wisely. I had a trip to Rose Bikes to get some new cycling shoes and found a few other bits and bobs.

And the next purchase was a Haube (cover for my head). I had the option of buying one with Millie but took a reduction of the purchase price instead. Of course after two weeks I realised I would want to ride her in the rain (I had assumed I would use Penelope in that case) and so I asked around for a second hand one and TimB had one he could let me have at a very decent price. So that should arrive next week and I will work out how to fit it… We will see how it goes!

I have had Millie for 13 days and have cycled 593.87km. When riding alone on decent roads I average 28-30km/h but in group riding with normal bikes (such as Critical Mass which I rode last week) it’s much slower so my current overall average is 26.2 km/h. This compares with my overall average for Penelope over 14,460km of 19.36 km/h, and Alfie 17.36 km/h (with 44,114km). I’m hoping to do a longer ride in Millie, perhaps a 175km ride, within the next few days to stretch my legs a bit and see how I do with the longer distances. I am looking forward to it!

And at some point I will do a new header for this blog with Millie and Penelope.

Penelope’s suspension

As mentioned in my last blog post, Penelope’s suspension had been getting stuck so I sent the relevant part off to Gerrit Tempelman in Dronten for repair.

It arrived back after a bit of to-and-fro-ing with the delivery company who for some unfathomable reason didn’t like the address (which was printed perfectly correctly on the parcel).

I refitted it and all was working much better. However, the dodgy creaking from the rear swing-arm has started again (as Gerrit warned it would) and this will be a long repair (maybe 3 weeks) so it’s a good thing I now have a spare velomobile as being without a VM for three weeks as winter approaches would be most annoying!!

Life in Germany

In England again

The month started off in England where I was visiting my Mum and also having a day trip to London for my annual hospital visit where they x-ray my arm and check the metalwork is still attached. All seemed as usual and we celebrated my 23rd year of survival post-cancer by having a very nice curry in Ipswich!

The day before Mum and I and James had visited Otley Hall for tea and cake. It’s a private house but with a tea room open. It’s a lovely spot with beautiful gardens and I think this photo shows how the house is a very traditional English country house – it’s lovely!

I took the overnight ferry back and collected my car from the car park at Hook of Holland and then whizzed back to Germany. This is by far the best option time and cost-wise, as my Mum collects me from Harwich. Taking the car on the Harwich Ferry is very expensive but going as a foot passenger (or with bike) is a pretty good bargain. One day I shall do it by Velomobile, perhaps next year for the GBI Charity Ride that I will be doing with Hartmut and Klaus.

Mum came back with me to Germany for a week and had quite a lot of time just relaxing in my flat as I had to go to work from 8am to 1pm each day. However, we went on a trip to Villa Hügel in Essen on Wednesday afternoon with Gudula and Lara. It’s the very posh country house which was built by the Krupp family (of Thyssen-Krupp fame) who were huge industrialists in Essen starting in 1810.

Here are Gudula and Mum sitting outside – you can see we had a lovely warm day for the visit.

It was a very ornate style with lots of wood. It felt actually rather dark inside.

There was a smaller building attached to the main building and this contained an exhibition of the history of the family which was very interesting. The Krupp family were so important for Essen and its development in the industrialisation of the Ruhr, but there were also some interesting reminders of how the UK also used to be strong in this area.

Although there are still steelworks in Germany they are struggling mightily against China’s cheaper production and who knows what the future will be. But Germany at least does still have a reasonable industry, unlike the UK (as far as my limited knowledge goes, anyway).

Afterwards we drove the short distance to the Baldeneysee and had a piece of cake whilst looking over the lake (where the Ruhr gets wider).

It was a very enjoyable day and good to visit a bit of local culture that’s not bicycle-related for me!

Miscellaneous

I think I would go for the Garlic sauce…

On my way to work I pass this fantastic pumpkin caterpillar!

And when cycling through Oedt pass this amusingly-named shop for kitchens and indeed bathrooms!

The fan within my car had stopped functioning and Frank did a fantastic job of replacing the thingie that had gone wrong. The company he works for had estimated it as six hours’ labour; he did it in his spare time so I only had to pay for the parts. Frank is a real hero!

Cakes this month

And here is this month’s cake collage…

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Auntie Helen buys another Velomobile!

Yes, I have done it – I have bought a companion for Penelope.

Yes, companion. I am not planning on selling Penelope in the short term as she fulfils a role that her new stablemate, the Milan, cannot. She is an everyday load-carrying workhorse, the Milan is a speedy long-distance rocket.

This all seems very sudden doesn’t it? But it isn’t, I had been thinking about getting a faster Velomobile for quite a while, and in fact that’s why I had asked to go on the Order List for a QuattroVelo. But when I realised I would have difficulties getting in and out of a QuattroVelo I widened my search for a fast velomobile that I could use despite my arm disability.

