Getting to the Wine Road

Flying into Strasbourg (SXB)

The easy answer, and if you're coming from the US with a bike box, the right one. It's a small airport — you'll be curbside twenty minutes after landing.

• With a bike box: taxi into Strasbourg (15 min), build your bike at the hotel, store the box for the week. Ride out to Marlenheim the next morning — 22 mostly-flat km, largely on the Canal de la Bruche cycleway. Treat it as your warm-up.
• With an assembled bike or just panniers: the airport has its own TER station. Trains toward Molsheim put you 10 flat km from Marlenheim without ever entering the city. Bikes ride free.
• No bike at all: if your rental delivers to Marlenheim, the line 230 bus runs from Strasbourg (Les Halles) to Marlenheim in about half an hour for a few euros. It won't take a full-size bike — folding bikes only — so it's for riders, not riders-with-bikes.

Flying into Frankfurt (FRA)

The big intercontinental door, and fine — with one hard rule: don't bring a bike box through Frankfurt. The direct Frankfurt–Strasbourg trains are TGV/ICE services that accept bikes only dismantled in a soft bag under 90 × 130 × 50 cm, and cardboard boxes are explicitly refused. If your bike travels in a box, fly to Strasbourg or Basel instead.

• With luggage only or a bagged bike: direct high-speed train Frankfurt → Strasbourg, about 1 h 45. The bag rides free as luggage.
• With an assembled bike: the regional route. ICE from Frankfurt Airport's long-distance station toward Basel as far as Offenburg (book a bike space with your ticket), then the Ortenau S-Bahn across the Rhine into Strasbourg — regional trains on both sides take bikes without fuss.

Arriving via Paris

TGV Paris Est → Strasbourg, 1 h 46. The bike question decides everything else:

• Bagged bike: free, no reservation, goes in the luggage space. The stress-free option.
• Assembled bike: only some TGVs carry bike spaces — four per train, €10, reserved when you buy your ticket. Three or four departures a day have them. Book early or bring the bag.
• Landing at CDG: check for direct TGVs from the airport's own station before you commit to crossing Paris. Hauling a bike box between Paris stations is the worst hour of anyone's trip; some days you can skip it entirely.

Basel / Zurich

Here's the thing nobody tells you: Basel is 40 minutes from Thann — the finish line. If you live in Switzerland or southern Germany, ride the route as designed, north to south, and you finish almost at home: Thann's tram-train connects to Mulhouse, and Mulhouse to Basel.

Getting to the start:

• From Basel: direct TER to Strasbourg, about 1 h 20, bikes free — but this corridor bans full-size bikes on weekdays 6:00–8:30 and 16:00–18:30. Travel mid-day.
• From Zurich airport: SBB to Basel (~1 h), then as above. On Swiss trains your bike needs a bike ticket (the bike day pass is CHF 15), and from late March to the end of October intercity services require a bike space reservation — on the Zurich–Basel line, Friday to Sunday.
• The same peak-hour rule matters again on your last day: finishing in Thann and training back on a weekday? Be out of the Mulhouse–Basel–Strasbourg corridor before 16:00 or after 18:30.

Starting from Germany by train

Two rules cover every city below: regional trains take assembled bikes happily (a Deutschlandticket plus a bike day ticket covers the whole German leg), while the cross-border TGV/ICE services take bikes only dismantled in a bag under 90 × 130 × 50 cm. Everything funnels through two doors — Offenburg in the north (short Ortenau S-Bahn hop across the Rhine to Strasbourg), Basel in the south.

• Cologne, Mannheim, Karlsruhe: the Rhine ICE corridor runs direct to Offenburg — book a bike space on the ICE, then the regional hop to Strasbourg. Mannheim and Karlsruhe also have direct TGVs to Strasbourg: faster, but bagged bikes only.
• Stuttgart: direct TGV to Strasbourg in about 1 h 20, bag only. With an assembled bike, regional via Karlsruhe and Offenburg.
• Freiburg: closest of all, and the Basel logic is yours too — the route ends practically in your neighborhood. Up to the start: regional to Basel and the TER onward, or the scenic option — train to Breisach and a flat ride across the Rhine plain to Colmar.
• Munich: the long haul. Direct TGV in about 3½–4 h with a bagged bike; with an assembled bike it's IC/ICE to Karlsruhe with a bike reservation, then regional onward — budget most of a day.

Driving in

Park in Strasbourg or Colmar for the week rather than Marlenheim — otherwise you finish 146 km from your car. Colmar is the smarter base: it sits near the route's midpoint, works as a bail-out if plans change, and the train back from Thann is shorter.

• Where to leave the car: use a staffed or barrier parking garage near the station — in both cities the station garages sell multi-day and weekly rates, cheaper booked online in advance than at the barrier. Covered, camera-monitored, and next to the platform you'll return to.
• What not to do: the tram park-and-ride lots are built for commuter days, not week-long stays, and free street parking in the old towns is zoned, time-limited, and enforced with enthusiasm. A garage week is the cheapest insurance of your trip.
• The return: trains from Thann run back via Mulhouse — roughly 50 minutes to Colmar, 1 h 20 to Strasbourg. Remember the weekday bike ban on this corridor between 16:00 and 18:30 if your bike's coming home with you.
• Starting out: from either city, reach Marlenheim by the same options as everyone else — TER toward Molsheim plus a 10 km spin, or ride the canal cycleway from Strasbourg.