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The Trip Map (700kb)

July 8, 2004 - A cycling trip was born !

The TRIP was originally intended to be in April. It was to be a car tour of northern France– Normandy, Loire, Champagne and Alsace – but a comedy of errors put paid to that idea, so with tickets in hand and six weeks remaining until our departure (September 3, 2004) we decided on a self guided bike tour instead.

July 15, 2004 -Shop for bicycles

I had not owned a bike for fifteen years (nor ridden one), and Mary’s was a good, solid, steel-frame hybrid that weighed in at 45 lbs with no luggage. First item: two new bikes. We made a fast visit to four bicycle stores – each store had exactly three models to suit us with identical pricing. The price difference of the models determined which Shimano component package was installed on the bike – the frame was the same. We chose mid-price range Marin Larkspur bikes, added lights, bell, mirror, bar ends, rear rack, kickstand, water bottle holders, fenders, and tire pump. Mary went down to the store (Foster's Sports) with her kitchen scales and weighed each component that went on the bikes – and then bought 60 litre panniers, the biggest they had so she could to take her pillow …

The Plan

“I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable” – Dwight Eisenhower

Planning for the trip was aided greatly by the advice of Charles Hansen’s page (http://www.sheldonbrown.com/euhansen.html). This proved to be invaluable as a good, practical guide and is highly recommended to neophytes (like us) planning their first self-guided tour.

The big picture was to fly into Amsterdam, take the train to Cologne, and then bike in 50km legs to Colmar (Alsace). Our intent was to bike up the Rhine from Cologne to Eltville (just shy of Mainz), leave the Rhine to continue south along the Weinstrasse (“wine road”) through Bad Durkheim and Wissembourg into France, on to Strasbourg and then to Colmar. Our ultimate objective was the village of Eguisheim about 7 km outside Colmar, for a total distance of 500 km. If we made it that far we’d rest our legs and play the return by ear; if we didn’t, we would park ourselves in a vineyard along the route and send postcards saying we’d made it to Switzerland! We decided to go “up” the Rhine rather than “down” for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was the north-to-south direction of the prevailing wind in the Rhine valley, which we judged would compensate for the slightly rising elevation .

The Maps

We followed Charles Hansen’s advice and used 1:200,000 scale maps obtained locally (as a matter of preference, the Michelin maps were the easiest to work with). These were scanned, enlarged and colour printed on legal-sized paper. Scanning was much more work than simply photocopying but has the advantage of re-usability, etc.

We read about the excellent maps produced by ADFC, the German cycling federation, but could not find a North American source for them. I tried ordering them over the internet, poking my way through the German web site to the point where I was filling in my shipping address, only to find that the list of selectable countries was limited to Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. C’est la vie, we’d buy them en route.

I also dusted off my old Hugh Johnson’s wine atlas which significantly influenced our route planning. As it turned out, our basic route along the Rhine took us right along the Rheingau, Germany’s premier wine region on the right bank of the Rhine between Bingen and Mainz. Also it influenced the decision to leave the Rhine at Mainz – the scenic Weinstrasse through the Rheinpfalz (another wine region of superior quality) sounded much more appealing than the industrialized section from Mainz to Mannheim.

Security

While getting our bikes tuned before departure, I ended up with a Kryptonite U-lock locked around my frame and no key (another comedy of errors known only to the immediate participants). My initial attempt to relieve myself of this burden was to attack it with my jigsaw fitted with metal-cutting blades. After 15 minutes of high speed cutting, I had worn down the teeth on my first blade and literally had not even scratched the surface of the Kryptonite lock. I was impressed – with the lock, that is. In a stroke of brilliance, Mary and I took it to Princess Auto, an excellent Canadian chain that sells industrial-quality equipment including tempered steel chain. A cheerful young man put our lock in their hydraulic chain cutter and cut through it in a matter of seconds. He also told us about Ski Totes, combination locks with retractable wire loops that had resisted all his attempts to cut them. We figured we could follow the advice of anyone who cut metal for a living and entrusted his $3000 mountain bike to the security of these devices. The local ski supply shops didn’t stock them in mid-August when we needed them, but Mary was able to find an equivalent product (Kryptonite) on the net.

Training

The bulk of our training was local, flat runs between 30 and 50 km, generally stopping for a fast water break at the half way point. Then we tried the Gatineau hills. One Sunday morning climbing these “mountains” to the highest lookout point was a sobering experience – we both slept very well that night. To be honest, we both had been spinning for a year or two before planning the trip, so we did have some cardio and endurance training under our belts before we started. (Our spinning instructor, Julie Fine from the JCC Ottawa (http://www.jcca.org/HPER.html), took a particularly sadistic delight in the classes prior to departure.) However wind, hills, rain, sun, and continuous long term bouncing in the saddle were unknown to us.

The weekend before departure we did a trip run fully loaded in the hot sun (note to self: apply sun screen early in the day), and then practiced braking down hills the next morning in the rain. There was very little difference in bike handling with the load while in motion. The biggest difference was manhandling them over steps (the back end sits like an anchor) or leaving them free-standing on the kickstand (the front end pivots).

During our last week we also started adjusting our body clocks for the 6 hour time difference. Every day (in principle) we went to bed and got up an hour earlier. By the morning of departure we were getting up at 3:00 am. We’ve done this a couple of times going to Europe and it works for us – it means we don’t lose a day to jet lag on arrival.

Airlines ------------------photos Sept. 3rd

Our bikes were checked as oversized luggage at no extra cost by the airlines – outbound they were put in large plastic bags, inbound in boxes (which we had to purchase). The bikes suffered on both journeys, particularly the rear derailleurs. On future trips I will do some careful packing to protect sensitive parts from unwelcome bumps.

Day 1 (Amsterdam – Arnhem) Sept. 4th

The airlines managed to lose Mary’s panniers on the flight over from Ottawa (major consternation). Fortunately we were spending three days with friends in Arnhem (100 km east of Amsterdam), otherwise this would have been a serious setback. When purchasing train tickets at Schipol I asked about our bikes (I had read about special bike cars on European trains). The answer was “Keep your bikes with you – we like to steal them from you.”

Day 2 (Arnhem) – 30 kms -----------------Photos Sept. 5th

Our friends took us on a bike ride through Nationale Park de Hoge Veluwe, a local nature reserve adjacent to Arnhem – pine forest, tall grasses, fields of heather and sand dunes – to the Kruller-Muller Museum tucked in the woods. It was established as a result of the bequethel of the wife of a wealthy industrialist who had the taste and means to acquire outstanding art. The woodlands setting of this gallery with its fine collection of Renoirs, Serats, Van Goughs, etc is a welcome relief from the standard city crush. We could not have navigated our way there without local guides or very detailed maps.

Day 3 (Arnhem) – 10 kms Sept.6th

Preparation in and around Arnhem. Our friend Henry applied his engineering skills to repair my mirror which had been broken on the flight over.

Day 4 (Arnhem – Cologne or Köln) - train ----------------- Photos Sept. 7th

Although there are direct trains from Arnhem to Cologne, bicycles are not allowed on them so we had to take four different trains to make this leg of the trip. Amazingly we did not miss a connection, although negotiating the bikes with fully loaded panniers was a true challenge (this is one example of where front panniers would be a advantage to balance the load on the bike). There was one slightly tense moment when we crossed into Germany and three intent young men climbed into our car at the back of the train. Thankfully they ignored us but set to searching the luggage of passengers in the next car, presumably for drugs being brought over from Holland.