As mentioned in the blog post for August 2016, I went to Räderwerk near Hannover to try out a Milan. I will include here what I reported in the other blog post:

A visit to Räderwerk

Having tried out the Milan SL and found it was possible to get out of it without needing a crane, I decided to visit Räderwork (the manufacturer) near Hannover for a test ride.

The fan for the air conditioning on my car decided to stop working so I was extremely lucky that Klaus said he would come with me – which meant we went in his company car (free diesel and, rather more vital at this point, functioning air conditioning).

You can only do a test ride on weekdays so we went on a Friday afternoon when Klaus was able to leave work earlier. It’s a long drive, three hours, to Siedenburg where the test ride would take place and we eventually arrived at about 5pm.

We met Jens with whom I had chatted a few times on the phone and he set the test Milan GT up for my leg length and after a few bits of fiddling about to get it right I set off.

Unfortunately the Tacho wasn’t working and as my Garmin was out of sight on the floor behind my seat I had no idea of what speed I was going, but my impression was not particularly fast. I had to get used to the tiller steering and the very wide turning circle (14 metres instead of Penelope’s 6 metres). But it was good fun and as the lid was missing there was lots of nice fresh air as it was 34 degrees outside.

Jens had told me to head for Asenburg which is about 10km away and I seemed to arrive there a bit sooner than I expected. I turned round and headed back along the same road, this time able to go a bit faster as I knew that all the corners were manageable. The Milan corners like it’s on rails, a totally different feeling to Penelope (who feels like she is teetering on the edge sometimes as she leans into the corners with her very soft suspension). One unfortunate thing was a very loud noise from the rear wheel a lot of the time, pretty distracting; Jens thought it was to do with my pedalling style but I was unsure.

I got back to where Klaus and Jens were waiting and extracted my Garmin – 34.5 km/h average. Wow! My average for the same cycling power level in Penelope is about 22 km/h. That’s a 50% increase in speed!

So then it was time for Klaus to have a go. He was wearing his normal work clothes but had brought his SPD shoes with him so in jeans and a t-shirt he headed off up the road to Asenburg. He appeared back in half an hour – with an average speed of 40 km/h. He can do 35ish in his Strada so the increase in speed for him was not as marked, but it was still faster.

I’m considering whether to order one of these as a companion for Penelope and when I want to do longer rides and faster rides but the Milan isn’t always as easy to live with as Penelope; punctures in the rear tyre are a complete nightmare, the lights are a bit low down for ideal visibility in night riding, water can come in where the flap thing shuts, they can be noisy around the back wheel (the test one was very noisy but it seems there might have been a fault with it), plus there’s at least a six month lead time once you order. But I am sorely tempted and am taking the opportunity to talk to some Milan owners and see what they think about them.

So I bought one?

Following my visit to Räderwerk I thought about it for a couple of weeks, and did indeed talk to some other Milan owners or ex-owners. Their main comment was that the loud noise I had heard from the back wheel whilst doing the test ride is not normal, as that had rather put me off. I send a couple of emails to Jens at Räderwerk asking him to give me a price according to my specification, but hadn’t got much further than that.

And then, last Monday morning, I got two messages at work – one from Klaus and one from TimB from the Velomobilforum – both telling me that someone was selling a Milan GT Carbon which looked good. I looked at the advert – it did indeed look good, pretty much my specification!

So as soon as I got back from work I phoned up the owner, Ludwig, and we agreed I would come and visit the next day after work to try it out. He lives in Ostfriesland so it was a three hour drive for me each way, but I thought it worth getting an early look at the velomobile before someone else pinched it from under my nose.

I managed to negotiate leaving work at midday so I wouldn’t be horrendously late home and set off to Ostfriesland in the car belonging to Gudula (because my air conditioning wasn’t working and it was 34 degrees outside!).

I arrived easily enough and got my first look at the Milan, just a year old…

Everything looked really good. Ludwig is a racer rather than a tourer so it was set up for speed and is very lightweight (about 27.5kg he said). He had initially thought he would need to adjust the boom length for me as he is 1.83 metres tall (I am 1.76) but I have long legs so in fact the boom length was fine.

After a good look at it and a chat I had a test ride with Ludwig following behind in the car – partly to act as my mirrors as there were no rear-view mirrors when the Racecap was removed (I wanted to ride open).

The ride went well, it was about 29km/h for the 12km and this included some less well-surfaced roads. The Milan was very quiet, way way quieter than the test one at Räderwerk, and pretty comfortable except for the sharp bit of something poking into my buttock from the Ventisit on the seat. Ouch!

When we got back Ludwig helped to adjust the seat to give me a more upright position, which I thought would suit my riding style better, and he also fitted the Deckel (lid thingie) which is what I would like to have, rather than the full racecap.

I had a second go riding with the Deckel (and he had also fitted a rear-view mirror) and all went well.

I got in and out four times over the time I was there. It’s not elegant but it is manageable. After my test rides and some conversation with Ludwig I agreed to buy the Milan. Ludwig agreed to change the chainring (65 tooth) for a smaller one for me and to put a small amount of carbon fibre strengthening where I put my hands as I climb out as I have to grab the edge of the cockpit in a place which isn’t as strong.

