Distance: 36.3 kilometres
Time: 1 hour 59 minutes
Speed: 18.2 km/h
Ascent: 110 metres
Total distance: 78 kilometres
Total time: 4 hours 17 minutes
Word of the day: Saarschleife: the Saar ‘bow’, the most famous river loop in Germany.
The Stoker writes:
We headed out for dinner in Saarlouis last night to a Mexican restaurant, where we made a rather poor effort at delicious but enormous portions of tacos and burritos. It was a lovely evening and we sat outside, listening to the somewhat unfamiliar sound of German spoken all around us.
We were early to bed after all the excitement of the first touring day in ages, and slept well – our room in the hotel overlooked the gardens and was incredibly quiet. With only 35 kilometres to ride today we surfaced slowly, and had a wonderful breakfast. I had quite forgotten how gorgeous German bread can be. The Captain also particularly enjoyed the delightfully named Fleichsalat…
Today’s route would take us north up the Saar river, as far as Mettlach. Now this is actually way further along the Saar than we need to go before we cross into the Mosel valley to continue our trip. Every guide to this area highly recommends visiting the Saarschliefe, though, the tight loop in the course of the river, famous as Germany’s most beautiful meander. So of course we had to go and see that!
We set off along the Alte Saar, a now cut-off section of the river, once again on a wonderfully quiet, dedicated cycle path. At least it was quiet until we rode around a downhill corner and encountered a huge group of elderly German couples pushing their heavy e-bikes up the other side. Cue a test of our brakes, and a lot of cheerful chatter from the Germans. Once we were clear of them the Captain observed that most of the people we have encountered so far on the cycle paths have been elderly couples. And after a moment of reflection, we concluded that we therefore probably fit in rather well!
We were both a bit creaky today after yesterday’s longest ride for months, with very sore sit bones, but we soon warmed up. Gilbert the Garmin, who guides our navigation, is working well, and has sprouted a few new features since our last trip. He warns about hazards that other riders have reported along your route, including dangerous potholes, obstructions and so on. Yesterday he tootled that there was an animal in the way shortly, which seemed unlikely, but when we got to the spot there was an enormous goose in the middle of the cycle path, and loads more loitering about! Saw some more today, although these were much calmer. With little chicks! I’m not sure what sort of geese they are, but they definitely honk rather than quacking.
The cycle path rejoined the Saar proper, and we bimbled happily along, enjoying the sunshine, the views, and the lack of traffic. We decided to stop and try out our new toy, a DJI Neo 2 drone. It worked perfectly!
We started to see various pleasure boats on the river, some tiny day boats, a scenic cruise boat, and more than one of these weird floating conservatory things:
They are probably gorgeous to holiday in, a lovely upper deck for lounging and dinner, what looked like a good kitchen, a bedroom upstairs with wrap-around glass windows, even a hammock at the front. Not pretty from the outside, though.
We spotted the Aussichtsturm from quite a few kilometres before the Saarschliefe. It’s a wooden spiral construction with walkways to take you up to the highest point from which you can look down over the loop in the river. Literally the ‘lookout tower’.
In Sarreguemines our hotel had a brochure of fifteen things not to miss in the area, including Orscholz, which lies above the meander with spectacular views down over it from the Aussichtsturm. The Captain had emerged from the bath there, where he had been reading the brochure, with it open at the Orscholz page. “We’ve got to go up here.”, he’d said, with a determined expression, “Bit of a climb…”.
So we’d rolled that into our return route for tomorrow, back past the meander on the high route, then down into the Mosel valley. Today we would ride past the start of the climb, which would give us a chance to check it out in advance.
As we neared the meander the number of people on the cycle path increased hugely, it’s really the only way to visit at river level, other than on the river itself. It was a gorgeous day to see it, blue skies, the green of the forest on the inside of the curve, the river flowing serenely round it. We gazed out at it, and took loads of photos, none of which probably do it justice. Definitely worth the detour today.
The adoration of the Saarschliefe complete, we rode on to our hotel for the night, just across the bridge from Mettlach. We’ve even got a view over the river.
That route up to the Aussichtsturm, though, is a complete non-starter – I think you’d need very good shoes to get up there on foot, and it’s definitely not designed for bikes! No problem, there’s a road instead which will get us up there tomorrow by a different route, slightly further but more doable. It’s going to be really hard, because we’ve done no climbing for ages, but we’ll give it a go!
Here’s today’s route:
…and a short video