Cologne itself was kind to us. It took three attempts to figure out the automated locker system at the train station to store our panniers but we were then free to explore. There is a bookstore in the train station that has a good selection of maps of Germany on the second floor, including the ADFC bike maps.

I bought all the ones they had in stock that I thought we would need. The local tourist information office booked us a room in a hotel where we could lock up in an underground garage.

The Cologne cathedral is truly awesome both in size and details. You could spend days in this cathedral and not be bored. We and all the other tourists milled about taking pictures and stretching our necks to look upwards. An organ played an occasional melody, though we couldn’t see the organist. An elderly priest stood by a rope barrier at the transept, nodding to local parishioners as he let them pass to enter a small chapel off to the side of the main altar. We approached but he was quite firm in refusing us admittance – tourists were definitely not welcome. When mass in the side chapel started Mary walked up to the main altar rail to listen, trying to identify the part of the liturgy from the cadence of the words. She asked the rope guardian “German?”, to which he replied, “Cathlische?” and the barrier opened. Here in the smaller chapel one had a closer sense of what the majesty of the main cathedral would have once been, with its gilding, the Eucharist, the minor embellishments. The rails for kneeling were unpadded wood and it seemed a lot of kneeling was required, but (to paraphrase Henri IV) Cologne is worth a mass. When mass finished at 7:00 pm the setting sun shone straight through stained glass windows and down the entire length of the nave – it must have been built on a true east-west axis –– an inspiring experience.

Part of the history of Köln is worth mentioning. Around the time of Christ Köln was a large Roman base camp, the northern-most along the Rhine frontier and the base of Rome’s Rhine fleet. In A.D. 9 Quintilius Varus, an apparently vain and pompous soul, was newly appointed as governor. Arminius, a young German noble, had been raised in Rome but was repelled by its dissolute habits. He persuaded the German tribes on the other side of the river to put aside their personal feuds and join in an organized revolt against the imperial power. Through guile and deceit Arminius lured Quintilius Varus out of Köln to put down a staged uprising, and in three rainy days of battle destroyed the XVII, XVIII and XIX legions. For years after Augustus the emperor was heard shouting at night, “Varus! Varus! Give back my legions, Varus!” He decreed to his successors that Rome should not expand beyond the Rhine, and the areas of modern day France and Germany did fall under a common ruler for another 800 years. Armchair historians suggest that had Rome been able to advance beyond the Rhine to the river Elbe, her interior lines of defence would have been shortened by thousands of miles and the empire easier to defend. The battle of Teutobergenwald is considered one of the decisive battles of western civilization (for a pedantic, 1930’s-style paper on this battle see http://www.standin.se/fifteen05a.htm). Most of Köln’s Roman legacy was lost in the bombing of WW II. Pretty much the entire city was destroyed with the exception of the cathedral.

A few kilometres of strolling led us to a sidewalk bistro for supper where portions were at least generous. We had trouble finding a store to buy a bottle of wine (a recurring problem throughout Germany except in the wine producing regions) – there are apparently only two wine shops in downtown Cologne. The one we found was not only open but boasts a selection of high quality if unusual chocolate (e.g. milk chocolate with sea salt and lemon, dark chocolate with a hint of hot red pepper). If you, like Mary, are a chocolate fiend, be forewarned – chocolate is a rarity in Germany, at least on the paths we travelled.

Day 5 (Cologne – Bad Bodendorf/Sinzig) – 58 kms ------------------photos Sept. 8th

Our first true day of biking! We were blessed with weather – warm summer sunshine. With the help of a city cycling map for Cologne (newly purchased) we were able to find a route to the river with ease. There is a long loop in the Rhine south of Cologne which we could have followed but chose instead to take a more direct path through a wooded area. This worked well except I missed the small turn to take us back to the river bank (it was under a fold in the map) - we ended up on a bicycle lane adjacent to fast-moving highway to Bonn. A local woman returning home with her shopping went at least five kilometres out of her way to guide us back to the Rhine. We would have liked to stop and get a photo of a massive array of solar panels but it was all we could do to keep up with her. I noticed that the village street she turned onto was “Rheinstrasse” – a good street name to remember in any town or village along the route. We left her breathing heavily on a bench at the river’s edge.

It was when leaving Cologne that we realized Mary’s odometer was not functioning. We had reset its readings to zero and now had no reading at all. There’s only so long you stand on sidewalk re-reading an instruction pamphlet - we elected start pedalling. It so happens there are distance markers along the shore of the Rhine every kilometre (in tenths, no less). We were passing Bonn when I realized their significance and noted “657” as a distance reference.

The bike path along this section of the Rhine requires no maps – it runs right along the river bank, and where it rarely deviates the route is generally well signed. In the sunshine it was marvellous riding, kilometre after kilometre of trees, fields, houses and gardens. Lunch was a fast picnic under a willow tree of meats and cheeses taken from the hotel breakfast, and then on to Sinzig, our objective. Sinzig itself has no accommodation for visitors. A baker on the outskirts had her two young sons guide us to a Croatian restaurant which lets rooms (I took no notice en route of the young woman who happened to stroll topless onto her balcony). We gave each of the boys two euros for their trouble which made them both extremely happy, but the rooms were far over priced so we parked ourselves at a delicatessen to consider our options (“Les Olives”, Bachovenstraße 10 – worth a visit if in Sinzig).

The proprietess of “Les Olives” speaks only slightly more English than we speak German, but together we managed to arrange an excellent plate and a bottle of local wine. (I will digress here. The Ahr valley is the only region of Germany that produces only red wine. The grape variety is spätburgunder, pinot noir to the rest of the world, and the wine is lighter than the French product from the same grape. I know this because I read it in Hugh Johnson.) The bottle was excellent, and while we were enjoying it the lady had one of her customers (who spoke very good English) direct us to Bad Bodendorf, a small adjacent village slightly inland with more rooms to let. (She also mentioned Ahrweiler as the town to visit in the Ahr valley if you are interested in trying the local wine.) Here we found a wonderful room in Gäusthaus Bauer, scrupulously clean and tastefully decorated (modern, not quaint). We finished our bottle on the balcony by candlelight.

A note regarding this area. Remagen, the town prior to Sinzig, has hotels right on the Rhine, but these appeared to cater to tour buses so we decided to pass (we had read about freight trains thundering by all night). The Ahr river itself is not much more than a stream, but the ride alongside it was very pleasant – I expect a side trip up the Ahr could be a worthwhile diversion, particularly if you are partial to red wines.

Day 6 (Bad Bodendorf – Koblenz) – 40 kms ----------------photos Sept. 9th

There’s nothing like a great breakfast to start a day on the road! A short ride down the Ahr brought us back to the Rhine and another excellent day of sunshine. Sunscreen was applied, the path was smooth, barges plied the river alongside, towns and villages slipped by.

We stopped at a baker’s in one of the villages along the route and made a selection of healthy-looking wafers full of nuts (delicious). We also wanted some bread, said “brot” in our horrible German and pointed to what looked like a bun in the display case. The woman behind the counter laughed and pointed us over to the breads at the side of the bakery, and said that we were pointing at was a “berliner”, a kind of jelly-filled doughnut. Berliners were the object of much hilarity when, in the early 1960’s, John F. Kennedy flew into Berlin after the airlift and declared every man proud who could say “Ich bin ein berliner!”