The deed was done, we shook hands on it and I drove home. The plan was for me to either collect it the next Sunday or the following one.

Collecting the Milan

My plans were such that the first Sunday was available to collect the Milan and Ludwig had time to make all the changes he planned. So rather than putting it on the roof of my car (still without air conditioning!) I hired a van from a local place in Kempen and drove up to Ostfriesland early on the Sunday morning, arriving at 11am for a spot of breakfast with Ludwig and his wife. Their hospitality to me was very generous, especially as I was horribly British and asked to use my English teabags for my tea (shocking, as Ostfriesland is known for its tea!)

He then showed me how to do all the maintenance on the Milan, which includes fixing punctures in the front and back tyres (more complicated as they are hidden within the body of the velomobile). We took the rear wheel off to see how it is done, and put it back again; he recommended I try this a couple of times at home so I am very confident with it, although rear wheel punctures are pretty unusual.

And then it was time to head home with my new toy. Ludwig was very sad to see it go as he had just discovered that his replacement Velomobile is significantly delayed and he will have to wait until February before it arrives. He admitted he had sold his Milan too soon but I have benefited very much from that – he has really set it up excellently and it runs beautifully.

We put the Milan in the van – there was plenty of room.

I drove home, getting stuck in a few traffic jams, but was home by 5pm. Klaus was doing a really long solo ride (he ended up with 213km) and was passing so stopped off to have a look at the Milan – and in fact helped me and Frank get it out of the van and had the first ride in it since I was the official owner. Here is the Milan with Celeste and Penelope.

Over the last few days I have slowly been setting it up for me and my dodgy arm, which involves adjusting the seat angle, tiller position and, most fiddly, the armrest position. The armrests are stuck on the side with velcro but the sticky velcro is not keen on sticking to the carbon fibre, plus sweat loosens the adhesive, so I will probably have to invest in some proper 3M stuff. It is a bit of a fiddly job for me finding a position where my dodgy left arm is comfortable because of scar tissue but I think I am almost there.

Here is the view from the cockpit.

And here are the rides I have done, including on 13 September the test rides in Ostfriesland. As you can see, I am notably faster than in Penelope. I am using Penelope for commuting and the Milan for leisure.

And due to an unfortunate lack of garage space – I already have half of the garage so Frank, Gudula and Lara don’t have much room for their bikes – I am currently storing Alfie folded in my lounge. I am looking for some garage space to rent for him but if I don’t find it I may have to sell him – it depends if I find I am using him at all.

I am slowly building up the miles in the Milan, fiddling with the seat position etc and will do my first ride in the dark this evening (so I will find out how good the lights are!) But so far I am really enjoying the speed, the fast cornering, comfortable ride (surprisingly!) and having something a bit different. I am also considering getting a signwriter to put a Union Jack on the tail…

The name for the Milan

Herein lies the colossal problem.

Penelope is definitely Penelope, and Alfie Alfie.

I decided I would obviously need to find a name for the Milan. Maybe something Italian? Maybe something to do with birds (‘Milan’ is German for Kite, like Red Kite, the raptor). However the big sticking point is what gender the Milan is.

As the person riding it, from inside it is basic and a bit unrefined so more masculine, but almost everyone tells me that from outside it is definitely female because of the curves. My shortlist of names is ‘Millie’ if it’s female or ‘Hector’ if it’s male, but I cannot yet decide the gender. Any comments gratefully received!

Lots of people have now seen the Milan and the overwhelming majority of opinion is that it is female, therefore it is now christened Millie.

I think the comment below from gear7lover says it all!

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Auntie Helen

I’m a keen cyclist now living in Germany, in the Niederrhein area which is ideal for cycling.

I have two recumbent tricycles, an ICE Sprint and a Trice Q, as well as a Versatile Velomobile. I cycle between 10,000 and 20,000 km (6,000 and 12,000 miles) per year.

In between cycling and eating German cake I work freelance for a UK book and record distribution company and do lots of book reviews as a hobby.

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Buttermilchbrot, Landbäckerei Stinges

Kalorien und Nährwerte pro Portion

Wie viele Kalorien solltest du zu dir nehmen?

Wie verbrennst du 82 Kalorien?

Zusammensetzung der Kalorien

Katharina, 25

Ich konnte und wollte nicht glauben oder wahrhaben, dass das auf den Bildern ich sein sollte. Vor dem Entschluss, mein Leben und meine Essgewohnheiten zu ändern, war ich träge, faul, unsportlich und habe mich größtenteils von Fertig- und Tiefkühlprodukten ernährt.

Sebastian, 31

Eigentlich wollte ich nur etwas gegen diese lästigen Rückenschmerzen tun. Dann packte mich der Ehrgeiz gut aussehen zu wollen und dies war nun mein Ziel: Gutes Aussehen, Kilos verlieren, sportlicher und fitter werden.

