Distance: 52.2 kilometres
Time: 2 hours 36 minutes
Speed: 20.1 km/h
Ascent: 99 metres
Total distance: 348 kilometres
Total time: 19 hours 31 minutes
Word of the day: Etappenzielerreichung: reaching the end of a section of a journey
The Stoker writes:
Our little hotel was right on the cycle path, very close to the river. The very cheerful owner showed us to a wonderfully cool room with a balcony overlooking the river and the castle. We headed straight down to the hotel’s shady café for a drink, and there he was again serving behind the busy counter. It was just like Denis Lawson’s character Urquhart in the film Local Hero!
We’d decided we would eat early in the café rather than trekking along the river to find a restaurant in Cochem itself. The café closed at 6pm, but the owner said if we’d ordered by 5:45 that would be fine, and we’d had an early start, so it all seemed very acceptable. We trotted down in our civvies at the appointed hour and had a lovely simple dinner, including ćevapčići for the Captain, a dish of Slovenian sausages we’d had in Ljubljana earlier in the year. There was also goulash soup on the menu. I asked the owner why they were on the menu amongst all the more German dishes, and he explained that his wife was from Slovenia. When I said we’d had ćevapčići in Ljubljana, she said that’s exactly where she was from! They’d been in Germany for many years, so their German was much better than mine, but we did OK, all speaking someone else’s language! I have found German easier to remember as we’ve gone along, just being in a country and hearing its language spoken around you all the time always really helps the memory of long ago lessons!
We took our bottle of local Riesling back to our balcony and tried to stay awake long enough to see the castle light up as it got dark, but it was a struggle. We were entertained by two elderly Dutch couples playing cards jovially on the next door balcony. At one point one of them let out an enormous fart, and they all giggled helplessly like children, which was very funny.
The Captain got up in the night to see the castle in full darkness, by which time unfortunately they’d switched it off! Not a bad photo from twilight, though…
Up betimes this morning, and we were straight onto the cycle path after a good breakfast in the hotel. We’d really enjoyed our time there, a warm welcome in a simple but well-run place.
This would be our last day on the Mosel, as we followed it to its confluence with the Rhein at Koblenz, at the ‘Deutsches Eck’, the so-called ‘German corner’.
We were both a little troubled today, thinking of the Captain’s Mum, who had been taken into hospital after a fall. News came through at around the half-way mark that things were under control, which was a great relief. Huge thanks to the Captain’s siblings, Phil and Jenny, who both stepped in to support her initially, and to the NHS as usual, who are busy putting her back together in their unflappable way. We have so much to be grateful for…
We tried to concentrate on what we were doing, for our own safety and that of everyone else on the cycle path, although there were many fewer people around today, perhaps because we are past the most beautiful stretch of the river now. It has been jaw-droppingly lovely for several days, and it started pretty well today, with a fabulous view of Cochem and the Reichsburg in the sunshine.
For most of the day we were between the road and the river, still meandering, but less tightly now as it approached its end. The railway line was also squashed into the narrow valley floor, and we saw several incredibly long freight trains. As the end of one of these monsters passed us, I noted where the front of the train was, and when we reached that point on the road I calculated that we’d done half a kilometre. A five hundred metre long train! We also saw little passenger trains, and this is how we will travel back to our start point to collect the car in a few days – it will be a very scenic journey, just as we have had, but much quicker!
There were many scenic boats trips pootling along the river today, and I even managed to get a wave from some people on one of them.
Mostly, though, we were tapping along lost in our thoughts of home, keeping up a good pace, but also aware that the temperature was ramping up. We stopped often to quaff water from our ever warmer bidons.
The parts where the cycle path was next to the road were quite wearing, we were separated from the traffic, and felt very safe, but there was constant traffic noise. We did manage a short section through the vineyards, which was much more tranquil. Some of the steeper vineyards have these amazing rack and pinion systems which must be used during harvest to get the grapes down to the bottom of the vineyard. Very clever.
As we neared Koblenz, the valley sides became shallower, the river wider, and the landscape more urban. Coming into a big city can be really horrible, but Koblenz was just fine, really, a separate cycle path over the big bridge onto the Deutsches Eck.
We realised that what we could see up ahead must be the bank of the Rhein now. So we’ve completed two of our three rivers.
Tomorrow we will cycle down the Rhein as far as Bacharach, where I went on a school German trip when I was a teenager. I’m not sure how much of it will look familiar, but I’m really looking forward to it.
Here’s today’s route:
…and a short video