There is a town where the path leaves the river to circle an industrial area and here we lost the trail. However we were next to a local supermarket, so I picked up a bottle of Riesling for the princely sum of one euro ( 99 cents actually) – at that price we could afford to throw it away. After one or two false turns (“hunt and peck”) we were back on the path with no significant loss of time. Our picnic lunch on a bench by the trail was once again pickings from the breakfast table, and the Riesling was actually quite good – not much depth of flavour, but a good balance of acidity and sweetness. Waste was not a concern.

Most villages in this area have hotels right on the waterfront, and it seems that in each of them there was at least one “Hotel Anker”, the same as we expect to see “Pine Inn” in small town Ontario. Koblenz was a bit tricky getting into without a city map, but following the signs to “Zentrum” took us to the bridge over the Mosel and into downtown. Our room (referred by the tourist office) was not exactly pleasant (clean as always) – it was only a few blocks from the rail line, and there seemed to be a lot of rail traffic through the night. The city itself held little attraction. I would not recommend it, although the equestrian statue at the Deutsche Eke can only be described as “monumental” – it is massive.

Here we realized that we really are not fond of cities, and decided in future to stay in villages or smaller towns instead. Our evening meal however was very good – shank of lamb with ratatouille and an English-speaking waitress – with a number of interesting views around the plaza to photograph from our table.

Day7 (Koblenz - Oberwesel) – 55 kms Sept. 10th

Koblenz was at least easy to navigate out of – we simply went down to the Deutsche Eke and turned upstream along the river. Another absolutely perfect day of weather – sunny with a slight breeze - the path was excellent, well marked, well maintained. It is at Koblenz that the Rhine narrows into the “gorge”, and castles start to appear on either bank. Most of these are in a state of repair with bits of scaffolding hanging around the exterior or cranes hovering overhead. It’s better than having them crumble and decay but it does make them less picturesque – I expect in ten years the gorge will look fabulous.

One of my objectives was the Marksburg, a castle on the right bank (opposite us). This castle is the only one that is truly authentic along the gorge, the rest having been destroyed by the French in various wars (notably the wars of the Palatinate Succession – Louis IV claimed the area for France after marrying a sibling to the ruler of the Palatinate who died without a male heir) and rebuilt during Germany’s romantic craze of the early 1800’s with all the embellishments popular at the time. This was a decision of practicality – there are no bridges across the Rhine between Koblenz and Mainz, the highway on the opposite side runs right along the bank, and the cycling path is not paved. We waved as we rode past on the left bank . (A note to avoid confusion. The “left” bank of a river is the one on your left when facing downstream. We were pedalling upstream on the left bank, therefore the river was on our left side.)

We made a mid-morning stop in another sleepy village for a cup of coffee (our Koblenz breakfast was adequate but no more), and sat at a table where we could keep an eye on the bikes. Mary watched the fellow behind the counter pull out a Nescafe coffee tin and said in horror, “Instant coffee!” Not so. It was made with one of the sealed containers that work so well in a European espresso machine – a nice, frothy, hot cup of black coffee.

The gorge itself becomes increasingly dramatic as you move upstream. It is here that vineyards begin, the vines planted up the face of the slopes at angles that seem impossible to work – at times the slope must be at least 45 degrees. Somewhere around Spay the cycle path starts a gradual decline that I’m sure extends for miles to Bacharach and beyond. We had long gentle coasts, although the folks coming from the opposite direction had the wind to their backs so I guess all things even out in the end (wasn’t the direction of the prevailing wind supposed to be north-to-south?).

We cruised onto Boppard along the waterfront and past all the tourist shops with their wares on display. At Weingut Konigshof (we liked the staircase) we asked for a bottle of local wine. The lady behind the counter explained that not only was the wine local, it was their own and suggested a Riesling. (This is when I realized what a “weingut” is – the outlet of a local wine maker.) We found a stone table right at the water’s edge in the shade of a tree, drew the cork, ate our sandwiches and watched the river flow. The breeze was soft, the company excellent, the wine refreshing, the food satisfying – there are worse ways to spend a day.

Late in the afternoon road construction forced us from the path and onto the highway. Fortunately the road narrowed so much that one-way traffic lights had been put in place, and in a pregnant pause when both directions of traffic were stopped we were able to advance the full length of the repairs and return to the path.

St. Goar is one of the more popular tourist attractions along the gorge. It is just downstream of the Loreley, a large outcrop of rock with treacherous currents and a siren-like legend of a damsel singing sailors to their watery graves. We did not stop – the crush of tour buses along the waterfront kept us pedalling.

Every year there are fireworks up and down the Rhine, marketed as the “Rhine on Fire”. Various towns host the fireworks through the summer, and from our rough planning we knew we had the potential of being in the village of Oberwesel on its scheduled Saturday night. The local tourist office told us there were only rooms in town for one night, Friday (our day of arrival), but wait! there was an apartment that could be rented for three days (no breakfast). Mary made the inspection, it was splendid, and we made the decision to stay put. Luck. It turned out the night of our arrival was also the start of the week-long Oberwesel wine festival. The apartment was directly above the main street and our landlady asked us a couple times whether we really wanted to stay 3 nights, giving directions to where we could buy ear plugs. There’s no such thing as a problem I say, just an opportunity.

Oberwesel has a lovely church above the town along the line of the old ramparts that is worth the walk (not the Rotkirche, but St. Martin’s at the other end of town). It was one of those lesser discoveries that make travel so interesting. We spent some peaceful moments among its delicate murals and finely carved wooden altar.

A village wine festival is quite an event for a visitor coming from an environment in which liquor consumption is highly regulated (Ontario). It doesn’t take place to attract tourists – there wasn’t a tour bus in sight – it’s for the people in the immediate vicinity. The business of the village is wine, and every person of every age for miles around was at that festival. By dusk all the local weinguts had their booths set up – a counter across the front, a list of their offerings, rows of tables and benches behind them, glasses at the ready. They charge by the glass (you pay a euro deposit if you want to wander with the glass while sipping). There’s no such thing as a problem, just an opportunity. We sampled randomly from booth to booth, trying different grape varieties, vintages, different degrees of sweetness. We ate snacks from the food vendors, watched the young kids climbing up on stage and dancing while the live band played. It was all very friendly, nicely spirited with an atmosphere of conviviality. Families came together and drifted apart, grandparents played with their grandchildren, parents chatted, young adults swaggered slightly, but no one was out of control, no police were to be seen – it was just lots of good fun.

We were asleep by the time the third brass band started playing.

Day 8 (Oberwesel) – 10 kms ------------------photos Sept. 11th

German breakfasts of wurst (sausage) and cheeses are nicely filling, but it is a pleasure to be able to make one’s self a good cheese omelette for a change of pace. We found a local computer store that was open that Saturday morning and had them burn a CD of our digital photos. To keep ourselves in motion we brought the bicycles up from the cellar and tackled a small side road above the church we had visited the previous evening. This turned out to be a lesson in reading the contour lines on a map. A route on which contour lines bunch together rapidly is best avoided. Even without our packs the 10% grade was too steep, and while we don’t mind walking up, the descent was nerve wracking (we’re really quite timid riders). Some things are best learned early on in a trip. That evening Mary cooked a supper of chicken breast and mushrooms with a crème fraiche sauce and fresh dill - I confess it was the best meal so far.