Monique, 30

Nach ein paar Bildern habe ich ein Foto von mir gesehen, was mich selbst so sehr erschrocken hat. Ich habe zuvor nie an mir gearbeitet und auch nicht darauf geachtet, wie ich aussehe und mich fühle. Mir war das alles egal, wenn mich jemand darauf angesprochen hat.

veröffentlicht in der Kategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren"

veröffentlicht in der Kategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren"

veröffentlicht in der Kategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren"

veröffentlicht in der Kategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren"

veröffentlicht in der Kategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren"

veröffentlicht in der Kategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren"

veröffentlicht in der Kategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren"

veröffentlicht in der Kategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren"

veröffentlicht in der Kategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren"

veröffentlicht in der Kategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren"

Das Lebensmittel "Buttermilchbrot, Landbäckerei Stinges" aus der Kalorientabelle Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren beinhaltet je 100 g einen Energiewert von 272,0 Kilokalorien. Mit diesem Gesamtenergiewert verfügt das Lebensmittel über eine schlechte Brennwertdichte. Da Produkte mit einem Kalorienwert von höher als 250 Kalorien je 100 g nur noch wenig Flüssigkeit, sondern größtenteils Fett und Zucker enthalten, solltest du dieses Nahrungsmittel nur in Maßen aufnehmen. Damit du siehst, wie du die gegessenen Energie für das Produkt "Buttermilchbrot, Landbäckerei Stinges" wieder verbrennen kannst, berechnen wir dir, wie viele Minuten du dafür z.B. Spazieren gehen müsstest. Auch der entsprechende Prozentsatz am Bedarf für die Nährwerte und Kilokalorien pro Portion wird berechnet. Zudem werten wir für das Produkt "Buttermilchbrot, Landbäckerei Stinges" aus der Lebensmittelkategorie "Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren" den enthaltenen Anteil von Fett, Kohlenhydraten und Proteinen aus und sagen dir, ob es sich um ein schlechtes Lebensmittel handelt. Weitere Informationen über die Vitamine und Mineralstoffe für "Buttermilchbrot, Landbäckerei Stinges" siehst du in der Kalorientabelle weiter oben. Das Lebensmittel gehört mit 2,9 Gramm Fett auf 100 g zu den fettärmsten Nahrungsmitteln, da es nur einen geringen Anteil an Nahrungsfett beinhaltet. Auch beim Abnehmen, solltest du rund 25 bis 30 Prozent der Gesamtenergie durch Nahrungsfett zu dir führen. Außerdem beinhaltet das Lebensmittel mit 51,9 g einen hohen Prozentsatz an Kohlenhydraten und ist damit nicht für eine vollwertige Mischkost heranzuziehen. Du solltest darauf achten, dass du höchstens 50% deiner Energiezufuhr durch Kohlenhydrate deckst. Der Anteil an Eiweiß beträgt 9,1 Gramm. Damit enthält "Buttermilchbrot, Landbäckerei Stinges" nur einen niedrigen Anteil an Proteinen.

Das Nahrungsmittel "Buttermilchbrot, Landbäckerei Stinges" befindet sich in der Kalorientabelle Brot, Brötchen & Backwaren. Die Angaben für das Nahrungsmittel wurden zum ersten Mal am 09.10.2013 erhoben. Zuletzt wurden die Nährwerte am 09.10.2013 vervollständigt. Die Nährwertangaben werden durch YAZIO Nutzer anhand der Nährwerte der Lebensmittelverpackung eingetragen oder stammen direkt vom Hersteller Landbäckerei Stinges. Bitte sei dir bewusst, dass wir keinerlei Garantie für die Korrektheit der Daten übernehmen. Interpretiere die dargestellten Informationen nicht als alleinige Quelle für eine Anpassung deiner Ernährung. Für zusätzliche Angaben zu dem Nahrungsmittel kontaktiere den Hersteller aus der Kalorientabelle Landbäckerei Stinges.

Stinges brötchen

Testbericht zu Landbдckerei Stinges

Neuester Testbericht: . Stьhle und die Wдnde sind gemauert, der Rest ist hell gestaltet, sodass es nicht zu dьster wirkt. Das alles wirkt sehr gemьtlich und ei. mehr

Mal nur ein Brцtchen

Landbдckerei Stinges

Vorteile: frisch, schmeckt gut

Nachteile: kцnnte gьnstiger sein

Brцtchen kaufen sicher die meisten цfters mal, nachdem nun vor einiger Zeit in meiner Nдhe auch der letzte "freie" Bдcker geschlossen hat muЯten wir uns nach einer neuen Quelle fьr Brцtchen umsehen und kommen dabei einfach nicht an den Bдckerketten vorbei. Gut gefдllt uns da das Angebot von Stinges - aus Brьggen am Niederrhein - also auch nur hier regional erhдltlich.

