The Day Our Van Exploded: How We Cycled Home From the Dolomites With a 3 and 5 Year Old

When the family campervan breaks down in the Italian Dolomites and school starts again in ten days, most of us would be booking the quickest flight home. Not Cycle Sprog review panel member Dan and his family. 

When their eldest child, aged just five, asked "why don't we cycle home?", a breakdown turned into an adventure, combining a patchwork of trains through Italy, Austria and Germany with a ride along the Rhine and into the Netherlands to catch the ferry back to the UK. 

It's a lovely reminder that family cycling can open up options you never knew you had, and there's plenty here to inspire your own trip (planned or otherwise!).

About Dan and his family:

We are a family of four: Dan, Kate, Robyn (5) and Harry (3). We really started to cycle recreationally when Robyn was around a year old.

We could go on family adventures with her happily coming along in a trailer, and we felt as though we were being active. Over time we progressed to balance bikes, front seats, a double trailer and a tag-along, with plenty of adventures on all of them.

We are really fortunate that both our children enjoy cycling, can now pedal their own bikes independently, and love being outside.

We were in the Dolomites, having a lovely family holiday. We try to make the most of the holidays, and had been cycling, climbing, exploring and playing our way through Europe. We were just starting to plan our route home when there was a strange noise, and then nothing…

Once we had got over the immediate emotional reaction to the fact that our campervan would not be accompanying us back to the UK (the garage we were recovered to told us in no uncertain terms that they couldn't look at it for three weeks, and school was starting again in 10 days…), we began planning our route home.

Taking the train to Milan or Venice and then flying back (thankfully covered by our European breakdown cover) appeared to be the best option. Then, over breakfast (48 hours after the van broke down, and the day after hearing the garage couldn't do anything for three weeks), Robyn (5, and our eldest child) asked, "Why don't we cycle home?"

We had a week of holiday left and no better ideas, so I started Googling to see how realistic this might be. Cycling across the Alps and all the way home within the week we had wasn't immediately obvious, but it became a more realistic idea once we considered using trains to travel north, and then cycling from there to a ferry that could take us back to the UK.

We had to check out of the temporary accommodation the breakdown service had arranged by 11am, so we headed back to the van with a half-thought-through plan, and frantic action ensued.

The first challenge was that we were leaving the van with everything we had loaded into it for a whole summer, and packing the minimum amount of equipment we could take.

We also had to find a set of panniers in an Italian town - we only had one set with us, and needed two to pack the mandatory soft toys, as well as clothing, my laptop, swimming stuff... you can imagine. Panniers successfully purchased, ferry booked and paid for, trains vaguely researched, and we were off.

We had been taken to the Italian town of Brunico (also known as Bruneck), and from here we planned to use the local train service to reach Munich, before jumping on an intercity train from Munich to Düsseldorf the next day.

We had to use the local trains as there didn't appear to be a way to book same-day bike tickets on the intercity service, but we found a train from Munich the following day and booked the last two remaining cycle spaces to travel north (bike reservations are mandatory on the intercity services).

Immediately after arriving at the local station in Brunico, we found our first issue…

There was a replacement bus service, and they weren't taking bikes on the buses!

Feeling more and more like we were in the action sequence of an A-Team episode, we questioned our choices, then hopped on our bikes to pedal the 40km down the valley to where the trains were running from.

Arriving in Bressanone, having pedalled a lovely route down the valley (a highly recommended cycle path - perhaps less so when it's already past midday, you still have five connections to make to get to Munich and you're already slightly emotionally worn out), it was time to start the train shuffling.

First, a train up the Brenner Pass to the Austrian border, then a train down into Innsbruck, before three different local trains to Munich.

Add in the final train to Munich being full, the next one not leaving for an hour, and it already being later (much later!) than the children's usual bedtime, and we chose to split forces. I stayed behind, sending Kate, Robyn and Harry ahead to check in and find the hotel.

This was one of our more fraught moments, with Kate navigating herself and the children through the red light district to the hotel with 4% battery on her phone, and Harry (3) innocently commenting that one of the people stood in a doorway was Taylor Swift, thanks to the glittery outfit they were wearing. Meanwhile, I tried to manage two bikes, four panniers and platform changes…

Eventually we were reunited, and after a good hotel breakfast we were ready to jump on the train to Düsseldorf, with reservations, space for our bikes and a slightly more relaxed journey ahead!

From Düsseldorf we followed the Rhine north, using Booking.com to find cheap hotels that gave us targets to aim for.

A personal highlight of the trip was Kerkedom, where we stayed in a really quirky bar with a really friendly owner, who let the children have free rein on the instruments hanging around the bar.

This was at the end of the longest day in the saddle the children had ever done, having covered 80km to travel between affordable accommodation options!

So that it wasn't an 'only cycling' trip, we added in a couple of shorter days to allow us to visit a mini theme park, and used the local train to cover a bit of distance, before ending up in a lovely village called Weesp, just outside Amsterdam.

We had planned to head into Amsterdam the next day, but were enjoying the village so much that we stayed an extra day, before a big push to the ferry port, where we caught the overnight ferry back to Newcastle and Kate's dad collected us!

Other articles you might be interested in:

• England's Top 10 forests for family cycling
• Our first family cycle tour: five days in the Netherlands with a 3 and 5-year-old
• Cycling with kids: everything you need to get started
• Our family mountain biking holiday in south Wales
• Ridgeback Dimension 20 Review: How it coped with 850km of family cycle touring
• Cycling with disabled children: one family's story