A point of interest: groceries in Europe are expensive. Our observation is based on grocery shopping (mostly in Germany and Holland) for the same food products we buy in Canada. Food in Europe is at least half again as expensive. It cost as much to prepare this supper as the equivalent meal in a restaurant (although it would not have been nearly as good). This was true for practically all food commodities, except sweets which cost only half as much. I don’t know who is supposed to benefit from the European Common Agricultural Policy, but it certainly isn’t the consumer.

The kitchen in our Oberwesel apartment is worth mentioning. Think of a 6 foot closet measuring about 2 feet deep by 4 feet wide with four doors – two on top, two on bottom. When these doors are closed the unit appears to be an ordinary linen closet. When opened there is a fridge, sink, stove top, microwave, dishes, cups, glasses, cutlery and cleaning supplies, all self-contained in this one unit. The only appliances missing were an oven and a dishwasher. This is one very clever Ikea product.

The crowd on Saturday night, the night of the fireworks, was decidedly younger and more frenetic than the previous evening. It wasn’t quite a crush down on the street, but it took some skill and persistence to manoeuvre among the booths and down to the entertainment stage. There were different bands this night (extremely good bands), the queen of the festival was crowned with appropriate words from appropriate people, and a poem recited which drew applause from the crowd. All the while a brass band kept playing up the street.

Around 9:00 pm we drifted with the crowd down to the river where benches had been set up. All the seats were taken so we took some stone steps down to the water’s edge. Just as we found some smooth rocks to sit on, a flotilla of cruise ships strung with lights appeared around a bend in the gorge, coming upstream with their loads of passengers. There must have been 50 ships at least. The sight of them alone was at least worth the price of admission (which was free). There was a long delay while final checks were made, sound systems synchronized, far shore inspected by a police boat, and finally lights were dimmed and background music turned off.

I must say that I have never seen fireworks quite like these. A poem was read which struck a chord with the crowd – I expect its theme was German reunification – there was heartfelt applause, and then “The Wall” started playing. For at least 40 minutes we were treated to a brilliant display of light and sound choreographed to the music of Pink Floyd. Explosions echoed off the walls of the gorge, cascades of light ripped across the sky overhead. It was dazzling. The crowd cheered throughout, there was applause at the end, and then we all filed back to the festival where the brass bands had not let up. There must have been rain that night or we would never have slept.

Day 9 (Oberwesel) – 25 kms Sept. 12th

Sunday morning began with the sound of church bells and sweepers cleaning up from the previous night. (By now we instinctively started counting whenever church bells started ringing – it’s actually convenient in the middle of the night.)

We tried a different hill this morning, one marked as a trail on the bicycle map with only two single chevrons on it. It was a continuous ascent over 10 kilometres that went on forever. We made it to the top in one pull and sat on a bench sharing an apple. The wind gusts were cool and strong – strong enough to blow my bike over twice (ouch!). As we started to leave I had to call for Mary to stop – my front wheel was seizing whenever I turned even slightly left. I could see nothing wrong, the bike could not be ridden, and it was looking like a long walk down. That’s when Mary noticed that my brake cable was wrapped completely around the front fork stem – when the bike fell, its handle bars had turned 360 degrees. All I had to do was turn them once in the opposite direction and we were gone. It’s a good thing I didn’t have my allen keys with me.

Back on the village street we were making good business of a spit-roasted turkey thigh (delicious) when the festival parade marched by to the very end of the village, turned around and marched by again. What’s a festival without a parade? We took lots of photos - anyone from the village who wasn’t in the parade was watching it.

We thought after the previous night that our last night of the festival would be a low key affair, but not so. The crowd may have been older, but the stage bands were better than ever and the brass bands hadn’t let up since morning. One young man in particular sang Joe Cocker so well that if you closed your eyes you wouldn’t know the difference. More photos – difficult in the low light of incandescent light bulbs, but our hands were steady as rocks.

Day 10 (Oberwesel – Mittleheim) – 55 km Sept. 13rd

Monday morning, on the road. If at first you don’t succeed, read the manual. We had missed Mary’s odometer since Cologne, so we took some time to examine it carefully before we set out. The problem turned out to be a misalignment of the front forks’ sensor with the wheel magnet - they had taken a knock on the flight over. Less than a kilometre out of town I realized I had trouble. My gears were jumping from 5 to 6 of their own accord – yesterday’s fall had knock around the rear derailleur. Fortunately Oberwesel has a good bicycle repair man. In little over an hour we were on the road again.

Another good day on a good path. We had the river, we passed gardens, and German gardens are certainly a treat to behold for order. Around midday we passed through Bingen, which has a grimy dullness that made it pleasant to be past. At this point we may have lost the main trail. Although we were by the river, we found ourselves riding through a nature reserve and for the first time on an unpaved path. This was not difficult, but had it been raining it would have been messy. We headed for Ingleheim, still on the same shore, but it didn’t have a lot to offer so we took the ferry across to Oestrich-Winkel. While waiting for the ferry we grabbed a bratwurst – we had not had a substantial breakfast that day nor stopped for lunch.

Bingen is where the Rhine changes direction. Between it and Eltville the Rhine flows from east-to-west rather than its usual south-to-north. We were crossing to the right bank on opposite shore – this is the Rheingau region which reputably produces Germany’s best wine. These wines call to mind such superlatives as “breed” and “character”. Unlike the French, the best German wines are to be drunk unaccompanied – food can only detract from them. I know this because I read it in Hugh Johnson’s wine atlas. Such were our expectations when crossing on the ferry.

The tourist office directed us to a local bed and breakfast in Mittleheim (part of Oestrich-Winkel) where we took our worst room of the trip for two nights. It was run by a grubby little man (“Mr. Littleheim from Mittleheim”) who sold us a bottle of his homemade wine for 5 euros. The room met the highest standards of cleanliness, had feather pillows and duvets, but otherwise had no redeeming qualities.

Although it was late we quickly unpacked and set out again on our bikes. I was bound and determined to visit Schloss Johannisberg, possibly the best vineyard of the region, before dark. I was setting us up for the biggest disappointment of the trip. Schloss Johannisberg is ornate, pretentious, arrogant and expensive. We took a late lunch there with a dramatic view overlooking the vines and the river. Before we had finished our meal we were asked to move to a different table because ours was supposedly reserved – poor form. The food was very good (smoked salmon with potato rosti, dumpling with wild mushrooms), but there are restaurants in Ottawa that easily rival it for quality and value. The wine – well, we couldn’t afford a good bottle and that is the only way they sell their better wines, so we each had a glass of their “common” wine. It was good but no better than many others we had tasted. On leaving, a phalanx of “suits” did not stand aside for Mary at the door – poor form. To cap it all, five minutes after leaving I realized I had left behind my cycling gloves. When I went back the staff were decidedly unhelpful (and our “reserved” table was still empty). I suggest anyone who plans to visit should arrive in a dark blue suit with a well padded wallet, take in the spectacular panoramic view in a perfunctory manner, and leave behind their social graces – you’ll fit right in. As I say, it was our biggest disappointment of the trip – a pity really.