Das Angebot der Stinges Filialen ist wie ьblich bei solchen Filialbetrieben meist etwas unterschiedlich, verschiedene Sorten Brцtchen und Brot gehцren jedoch zum Standart. Normale helle Brцtchen werden den ganzen Tag ьber frisch gebacken aber auch die verschiedenen Varianten der Kцrnerbrцtchen kann man getrost auch noch am Abend kaufen, diese schmecken dann noch und sind nicht trocken wie wir es oft erlebt haben. Zum spдten Einkauf nicht zu empfehlen sind Mohn oder Sesambrцtchen - ich vermute einfach das helle Brцtchen in so einer Auslage schneller trocken werden und da Mohn und Sesam meist nur morgens gebacken werden sind diese dann alt. Das scheinen die Damen bei unserem Stinges auch zu wissen, denn meist gibt es Abends eh nur noch normale oder Kцrnerbrцtchen. Neben wechselnden Sonderangeboten und den Monatsspecials (zB Grillbrot mit Paprika oder Bagel) gibt es ein Mittwochsangebot welches 1 Brot nach Wahl, 4 Brцtchen und ein Teilchen fьr 3 Euro enthдlt - finde ich wirklich gьnstig. Alle anderen Preise sind fьr mich Durchschnitt, 27 Cent fьr ein Brцtchen, Teilchen so 1,20 Euro - gerade Teilchen und Kцrnerbrцtchen finde ich generell recht teuer, bei allen Bдckern aber bei Stinges muЯ ich schon sagen das die Qualitдt gut ist und wir immer frische Ware bekommen haben, das war beim alten "freien" Bдcker schon mal etwas zweifelhaft..

GroЯes Sortiment, guter Geschmack, Preise entsprechen dem heute leider ьblichen - ich hole da gerne mal was

Fazit: Schatz, hol mal ein paar Brцtchen !

Weitere Testberichte: im Bereich Offline Shopping

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dein Bericht ist sehr schwer zu lesen, schцner wдren Absдtzte lg

Erfahrungsbericht zu Landbäckerei Stinges

erstellt von togri 18.06.2008

Pro der guten Qualität angemesse Preise / Angebote

Kontra teilweise fehlende Freundlichkeit / einige Brötchensorten sind nicht so gut

☼ Natürlich, frisch & freundlich. ☼

Mit diesem Slogan wirbt die Landbäckerei Stinges.

Solange ich mich erinnern kann, kaufen wir Brot, Brötchen, Kuchen und Teilchen hauptsächlich bei Stinges. Lediglich der Fabrikverkauf von Kamps hier im Ort ist eine Konkurrenz dazu, aber auch nur, weil es dort halt günstiger ist. Geschmacklich kenne ich keine Bäckerei, die besser ist als Stinges - zumindest hier in der Gegend.

Die (momentan) 72 Stinges-Filialen findet man laut Website (stinges.de) in folgenden Orten / Städten:

• Brüggen
• Erkelenz
• Grefrath
• Heinsberg
• Hückelhoven
• Jüchen
• Kaarst
• Kerken
• Korschenbroich
• Mönchengladbach
• Nettetal
• Schwalmtal
• Straelen
• Tönisvorst
• Viersen
• Wachtendonk
• Wassenberg
• Wegberg
• Willich

Somit deckt Stinges den linken Niederrhein ziemlich gut ab! [Klickt man auf der Website auf die einzelnen Orte, erfährt man die genauen Adressen der Filialen!]

Die Filialen, die mir bekannt sind, sind immer an einen Discounter oder einen Supermarkt angeschlossen. Somit liegen sie gut erreichbar und aus Stinges' Sicht auch lukrativ.

Teilweise sind es reine Verkaufsfilialen, teilweise sind auch einige Sitzplätze vorhanden. So kann man mal eben schnell einen Kaffee trinken oder auch ein Frühstück genießen.

Die Öffnungszeiten findet man auch auf der Website. Sie sind meiner Meinung nach ausreichend. Geöffnet wird z.B. hier bei uns im Ort um 7:00, geschlossen (meine ich) um 19:00. Die meisten Filialen haben auch sonntags von 8:00 bis 11:00 geöffnet!

Die Verkäuferinnen (es gibt wirklich nur Verkäuferinnen, keine Verkäufer) waren meiner Meinung nach früher freundlicher. Die "alten" Verkäuferinnen, die man schon seit Jahren kennt haben diese Freundlichkeit noch. Die "neuen" Verkäuferinnen kriegen teilweise noch nicht mal Begrüßung und Verabschiedung hin, geschweige denn Freundlichkeit im Verkaufsgespräch.

Diese Entwicklung finde ich sehr schade. Früher habe ich wirklich gerne bei Stinges eingekauft. Die Verkäuferinnen haben gerne die neuen Produkte erklärt oder einen Tipp gegeben. Heute bekommt man nur die Ware, die man haben möchte und wehe man fragt mal nach, was denn genau z.B. die "LaOla-Welle" ist!

