July 11, 2022
Bernkastel-Kue to Cochem
wine villages by the dozen
I don't know how to do this section justice. There are so many cute towns along the way, many of them hyphenated (some just amalgamated, and some are across the river from each other), and you can only have so many espressos watching the world go by if you want to get to your next stop! For the most part, I will just show photos of these towns to give you a flavour without even identifying some of them.
We had decided to mostly follow the river today, with one "cut" across a loop of the river that subtracted about 10 km. I didn't tell Marjory about it beforehand. Risky, I know. The thing is, we only went 26 km today as the crow flies, and 70 km, as the bike rides. It would have been 80 if we had kept solely to the river. Let's see how that turned out...
We started across the bridge at Bernkastel-Kues almost right away; you can clearly see the theme for today is "grapes".
The river was quiet, the sky was overcast. It was cool and a glorious day to ride.
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Now I know I have mentioned that there must be lots of $$ in this wine business, but there is nothing that says money like being able to use helicopters to fertilize (or spray pesticides). Wow!
There were a number of flea markets and biergartens along the route this morning. This particular one was a little strange, first because they were flying a Canadian flag, and second because it was upside down. Nobody I asked knew why its orientation was thus.
Have I mentioned campgrounds? There are so many, its amazing as you know this land is pretty expensive. What a great view to wake up to!
Although Riesling is king here, and a few other white grapes are grown, to see red grapes growing was a shock. This was a small patch near an industrial building, so hardly a major undertaking. I am guessing Pinot Noir, but don't really know.
late edit: sharp-eyed reader Beth (thanks Beth!) pointed out that these are probably red currants, not grapes. Now that you mention it....
Marjory has a new way of telling if somebody has an eBike or not. It used to be that eBikes always had their lights on, but not any more. She says the main way to tell.....clothing. It was cool this morning, and we had only our polyester shirts on while the eBikers were bundled up.
Incidentally, the ratio of eBikers is well over 50% - maybe 80%. There is no doubt the cycle paths are much busier because of this.
The cute towns weren't just on one side, they seemed to alternate so there wasn't really a "best side" to ride. In general, I would say the towns were on the opposite side to the vineyards. This is because the grapes are preferentially grown on the slopes, where the towns like it flat. Just my theory.
We at lunch at Pumerich, since we were going to take the ferry across at that point and the ferry wouldn't be running for another 1/2 hour. Why did we cross at this point? Because Komoot told us to.
These chairs were seen all along here, and we tried them out a few times. They were a cross between lounge chairs and a Muskoka (or Adirondack) chair. Very comfortable! Marjory here is waiting on the ferry.
Once Mr Ferryman had HIS lunch, the ferry started up again at 1pm and we were the first across. One euro each, and 2 euros for each bike. He had a hard time getting free of the dock landing, maybe because there is usually more weight up front. We need to start eating more at lunch.
I have spoken numerous times about the steepness of the vineyards, and how the heck do they pick those grapes. The slope here was getting ridiculous, as the grapes were planted almost right above each other. As we tried to make sense of this, we came across the following device which explained it all. The MCGPP - magic carpet grape picking platform! This motorized device would whisk you up to whatever level you needed to go - like a Swiss cog train. Once you are there, you still have to navigate along the row to the grape you wanted to pick but at least you didn't have to climb.
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2 years ago
The cute towns came fast and furious now, as you would be just out of sight of one and the next one was there. No wonder they had to hyphenate so often.
Then a variation: a cute town with a castle above it!
That's just about the time when Komoot announced a left turn - up. It had been planned (by me) to cut about 10+ km off the route, and I sincerely hoped it would be well received by all involved....
So we start grinding our way up - have I mentioned that the Rohloff hub has 14 gears and you can choose your gear ratio? And that we chose the low one to make hills easier? Well, we were in gear 2 most of the way up, but we made it and the view was fantastic. We could see the way we would have gone if we had continued along the river and now we could ride down the other side, omitting a big loop
Smiles all around as we figured we did a smart thing. Plus we are going down now!
One uber cute town is Trahan-Trarbach, which strangely enough has a Buddha museum. We did not stop and peruse it, but it appears to be also a hyphenated version with 1/2 of it ancient stone and 1/2 of it glass and steel.
I mentioned that I chose Cochem for the night from Bing images, right? So I was anxious that the town would out-cute the ones we had passed. The bar was set pretty high.
So here's a few pics of this town, a real gem. Only about 5,000 residents, and they didn't feel the need to hyphenate for some reason.
This type of construction has been common in the Mosel valley as that slate which gives the wine its mineral taste is used as the base material. I loved the archways in town made of it.
Just about every view included a peek of the castle above.
We had dinner at a Mexican food place actually, and it was really good. You might think it strange not to eat German food, but beer and brat gets old after a while....
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Tomorrow is castle day. By popular demand, I won't skip the journal just because we are sightseeing. Get ready for castle pics!
Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 1,298 km (806 miles)
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