Back at our room we tried a sip of our landlord’s wine – it wasn’t bad, it was truly awful. To salvage the evening we wandered down the street to the Weingut Johannes Ohlig (Hauptstraße 68), a local producer whose cheerful and efficient wife kept a courtyard of local patrons laughing and happy. We took a table under one of the propane heaters, ordered one of his excellent local bottles with a plate of fries, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I dare say we laughed more that night than all the patrons of Schloss Johannisberg combined.

Day 11 (Mittleheim – Eltville) – 15 km Sept.14th

Our breakfast the next morning was the worst one of our trip – a few slices of cheese and meat that had seen better days accompanied by bland white bread. We decided then and there we were leaving. In our haste of packing Mary forgot her pyjamas tucked under the pillow. As they say, there’s no such thing as a problem ... Neither Mittleheim nor its neighbour Oestrich boasts a local bakery. We know this because we cycled for over an hour looking for one, and by now we were hungry. More disappointment. Finally we found a Lebanese fast food outlet where we could at least get a donner sandwich and a soft drink (no coffee).

We decided to leave the roads and cycle cross country through the vines to reach Kloster Eberbach. By road the journey might have been only five kilometres, but neither of us like riding on highways with no shoulders and high speed limits. We ambled along vineyard paths using detailed maps I had scanned from Hugh Johnson’s atlas (a good book, that). Amazingly our strategy worked, and we joined the highway just a few hundred meters short of the Kloster.

Of all our stops in Germany Kloster Eberbach may rank as our highest recommendation. It was here that Benedictine monks first came from France in the 1300’s and introduced vines to the region. Today the Kloster is a dedicated wine institute. Its setting in a wooded grove is just behind the hills that overlook the river – a spot of seclusion and tranquility. The 25 guest rooms (not inexpensive) were fully booked or we would have considered staying a night. Our afternoon was a delight, wandering through the old church, the museum, the dormitory, the gardens. The tastings at the wine bar were gracious and informed, and we came away with two excellent bottles, a Steinburger Riesling and a Fruhburgunder (a red wine from a grape variety for which I have not been able to find an equivalent). Late lunch at the restaurant (lit with dozens of pillar candles) was Riesling soup and jellied sucking pig with creamed cucumber sauce – quite delicious.

Picking our way back down through the vineyards we met a local lady walking her dog who was good enough to take our picture. We turned around and rode back a short distance to get a shot of both of us riding together. When we reached the edge of Eltville we debated whether to don helmets. “What would our children say?” we asked and put them on. Lucky we did. Mary misjudged the height of a curb and took a fall – once a bike with panniers starts to tip there is no chance for recovery. She had a bad scrape on her knee, her elbow, both hands suffered and her head bounced on the concrete. We never took our helmets off after this.

Our room in Eltville was our most expensive of the trip, but with an injured party we didn’t really care. Besides, it had a nice little writing alcove, bathrobes, and a coffee maker right in the room – one of the really good European kinds, not a simple North American drip machine. (An espresso research institute in Italy recently concluded that the single most important factor in preserving the flavour of a cup of coffee is limiting the time the grounds are exposed to air. Also, espresso apparently has less caffeine than regular coffee because the grounds spend less time in water.) This machine worked with sealed, pre-packaged plastic cylinders of ground coffee (about the size of a tealight), one cylinder per cup. When the cylinder was inserted into the machine you pressed down firmly, presumably to puncture it and, yes, the resulting coffee was superb.

Eltville is a very pretty town with interesting architecture and quaint, winding streets. We walked down to the river for the sunset and back to a picnic supper in our room. With a room that nice there was really no need to go out, and besides we still had some jellied suckling pig left over.

Day 12 (Eltville – Oppenheim) – 47 km ------------------photos Sept. 15th

At Eltville we made a strategic decision. Our original plan had been to leave the Rhine and cut south cross-country to Bad Durkheim and the Weinstrasse, but the ADFC cycling maps showed no route that was even remotely direct. Instead we decided to proceed through Mainz and carry on along the river.

We took our time leaving the hotel – we still had bread and cheese from the previous evening, and the coffee maker was working wonders. The bicycle map showed a passenger ferry between Eltville and Mainz that crossed the Rhine. Every trip report I had read talked about the difficulty in negotiating the river crossings in Mainz and we wanted to avoid the hassle. We found the ferry landing, it was a lovely morning and although no boat was in sight we decided to wait. We might still be there except an elderly German couple noticed us, came over to read the sign and managed to communicate through words and gestures that the ferry ran only on Fridays and Sundays – on we rode. Close to Mainz we stopped to buy some blackberries and raspberries from an animated old lady by the side of the bike path. She had plums which she was handing out to everyone to try – they were overripe and I’m sure she wanted to get rid of them. We pedalled away with extra plums stuffed into our bags.

The path from Eltville to Mainz (on the right bank of the river) is not paved, but the sandy surface is hard, well packed and easy to ride over. It runs right by the river bank along its length – I would consider taking this side of the river all the way from Mainz to Rudesheim if doing the trip again.

We found the bridge that crosses into Mainz without a problem, but three attempts to find a way onto it were futile (we avoid riding on four lane highways). We were walking back from our third attempt, perplexed and frustrated, when a woman called out to us from the side of the road. She was a cyclist, had noticed our consternation, parked her car on the sidewalk, and walked us to the bike path that led to the bridge – very kind. The key, by the way, to finding the path is to look for cycling signs pointing to “MZ – Mombach”, “MZ” standing for Mainz and Mombach being one of its suburbs. The path, tucked away in some shrubs, runs parallel to the bridge and away from the direction you want to travel, and then circles around to an entrance ramp.

As with most cities, the paths into and through Mainz are not particularly attractive. I think most paths are routed to avoid heavy traffic, with the result that you cycle through back roads that are often used by light industry – useful but not pretty. We were close to the city centre and back to looking at maps when we noticed a pedestrian sign pointing to the Gutenberg museum. Well, we were only coming this way once. It is not every day that you have the opportunity to see not one, not two, but three Gutenberg bibles, the first printed books in western civilization. The museum room they are kept in is literally a strongbox, with the massive doors of a bank vault. It was interesting to see that Gutenberg’s printing was slightly messy – the font edges were blurred (“wicking”, I’m told is the term), and the one page illustration on display was done in a very amateur manner. By comparison other books printed by contemporaries were incredibly crisp, more finely printed than any book you find in a modern bookshop.

After Mainz the cycling path by the river was no longer paved. This proved a bit tiring – we could not build up to a good tempo and bumps were less welcome after a few hours in the saddle. At either Nakenheim or Nierstein we missed a turn in the path and cycled into a dead end at the guard rail of a highway. Around we turned, retraced our route through the dust and found the underpass that took us under the highway. On to Oppenheim where it was time to find a room. We had by now established a routine for finding a place to stay. On arrival, we rode for the tallest building in town, usually the church. If we saw a hotel along the way we checked its price – this was the benchmark for that town, and invariably all rooms we looked at would be that price. Mary always handled the room inspection and made the crucial decision while I stayed outside with the bikes (she’s much better at this than I am).