Aber zum Glück ist das halt nicht bei jeder Verkäuferin der Fall. Bei den meisten schon, aber man trifft immer wieder auf freundliche Verkäuferinnen, die gerne das Sortiment vorstellen.

Klassisches Sortiment

Das Sortiment umfasst (ganz klassisch) Brote, Brötchen, Feingebäcke (also Kuchen und Teilchen) und Snacks. Auf der Website bekommt man einen kleinen Einblick!

Ich finde die Auswahl wirklich gut! Es gibt zig Brotsorten, so dass wirklich für jeden etwas dabei sein sollte. Genau wie bei den Brötchen! Die Feingebäcke sind auch das Klassische, also z.B. Deckapfel, Aprikosengitter, Amerikaner, Berliner, div. weitere Hefe- und Plunderteilchen. An Snacks findet man herzhafte Gebäcke (Laugenstangen z.B.), aber auch belegte Brötchen.

Zu diesem klassischen Sortiment kommen monatlich wechselnde Angebote, auf die ich weiter unten eingehe!

Die Auswahl ist schon ziemlich groß und wenn man nicht gerade kurz vor Feierabend kommt, hat man auch noch die freie Wahl, weil eigentlich immer genug vorrätig ist.

Das Brot wird erst auf Wunsch kostenlos geschnitten. Verpackt wird es (wie man sieht) normalerweise in Plastiktüten. Auf Wunsch aber auch in Papiertüten.

Die Preise sind meiner Meinung nach vollkommen in Ordnung. SB-Bäckern sind sie natürlich keine Konkurrenz, aber dafür ist die Qualität (s.u.) hier auch eine ganz andere!

Einfache Brötchen kosten z.B. 0,25€, Käsebrötchen 0,55€, 750g Malzkornbrot 2,65€, Teilchen zwischen 1€ und 1,30€.

Sparen kann man - wenn man möchte - indem man Brot vom Vortag kauft. In jeder Filiale gibt es einen Kasten mit den Resten, die dann zum halben Preis verkauft werden!

Monatsangebote

Etwa alle 4 Wochen kommen zum klassischen Sortiment Angebote, die einmal durchs gesamte Sortiment gehen und thematisch zusammengehören.

Im Moment ist das Oberthema natürlich die EM. Bis zum 28.6. gibt es:

• Deutschland-Brot (750g für 2,25€)
• Halbzeitbrötchen (0,60€)
• Trillerpfeife (Hefegebäck, 0,75€)
• Gelbe / Rote Karte (Plunderteilchen mit Obst, 1€)
• Deutschlandschnitte (Obstkuchen, 0,99€)
• LaOla-Welle (Schokoboden mit Kirschen, Pistaziensahne & Kokosraspeln, 1,20€)
• Volltreffer-Berliner (0,85€).

Vom 30.6. bis zum 2.8. ist dann wieder Grillsaison:

• Baguette (1,35€)
• Zwiebelbaguette (1,45€)
• Mehrkornbaguette (1,55€)
• Roggenbaguette (1,45€)
• Grilleiter (1,95€)
• Panetto (Ciabatta-Brötchen, 0,55€)
• Pane Peperoni (Ciabattabrot mit Peperoni, 1,50€)
• Pustastange (Blätterteigstange mit Körnern und Paprika- und Speckstücken, 0,85€
• Partysonne (8er 2,20€, 15er 4,10€)
• Paint Paillasse "das Echte" (1,99€)
• Ciabatta (1,39€)

[Diese beiden Angebote seht ihr unten auch als Fotos!]

Das Grill-Angebot gibt es jedes Jahr zu dieser Zeit!

Im Frühjahr gibt es immer einen Italienischen Monat mit z.B. Kuchen mit sizilianischen Zitronen.

Im Winter stehen meist Nüsse im Vordergrund.

Im Mai gab es einige Sachen mit Bärlauch (

Durch diese Monatsangebote wird das klassische Sortiment sehr gut ergänzt. Die Ideen sind meist ziemlich ausgefallen - geschmacklich wie optisch!

Auch hier sind die Preise meiner Meinung nach wieder vollkommen angemessen!

Wochenangebot

Jede Woche ist eine Ware aus dem klassischen Sortiment im Angebot. Sie kostet dann 30% weniger als regulär. Es ist jede Woche etwas anderes. Mal ein Brot, mal eine Brötchensorte, mal ein Teilchen.

Mittwochstüte

Seit eh und je (habe ich das Gefühl), gibt es die Mittwochstüte. D.h., dass man jeden Mittwoch 4 einfache Brötchen, 1 Brot (bis 750g) nach Wahl und 1 Teilchen nach Wahl für 3€ bekommt.

Ich finde das wirklich super günstig! Ich nehme z.B. immer das Gleiche: 750g Malzkornbrot für 2,65€ regulär, Nussschleife für 1,25€ regulär und halt die 4 Brötchen. Würde ich das an einem der 6 anderen Wochentage kaufen, würde ich 4,90€ dafür bezahlen!

