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I'm a big fan of travelling on trains with my mountain bike.
I like the fact that it's generally lower carbon than other forms of transport, and I prefer travelling by train (when it goes ok) to just about any other form of transport too.
I much prefer travelling by train than flying. It's more picturesque, and it's more of an adventure than queueing repeatedly in an oversized shopping mall.
I've done the alps with my bike on a train, and that was a good adventure, from which I learned a lot (use a lightweight bike bag, and try and have the bike assembled for as much of the journey as possible).
I'm looking at my holidays for next year. I quite fancy trying Spain. But a bit of googling tells me that the apocalypse will happen if I try to take my bike (bagged or fully assembled) on a Spanish train.
Anyone got any experience on this? What was it like, lovely experience, or full on horror-story?
Done local trains in Malaga with a bike no problem. Learn some Spanish, ticket guy who helped me turned out to be a big BMX fan. Doubt he'd be as helpful without me trying to help in his language!
What did you do with your bike bag when you got off the train OP? This aspect has always stumped me and stopped me doing more international stuff by train.
We once did a bike holiday in Spain with bikes, became a nightmare on long distance ones as had to book humans and bikes on different services. Local services you can just take your bike. Why not try alsa bus, you can book a bike for 10 euros per journey, cheap as chips in advance, I book Valencia to Barcelona, 4 hours, for 5 euros. I have a Brompton but just put it in a big laundry bag.
@Blackflag, when I did it the last time, I was staying at a chalet, so just used a normal bike bag and left it in the garage along with all the people who'd flown. Since then I've bought a Ground Effect Tardis bag, which folds down to a compact size, so I can either put it in the bottom of a rucksack, or roll it up and fit it in a bike bag. I think that a few other companies also make some very lightweight bike bags/covers too.
My main lesson from doing it previously is that schlepping a full sized bike bag around train stations is a PITA, so next time I did it, I'd keep the bike assembled as much as possible, and use a lightweight bag.
The other option is to use RER trains only across France, that way you can keep your bike fully assembled, but it's much slower.