Oppenheim was full - we went to three different places and there was not a room to be had. Finally the lady of a very busy restaurant (who also let rooms) called around and found us a spot which turned out to be quite lovely – a small room in a third floor loft with french beds and a skylight that looked up into the town. We returned to her restaurant for supper (still filled with locals – a good sign) and ordered a schnitzel, sauerkraut (I was determined to have some), a garden salad, beer and a glass of wine – it was delicious, our second best meal of the trip. The evening was cool but we didn’t mind sitting outside writing postcards as dusk faded into night. I’m sure we shared a dessert, but I don’t remember what it was – probably apple.

Day13 (Oppenheim – Lambsheim) – 52 km ------------------photos Sept. 16th

Breakfast in our hotel was once again excellent – a good selection and enough quantity to fuel us. It was another morning of brilliant sunshine, with a straightforward ride along the path into Worms in time for lunch in a local square close to the cathedral. It may have been on the approach to Worms that we missed the turn of the bike path away from the river and kept riding right past a glass recycling factory. There was a conveyor belt overhead used to move crushed glass onto barges. It wasn’t operating but the road below was completely littered with the stuff. We walked the bikes across this minefield and then carefully examined our tires to make sure we hadn’t picked any up bits of glass.

A tea house in the square had a sign for Neuhaus chocolates in the window, but the lady inside told me their supplier was out of stock until the end of September. Can you believe it? Mary does not complain a lot. She had broken her ankle 6 months earlier, her knee was scraped, elbow bruised, thumb bent – there was not a murmur about any of these – but the absence of chocolate was making itself known. Every morning when she sipped her coffee there was the comment, “No chocolate!”

We sat outside, ordered fish and had an excellent meal. Our waitress, one of those people who is interested in what you are doing because she also wants to travel, insisted we must stop to see the cathedral (we had intended to just keep cycling). It was to the cathedral of Worms that Martin Luther was summonsed by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V after he had been excommunicated for his rebellion against the simony of the church. Here the Diet of Worms banished him to the furthest reaches of the empire. His brazen ideas were not original, but were expressed with all the passion of righteous indignation and spread by the newly-invented printing press. The small stretch of the Rhine from Mainz to Worms was pivotal in shaping the direction of western culture and politics for the next 500 years. The cathedral itself lives up to its role in this drama. Its style is solidly Romanesque, with half-round arches rather than the vaulting points of gothic cathedrals, and is made of a red stone that gives a soft touch to its interior. The stone carvings along its walls are astonishing in their relief and detail. The insistence of our waitress was appropriate.

At Worms we left the Rhine to strike inland for Bad Durkheim. Our intention was to avoid the industrialized areas of Speyer and Mannheim, and to see at least part of the Weinstrasse. Exiting even a small village is time consuming – one wrong turn in the twisting streets sets you in the wrong direction or, worse, on a circular road – but finding our way out of Worms was incredibly frustrating. It took close to an hour to find the specific street we were looking for, located within half a kilometre of the cathedral. Such is the frustration of cities. It might have helped if we understood German.

A note of caution to others contemplating the same type of trip. The very detailed cycling map of the area published by the ADFC quite clearly shows routes in the general direction of our objective. These inland routes do not always have signs on the ground. We spent quite a few hours looking vainly for bicycle route signs to confirm we were on the right path. It was only about midway through the second day of inland navigation that I realized that the paths we were looking for existed but the signs didn’t. This realization actually made life simpler – there’s no point searching for something that isn’t there (and then doubling back because it wasn’t found).

Our room in Lambsheim was a pleasure – feathers on the bed, lace curtains, and the standard German cleanliness, although the fabric of the sheets and duvet covers was unusual, something like the waffle-weave of a tea towel. Our landlady was a delight. She spoke no English but made sure we were comfortable in our room and our bikes well sheltered. Supper was at an Italian restaurant – cannelloni with tira misu for dessert, wine, beer and a map to plan out the next day’s route.

Day 14 (Lambsheim – Germersheim) – 46 km ------------------photos Sept. 17th

We woke to a clear dawn framed by the lace curtain in our window. Our excellent landlady fed us well – good standard German fare. It was in the breakfast room that Mary noticed a clock on the wall that ran backwards – the numbers on its face and it hand movements were counter clockwise. We did not even think of trying for an explanation – language is a true barrier. As we were wheeling our bikes out of the courtyard our landlady brought some bunches of freshly-cut grapes for the journey – very nice.

The route cross-country to Bad Durkheim was pretty much straight forward. We were often back to cycling among the vines again, which I must say is most pleasant. We didn’t actually go into Bad Durkheim itself (no, we didn’t see the massive wine cask) but pushed on for Deidesheim in time for lunch. Lunch was in the central square at the Deidesheimer Hof. It was the sort of establishment in which speed of service is in inverse proportion to the price, and prices were very high indeed.

Here I will make an observation. Certain villages (Deidesheim among them) are often mentioned in travel guides as pretty, quaint or picturesque. Sometimes they are all these things. However, in our experience if a village has, for example, a two-star rating in the Michelin guidebook, you may rely that it will have given itself over almost entirely to the tourist trade (and wine, in this general area), and while it will still be pretty and picturesque, it will no longer be quaint. Tourism is an industry, and as with all industries there are standard products – the same items are for sale in the same shop windows in any one of these villages as the next, the menus will have the same “local” specialties, and as familiarity breeds contempt, the locals treat tourists as customers rather than visitors or guests. It was our experience that the “lesser” villages on our route were often preferred to the star attractions. The moral of the story – if you want to see a village that is a “star” attraction, choose one nearby to stay in and then make a side trip. That’s my rant.

We decided that navigating cross-country was going to take too long, so we chose to return to the Rhine where the route was at least straight forward. At Haßbloch we ran into the most dangerous hazard of the journey. Kids just released from school are a menace. We’ll take cars, buses and trucks any day rather than a crowd of hormone-charged adolescents set loose on the streets with no more brains than we had at that age.

Immediately south of this village the cycling path enters a Vogel park and intersects with another path that extends east-to-west from Neustadt to Speyer. If doing the trip again I’d try to incorporate it into the plan – it was among the most pleasant cycling of our holiday. We left this east-west route early because we were trying to avoid Speyer, not find it. By late afternoon we had made it back to our friend the Rhine and followed the loops and whorls upstream to Germersheim.

A room in Germersheim was very difficult to find. Another rule of thumb – hotels with signs put up by the tourist bureau on street lamps are usually not very good. At a local bike shop the owner made a phone call and sent us down to the Germania, a local pub that lets rooms, but somehow the price managed to increase by 15 euros from leaving the bike shop to arriving at the pub. (We found this to be a distressing habit in Germany – often when we asked if a room was available a side conversation started up in German in which they decided for how much they were going to soak the tourist.) We pedalled back to the railway station looking for other hotels – there were none - made our way back into town and finally found a decent (and decently priced) room. At supper that evening we had a delicious homemade tomato soup, but the pork loin was overdone. That was a surprise – generally the food in Germany was prepared extremely well.

Day 15 (Germersheim – Beinheim) – 65 km Sept. 18th

I looked at the map – I looked at the map in the hotel very carefully to be sure I knew how to find our way out of town. Somehow it just never works out the way it’s supposed to. It took at least one more half hour of hunt-and-peck to get back to the bike trail and on to France.