Ok, ich würde mir dann die Nussschleife wahrscheinlich sparen, aber andererseits ist die sooo lecker … =)

Insgesamt ist die Qualität wirklich als sehr gut zu bezeichnen. Allerdings gibt es 2 Sachen, die ich von Stinges ganz schrecklich finde und nie wieder kaufen werde: Die Käsebrötchen sind einfach viel zu trocken und haben viel zu wenig Käse! Und das Laugengebäck ist auch sehr trocken und auch wenn es frisch ist schon sehr hart!

Alles andere (und ich habe im Laufe der Jahre mind. 80% des Sortiments probiert) ist wirklich erstklassig!

Einfache Brötchen müssen für mich eigentlich immer sehr hell und somit recht weich sein. Die Brötchen von Stinges sind immer gut ausgebacken, somit dunkel (aber nie verbrannt) und sie bestehen innen nicht aus Luft, sondern haben ganz viel Teig drin (das ist ja leider nicht mehr überall der Fall). Und sie schmecken einfach super! Krosse Kruste, weicher Kern - diese Brötchen esse sogar ich sehr gerne und das soll was heißen, bei Brötchen bin ich nämlich ziemlich pingelig!

Auch am nächsten schmecken sie noch fast genauso gut!

Die Teilchen schmecken auch alle super! Sie sind nie zu süß, alle Zutaten kommen gut zur Geltung! Mein Favorit ist da ganz klar die Nussschleife. Ein Blätterteiggebäck mit einer Nussmasse und Zuckerguss. *yummy* Der Geschmack ist einfach unbeschreiblich toll! Kein Wunder, dass ich in der Mittwochstüte seit bestimmt 10 Jahren nichts anderes mehr kaufe! =)

Wir frieren das Brot immer in kleiner Portionen ein (daher kaufen wir es auch geschnitten) und nach dem Auftauen schmeckt es immer noch so gut, wie frisch gekauft!

Die Monatsangebote schmecken auch immer super! Sie sind geschmacklich meistens etwas ausgefallener (wie z.B. die LaOla-Welle), qualitativ sind sie aber meistens sogar noch einen Ticken besser als das klassische Sortiment - und das ist ja wirklich schon spitze!

Das komplette Angebot ist immer frisch! Kein Wunder, hat sich Stinges im Laufe der Jahre von der kleinen Bäckerei aus dem Nachbarort doch zu einer Kette entwickelt. Aber im Gegensatz zu manch anderer Bäcker-Kette hat Stinges wirklich die gute Qualität und die Frische der Waren bewahren können.

Alles ist immer gleich gut, man kann blind kaufen! Und vor allem hat man kaum das Gefühl, bei einer Kette zu kaufen. Stinges ist immer noch Familienbetrieb und irgendwie wird das auch immer noch vermittelt!

Kundenzeitschrift

Seit diesem Jahr bietet Stinges auch eine kostenlose Kundenzeitschrift an: "Ofenfrisch!"

Die Zeitschrift erscheint meiner Meinung nach eher ein wenig unregelmäßig. Heute habe ich Ausgabe 3/08 erhalten, Ausgabe 4/04 soll am 1.9. erscheinen. Die letzte Ausgabe liegt meiner Meinung nach aber schon 3 Monate zurück. Egal!

Die aktuelle Ausgabe hat 8 Seiten und in ihr findet man Infos zum Sortiment und zum aktuellen Angebot.

Es werden 3 Rezeptvorschläge für Dips gemacht, Pilates wird kurz vorgestellt und man erfährt, wo Stinges Erdbeeren und Mehl einkauft.

Man kann an einem Gewinnspiel teilnehmen und wenn man das Kreuzworträtsel auf der Rückseite richtig löst, bekommt man bei Abgabe des Coupons 4 einfache Brötchen geschenkt.

Zudem gibt es 4 Spargutscheine: Altdeutsche Apfelplatte XXL für 1,99€, Holzluckenbrot (750g) für 1,50€, 2 Aprikosenriemchen für 1,30€ und 2 "Landjungs" (Roggenbrötchen) für 0,50€.

Der Inhalt ist immer ähnlich, ein Gewinnspiel, sowie das Kreuzworträtsel und die Sparcoupons sind auch immer dabei!

Man erhält die Zeitschrift beim Kauf von der Verkäuferin und sollte nicht nein sagen. Es ist nichts besonderes, aber eine nette Beigabe!

Unter www.stinges.de findet man einige Infos zum Sortiment und zu aktuellen Angeboten.

Man kann hier das aktuelle Wochenangebot und auszugsweise auch das Monatsangebot anschauen. Die aktuelle Ausgabe der Zeitschrift "Ofenfrisch!" kann man als pdf herunterladen!

Zu einer (großen) Auswahl aus dem Brot- und Brötchensortiment findet man schon Infos (Zutaten, Nährwerte & Tipps). Feingebäck und Snacks sind leider schon ziemlich lange "in Bearbeitung". Es wäre toll, wenn hier wirklich mal wer dran arbeiten würde!