The path south of Germersheim is a very flat, paved surface that runs beside a flood dike – the road is smooth and straight forward, but you don’t see much of the river. Part way through the day Mary observed that people coming from the opposite direction were often coasting, whereas we had to pedal constantly because we were on a gentle but steady incline. It was also around this time that the slight headwind strengthened – not enough to be uncomfortable, but enough to ensure that the legs were in constant in motion – weren’t the prevailing winds supposed to blow from north-to-south?.

Lunch was at a beer garden along the route – bratwurst, wine and beer if I remember correctly. We wheeled our bikes into the patio, parked them beside the table and took our time enjoying lunch in the sunshine. When it was time to leave I turned my bike around – the front tire was limp. Curses. Our first flat tire. Spare inner tube, tire irons, hand pump, pressurized gas cylinder for a final boost – it took about 45 minutes to make the change, repack and get back on the trail. Mary’s backup plan was the black Mercedes convertible in the parking lot.

Near the French border, where the path runs next to woods, the breeze brought the moist, pungent smell of poplars – not my favourite tree (“I hate poplar”). It was an unexpected reminder of home. We crossed the border that afternoon as noted by the map – no sign marked the event. Over the Sauer river there were flat bottomed boats and a large flock of swans. We rolled past a French campground (I paid no attention to the young woman sunbathing topless). By late afternoon we judged it time to leave the trail for a nearby village, Beinheim, and as luck would have it the one hotel in town had a lovely room with a balcony – a perfect spot to relax. To celebrate our arrival in France we opened the bottle of Fruhburgunder I had been carrying since Kloster Eberbach – a wonderful red with strong earth tones and flavours of thyme which lingered long after it had been swallowed. A good thing it was, and less weight to carry besides.

Supper was at a local restaurant – a lovely pastry tidbit to start followed by half a dozen oysters on the half shell, and a breast of duck for the main event. The oysters were not as fresh as they might have been (not enough of an “R” yet in September?) and the duck over-spiced with allspice, but still quite tasty. We finished with a crème brule that had just the slightest hint of lavender in its caramelized sugar – possibly the nicest food discovery we made on the trip.

Day 16 (Beinheim – Strasbourg) – 57 km ------------------photos Sept.19th

Rainbows are not always good news – they generally mean there’s rain in the vicinity, and in the morning there was a rainbow outside our bathroom window. It looked like our string of amazing weather was about to end.

One of the significant differences we found between France and Germany were breakfasts. We had grown used to the hearty German plates of wurst, cheese, fruit, and bread. Now in France we had tasty croissants and jam with our coffee, but nothing more and not much by way of substance. This is important when cycling.

The morning’s light drizzle had stopped by the time we were underway. We cycled past farm yards of goats and geese (Mary stopped for a chat), back to the cycle path and pushed on towards Strasbourg. The winds had grown increasingly strong and steady but the rain held back. After a couple of hours, though, the light French breakfast was making itself known. At a small restaurant just off the trail I ordered an omelette – I think the chef was a bit chagrined but there comes a time when you need protein in your system. A cookbook for sale on the counter featured recipes by local chefs and out-of-character drawings of them with the farm animals used in their recipes. Our chef was one of those featured – it would have been a good cookbook to have, but when travelling by bike you can’t carry many souvenirs.

By late afternoon we were shifting our weight forwards and backwards on the bike frames or standing to coast on the pedals for saddle relief.

There is a point where the cycle path into Strasbourg leaves the river and heads inland to follow local roads. It is just as well to follow this route – the trail by the river degenerates and eventually you are forced to move anyway. The path runs through local woods for quite a distance and then finally leads into the suburbs of Strasbourg itself, winding along its various canals and bridges until you are almost in the heart of the city and there are no more signs to follow. We walked our bikes towards the cathedral, checking room rates along the way. You could spend a lot of money in Strasbourg if you wanted – it is a very cosmopolitan city – but Mary was able to find a small room a block away from the cathedral at a reasonable rate. The only catch was our bicycles – we could put them in the breakfast room overnight, but they had to be out by 9:00 am the next morning. This in a city with a reputation for bicycle theft to rival that of Amsterdam.

The local tourist office has free maps of cycling routes for the city and the Bas-Rhin region (basically northern Alsace). These are quite useful, although the regional map is at a very small scale (1:200,000). (Afterwards, when writing this trip report, I noticed that the German ADFC cycling map for the area around Freiburg includes the Colmar region at a scale of 1:75,000. It would have been much better to use. The map from the tourist bureau map shows that a cycling route exists, whereas the ADFC map shows how to find it.)

The cathedral of Strasbourg is a wonder. It is covered in stone carvings that never seem to end, each one a story in its own right. You could spend a week in Strasbourg cathedral and not get bored. Unfortunately at the time of day we arrived it thronged with tourists, so we decided to spend our time wandering and to return the next morning. For supper Mary had tarte a l’oingon, something she had craved since our last trip to Paris too long ago. We were debating the ingredients of the dish (something we enjoy as a pastime) when the French couple next to us corrected our assumptions and let us know it was made simply with onion, egg, and some crème fraiche. We chatted throughout supper – their English was a bit better than my French – and when their ice cream desserts arrived I took a photograph of them (the desserts that is). We never did have one of the famous German ice cream concoctions ourselves. The rest of the evening we looked at shop windows, admired the carving on the half-timbered houses and enjoyed our time in a city.

Day 17 (Strasbourg – Obernai) – 32 km ------------------photos Sept. 20th

We were up and out the door by 7:00 am. Something we learned on our last trip to Paris is that this is the best time of day to see a cathedral – the tour buses have not arrived, and only the devout or intent bother to come at that hour. The secularization of large cathedrals has stripped them of their mystery but not their beauty. It is ironic that in these massive structures one requires solitude to absorb their splendour. We had spent an hour in quiet awe, discovering views and admiring details when mass for the local congregation finished in one of the side chapels. A clutch of visitors who had attended hovered at the end of the nave on their way out, looking up and around as we all do. We were about to leave when they started to sing – a small choir singing in unadorned harmony. Their hymn finished, they remained where they stood until their voices had faded into the stone arches like countless voices before them. And then they turned and like all other tourists shuffled off to leave. It was a moving moment.

By 9:00 o’clock our panniers were packed and our bikes moved to the public square. We locked the bikes together and to a solid bike rack with seven locks – two kryptonite U-locks, two kryptonite cables held with a padlock large enough for a strongbox, and our four combination cable locks. Our bikes were not going to be burgled in Strasbourg.

Breakfast was at an internet café – yes, their computers had a CD-burner, but the Windows 98 operating system would not recognize our digital camera and we were not carrying the drivers disc with us. They did have a very interesting antique espresso maker in a display case (it looked like the setup for a high school science experiment). It was a good breakfast (more German than French) and, most importantly, they served a tiny foil-wrapped wafer of chocolate with our coffee – we ordered two cups each.

We split up for various errands and rendezvoused just after noon to pick up our panniers from the hotel. Off came the U-locks from the bikes, off came the cables, off came three of the four combination locks … but the fourth combination lock would not give. I suspect someone had messed with it and it was jammed shut, wrapped around our wheels and the bike rack so neither of us could move. Luckily my trusty multi-purpose gardening tool from Lee Valley Tools has a good quality serrated edge on it – five strong pulls severed the cable strands and we were free – we had burgled our own bikes in Strasbourg!

Using the cycling maps from the tourist office we were at least able to get on the right route to exit Strasbourg along the Rhone canal. We had a route planned but as always had trouble determining at exactly which point we should leave the canal and strike cross country. Eventually we had to ask for assistance and had the benefit of someone who led us to the exact road we wanted. Not only that, I could actually determine our location on the map! Some days you just get lucky. (Another small note on maps. The ADFC cycling maps don’t cover the area immediately around Strasbourg – its position unfortunately happens to fall on the map panel used for the legend. For the general area around Strasbourg you need to use the maps from the tourist office, but otherwise rely on the German cycling maps.)

The ride cross country to Obernai was flat through cornfields and cabbage patches. It was here that we ran into strong gusting headwinds that slowed us down to less than 10 kph. Even coming down from an overpass we needed to pedal – there was no coasting for even an inch. On the outskirts of Obernai we again ran into kids just out of school, crossing the road in packs and oblivious to our bells.

Obernai itself falls into the category of a tourist town, very pretty with lots of half-timbered buildings and flowers everywhere. Our room on the town square was pink – very pink – and did not have a plumb line or level surface anywhere. There was no parking spot for the bikes so we put them in the cellar next to the restaurant refrigerators. The pastry chef was a bit alarmed as we came through, but we were careful and his crusts stayed unblemished.

Supper was at Club 55, or something like that. Mary had tarte flambé, an Alsatian specialty made of a very thin dough crust topped with crème fraiche and cheese. It is served on a wooden platter and looks similar to pizza but has no tomato sauce. (Crème fraiche seems to be a staple of Alsatian and probably most French cooking. It is a cream that has been thickened with lactic bacteria, supposedly has a nutty flavour and does not break down when boiled. There is no commercial North American equivalent, but the recommended substitute is to stir one teaspoon of buttermilk into a cup of whipping cream and let stand until thick, which takes anywhere from 8 hours to 3 days.) The food was good, but our young waitress gave no indication that she enjoyed her job – she was just short of surly, and not only to us. On our way out I suggested that an occasional smile for her patrons would not go astray – I don’t appreciate paying for the privilege of being snubbed.

Day 18 (Obernai – Itterswiller) – 17 km ------------------photos Sept. 21st

By now we were getting rain nightly with clouds scudding overhead throughout the day. Apparently the storms that were battering Florida were trailing off across the Atlantic and finding us. I picked up some coffee and breads at a local baker for breakfast in our room before we walked around the town a bit more. The goods in the shops were quite expensive, even for items like linens. Fortunately we weren’t buying.

The Alsatian Route du Vin trails through the wine villages along the foot of the Vosges mountains. The map shows that a cycling route is planned for this area in the future, but today we were on the roads riding with traffic. It was not that bad but would have been much better without the winds, and now we were into rolling hills. Climbing into the wind with panniers was tiring, and descents were slow since we didn’t want to lose control as a result of the added weight. This is one instance where a configuration with front panniers may be an advantage.

We rode into Itterswiller in early afternoon looking for a bottle of water and ended up staying the night. It has a lovely setting on one of the spurs of the Vosges overlooking the next two villages and beyond. Like most villages along the route du vin it appears prosperous with multiple hotels or bed and breakfasts catering to visitors. I expect during the height of summer it might be difficult finding a place to stay in this area. Mary found a delightful loft right in the peak of an old house originally built for vineyard labourers – the stairs going up were almost dangerously steep. Our hostess, Betty, brought up two glasses of wine and a cut rose while we wandered the town – it was another fairy tale setting of gabled houses decked with flowers. The French government ranks villages and towns according to their floral beauty – I think Itterswiller had earned four-blossoms.

I noticed from the signs of the village weinguts there were three or four “Faller” wine producers in the town. The elderly woman behind the counter at one of them (she spoke more German than French) explained they were all cousins, and indeed our landlady was also a Faller cousin. We had missed foie gras in Strasbourg (the shops weren’t open by time we left) so we bought a small jar of 100 grams and a 500 ml bottle of 1997 Tokay Pinot-Gris (a grape with which we were not familiar) which she recommended to accompany it– perfect.

All this eating takes a lot of energy, and a nap was needed before supper. Lying in our bed with the window open at our heads we almost overslept, but rallied in time for the last sitting at one of the two restaurants in town. I ordered a beef dish which was pleasantly nicely done, but certainly does not compare with Canadian beef. The Pinot Noir was served chilled – a surprise for us, but this is apparently the way they serve it in Alsace and it suits the light nature of the wine quite well. Mary’s dessert of meringue, three flavours of ice cream and a garnish of whipped cream was … well, you get the picture.

Day 19 (Itterswiller – Riquewihr) – 32 km ------------------photos Sept. 22nd

Breakfast was at a common table. Our companions, an elderly couple from Belgium, come to Itterswiller and stay with Betty and René every year – they like the area and they like the hosts. I can’t think of a better recommendation. Betty’s french toast was done to perfection – a welcome change from the standard of croissants and coffee. René happened to pass through the courtyard as we were preparing to leave and quite cheerfully showed us his moulding planes, scrapers, chisels, mortising jigs and the like, demonstrating the function of each and explaining how they were all made from knot-free wood. From the street he pointed out the third village we would ride through (Dambach-la-Ville), and said we should not go to the big church there but rather the small church of St. Sebastian up among the vines on the right. Advice such as this is not to be ignored.

As always we managed to find the more difficult route to the church – part of the fun when cycling among vineyards is that there are lots of paths, so you can generally work your way to your destination as long as you can see it. The church entrance was not evident. While I was locking the panniers to the bikes, Mary wandered around the perimeter and was startled by a large flock of black birds that flew out from behind a low iron grill. It looked like they had perched in rubble under the church – in fact it was a pile of human bones. This was an ossuary, used when the cemetery became too full. The inscription above roughly read “What you are we were, what we are you will be”. The altar of the church, carved in wood, is a marvel of artistry and craftsmanship from the 1600’s. The names of the craftsmen are recorded as are the parishioners who sponsored and supported the effort – a nicely personal touch. The simplicity of the rest of the church – plain wooden pews and a simple choir at the rear – spoke of the rustic nature of the village in that era.

We stopped at a baker’s for some bread, a butcher’s for some cheese and paté-en-croute, then rode until just past noon for a picnic lunch. One difficulty we consistently ran into was that many shops in both France and Germany close from noon until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and here we almost got caught again. However in Bergheim we found a weingut that was open, pedalled back to the local traffic circle and took a picnic table by the park fountain. It was not long after we had laid out our spread that an elderly couple with a dog arrived and shuffled over to another table, laid a pillow for the dog on the seat, unpacked their picnic, the wife sent the husband back to the car for something, he brought it, she sent him back again… it looked like the dog had the best of the lot, and I expect from a glance our way that we had taken their habitual spot – c’est la vie. Mary soaked the label off the bottle in the fountain for her scrap book.

By mid-afternoon the rolling hills, the headwinds and the packs were taking their toll. Supposedly there is a bicycle route along this section but we had lost the trail long ago and were simply pedalling along the highway on an increasingly dark day. Traffic was not that bad and the drivers courteous, but highway travel is always tense. When we finally rolled into Riquewihr we were definitely in a frame of mind for a stop. The tourists on the streets attested to its three-star Michelin rating, yet the village charmed us immediately and we started looking for a room. It was the four poster bed that did it for Mary. Her philosophy is that if you want to sta