Zudem findet man hier die Auflistung aller Filialen und eine kurze Vorstellung des Unternehmens!

Ein Blick lohnt sich hier auf jeden Fall mal!

Auch wenn die Freundlichkeit der Verkäuferinnen mittlerweile leider nicht mehr so gut ist, dass man damit werben könnte und obwohl Laugengebäck und Käsebrötchen leider wirklich ungenießbar sind, gebe ich gerne 4 Sterne!

Das restliche Sortiment ist einfach super, genau wie die Monatsangebote. Die Filialen sind gut erreichbar, die Mittwochstüte absolut lohnenswert, zudem gibt es immer ein Wochenangebot und die Zeitschrift ist eine nette Beigabe!

Wenn ihr also vom linken Niederrhein kommt oder mal hier seid und grade etwas vom Bäcker braucht, dann geht ruhig zu Stinges, statt das Geld weiterhin den größeren Ketten in den Rachen zu werfen! Stinges hat es wirklich verdient, dass man hier kauft! =)

Nussschleife (meine Mom hat leider schon ein Stückchen gemopst)

Monatsangebot zur EM

Monatsangebot zur Grillsaison

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togri empfiehlt das Produkt.

Dieser Erfahrungsbericht wurde von 141 Ciao Mitgliedern bewertet. Durchschnitt: sehr hilfreich

Stinges Landbrцtchen, Weizen Brцtchen

Stinges, Backwaren

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Datenquelle: Extern. Die Produktdaten wurden am 11.05.2013 von einem Fddb Nutzer erhoben. Hinweise zu den Produktdaten. Aktualisiert: 11.05.2013.

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Brennwert: 1176 kJ, Kalorien: 281 kcal

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Was kostet ein Brötchen? Verbraucher zeigen sich unbewusst

Verbraucher schätzen den Preis für ein normales Weizenbrötchen zwischen 20 und 35 Cent. Brötchenpreise unterliegen erheblichen Schwankungen. Aber kaum jemand weiß, wie viel Cent zurzeit das einfache Brötchen tatsächlich kostet. Dabei haben sich die Preise für Brötchen und Brote erst Anfang des Jahres in Münster teilweise in die Höhe geschraubt. „Aber kaum jemand hat die Preisanhebung bemerkt“, sagt der Obermeister der Bäcker-Gilde in Münster, Georg Krimphove.

Von Gabriele Hillmoth

Steigende Energiekosten und Rohstoffpreise seien Ursprung des Übels

Natürlich hängt die Gilde die Preisanhebung nicht an die große Glocke. Krimphove: „Ich weiß schon, was dann da steht: Der Biss ins Brötchen wird teurer.“ Der Obermeister macht für die Preisanhebung unter anderem die in den vergangenen 14 bis 15 Monaten erheblich gestiegenen Rohstoffpreise verantwortlich. Auch die Energiekosten spielten eine Rolle, ebenso die Personalkosten.

In Münster , so Krimphove, sei bei den meisten Bäckern die Preisrunde schon durch. Viele hätten erhöht. Auch das Unternehmen „Der gute Bäcker“, läutete die neue Preisschiene ein. Bis zu 34 Cent zahlen die Kunden heute für ein einfaches Brötchen.

Unbewusstsein bei Verbrauchern

Elisabeth Frisch: "Ich zahle für 30 Cent für ein normales Brötchen."

Trotz der gestiegenen Preise zeigten die Verbraucher aber Verständnis, so der Obermeister, der feststellt, dass sich der Kunde zunehmend regionale Produkte wünsche. „Wir als Handwerksbetriebe arbeiten zum großen Teil mit regionalen Vermarktern“, wirbt Krimphove für die Gilde.

Simona Pohlschmidt: "Ich würde sagen 30 Cent, aber ich kaufe selten ein einzelnes Brötchen."

Verbraucher reagieren unterschiedlich auf die Brötchenpreispolitik. „Ich finde, das ist nicht mehr gerechtfertigt“, sagt Doris Kortmann . „Dann verzichte ich lieber auf das Brötchen.“ Ihre Schätzungen für ein normales Brötchen bewegen sich zwischen 30 und 32 Cent. Filipe Carvalho Garzia kann die Frage nach dem aktuellen Preis spontan nicht beantworten. „Ich habe keine Ahnung“, bekennt der junge Mann. Elisabeth Frisch dagegen kennt sich aus: 30 Cent. Und die Neumünsteranerin und ihr Mann kaufen längst nicht bei jedem Bäcker ein. Gezielt steuert das Ehepaar für Brötchen ein bestimmtes Geschäft an. Im Gegensatz zu Elisabeth Frisch kennen aber die wenigsten Verbraucher die genauen Brötchenpreise .

Heide Lubbe: "20 Cent? Ich weiß es nicht, ich achte nicht drauf."